Published December 20, 2002 | 
Enter your password to view comments.Published December 20, 2002 | This Will Make Joe Happy
Today, Philadelphia is having better weather than the Bay Area. It’s 55 and partly sunny there, about 50 and pouring rain (on and off) here.
Of course, the rain, chill, and high winds exhilarate me. I caught myself laughing out loud the other day, crossing the courtyard here at work. (This building is designed like a cheap motel, with suite doors opening onto external corridors. There’s a central courtyard complete with fountain and four magnolia trees. And yes, the bathrooms also open onto the outside corridors.) I figured out that it’s because at last we’re having *weather*. This attitude has not endeared me to some of the native Californians, who would just as soon go back to perpetual sunshine.
Published December 20, 2002 | Good News, Bad News
From Harper’s “Weekly Review”:
American non-Christians told pollsters that evangelical Christians are better than prostitutes but worse than lawyers or lesbians.
Published December 19, 2002 | This Day in (Personal) History
I did a little quiz today, listing where I’d been and what I was doing twenty years ago, ten, five, etc. I think the author was just asking for general information, but with my idiot savant’s head for dates, I know what was happening. Also, it doesn’t help/hurt that today is an important day in my life. My ex-husband’s birthday — in fact, his first birthday as a divorced man. (Any bets that he’s remarried already?)
Though some of the quiz was painful, the overall effect was heartening. My life is a thousand times better than it used to be. I’m in one of the best relationships of my life. I have a good job with great people. I am involved in a loving church. Now I have the NaNoWriters, and I love them all, even if I haven’t gone to the extent that Dan did. (He proposed marriage to us all at the “Thank God It’s Over” party.) I’ve been needing a writers’ community, as well as some friendships outside the house. I’m writing again, fiction and nonfiction. I may even be unpacked someday.
The other day I was discussing this with Ed (my carpool buddy and our company’s resident database genius/Eagle Scout). I was listing the cool things in my life, and he said, “Seems like good things do happen to bad people sometimes.”
Published December 19, 2002 | Just in Case You Wondered. . .
I am 58% Tortured Artist
Art is significant in my life, people are scum but I have the capicity to deal with it. Give it a few more years and I will either forget about art or hate the world.
Take the Tortured Artist Test at fuali.com
Like this is going to surprise anybody who knows me.
Published December 19, 2002 | Published December 18, 2002 | Published December 17, 2002 | Kids and Grownups
“None of us are as strong or brave as the children we used to be.” — Peter Straub
There are times when my friend Karen wants to be a kid again: safe, protected, the focus of a lot of adult care and attention, without the responsibilities adults have to face. Nevertheless, she shoulders her responsibilities and deals with them — with occasional breaks for playfulness.
Even in my wildest dreams I can’t imagine childhood in those terms. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be an adult — no, that’s not accurate. I thought of myself as old and battered, a scarred veteran walking among the fresh-faced innocents. Even when I was spending time with people a dozen years older than I was, I never took on the cute little kid persona. That is not in my repertoire. For me childhood meant having crushing responsibility with no power — meant protecting the grownups, protecting my sisters, dealing with things that were unbearable but had to be borne.
One unpleasant side effect of this is that I’ve always tended to emphasize how old I am. This must have been mildly amusing when I was in my early twenties and feeling elderly. At 43, though, I think it’s time to end it. Not because I haven’t been through vast quantities of garbage, but because I ought to have figured out by now that chronological age hasn’t got a bloody thing to do with that. It’s obnoxious, it’s embarrassing, let it end.
Yes, I do feel old sometimes when people a dozen years younger than I am talk about TV shows I’ve never seen, or music I’ve never heard of — but given that I was never particularly plugged into that aspect of pop culture, that’s OK. I love the music I love, and I am always open to listening to new music. I acquired what I know of pop culture between about 18 and 38. Then people started dying and I turned away from keeping up with every new movie. There wasn’t energy for that any more.
Oddly, I never felt that age would deprive me of anything I wanted. I don’t obsess over wrinkles and gray hairs — having stayed out of the sun, determinedly pale and geeky, I don’t have many wrinkles yet, and the few gray hairs are covered by hair dye anyway. (Redheads have more fun.) I’ve never feared that turning 30 or 35 or 40 would deprive me sexually. Now, well ensconced in my 40s, I definitely don’t feel deprived.
“I’ve been an evil freakin’ diva for forty years — now I have to go somewhere and knit!” — Cher, contemplating retirement
Well, no. Now you get to be an old evil diva. You get to be powerful, sexual, strong. I much prefer another Cher quotation, what she reportedly said when she first spotted the bagel-store clerk she lived with for years: “I want him. Have him stripped and washed and sent to my tent.” Now that’s an attitude.
Published December 11, 2002 | Because I’m Fair-Minded. . . .
I’m quoting an article in full from the Tennessee Right to Life website.
Pro-Life Doctor May Join FDA Drug Review Panel
October 13, 2002—Washington, DC: A pro-life gynecologist from Lexington, Kentucky, who is lobbying the federal government to rescind its approval of the dangerous abortion drug RU 486 is in line for a position on a key FDA advisory committee on women’s health issues.
Pro-abortion groups are furious that the Bush administration is considering W. David Hager for an appointment to the Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee.
The panel advises the Food and Drug Administration and made the recommendation that eventually led to government approval of RU-486. Hager’s pro-abortion critics describe him as an ideologue who has no credibility in the medical or scientific community.
As evidence, they point to a book that Hager authored with his wife, Linda, that stresses “the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one’s life” and puts a strong spiritual emphasis on easing women’s suffering from health problems.
“He’s more interested in ideology than in science or medicine,” claimed Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Hager did not respond to requests for an interview. However, his defenders say he is a well-respected physician and researcher who is hardly an extremist.
Hager is a part-time professor at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and supervises the residency program at Lexington’s Central Baptist Hospital.
“He is an outstanding and highly qualified candidate,” said Bill Pierce, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
One published report said that Hager would serve as chairman of the panel, but Pierce insisted that no decision has been made on Hager’s appointment.
Kenton County Commissioner Barb Black said Hager would be a good addition to the committee. Black said she sought Hager’s advice earlier this year when the Northern Kentucky health board was debating whether to reject federal family planning money. Hager’s position on that issues shows that he is someone who “looks at all of the medical facts and considers all of the data before he makes a judgment call,” she said.
Hager has been active in the pro-life movement for years and is probably one of the best-known obstetrician-gynecologists in Lexington, said Frank Schwendeman, president of the Kentucky Right to Life Association.
He also has worked to reduce pregnancy among teen-agers and has promoted the abstinence-only approach to sex education. In addition, he was one of the doctors who participated in a federal study last year that questioned the effectiveness of condoms in protecting against sexually-transmitted diseases.
Emory Wilson, dean of the UK College of Medicine, said Hager’s contributions “to the literature and to our knowledge of infectious diseases in women have been significant and respected by others in the field.”
In August, Hager was one of several physicians in the Christian Medical Association who petitioned the FDA to shelve the RU-486 “abortion pill” pending a review of the approval process and complications attributed to the drug.
Pro-abortion supporters contend it would be a conflict for Hager to serve as chairman of the FDA’s advisory committee at the same time he is pushing the agency to shelve RU-486.
The appointment doesn’t require confirmation by Congress.
“For someone who doesn’t trust or support women’s rights to reproductive health care … to be in a position to make critical decisions about the future of health care is quite frightening,” said Beth Wilson, director of the Reproductive Freedom Project for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky.
Feldt and other abortion advocates say Hager’s appointment is part of a pattern by the Bush administration to fill key advisory positions with people for whom ideology is more important than medicine or science.
Other appointees they cited as examples include Dr. Mildred Jefferson, a founder and former president of the National Right to Life Committee who has been asked to serve on a new panel on clinical research trial safety; and Dr. Tom Coburn, a pro-life former Republican congressman from Oklahoma who was named in January co-chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Coburn has questioned the effectiveness of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases.
Now, according to other sources (Time magazine and CBS news), Dr. Hager refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Moreover, Hager’s book on women’s reproductive health prescribed specific bits of Scripture as a cure for PMS. This seems inadequate, to say the least, but could be effective if coupled with a good diagnosis and whatever drugs are necessary. The FDA offered several candidates (who were rejected) and also asked that this appointment be temporary, but Bish insisted that it be for the full four years. At least one published report has claimed that Dr. Hager would be the chairman of the committee.
In searching out the pro-life point of view, I discovered the other appointments mentioned in the final paragraph, which I hadn’t heard about before.
I’m not going to pretend to be shocked that beliefs play a role in politics and in the government functions (like the FDA) that should be more about substance than ideology. I refuse to say that a pro-choice candidate would not be a political choice. But I will say that this is bad news for women who need reproductive counseling before they’re married (or after they’re divorced?), who need RU-486, who want to be able to prevent or end an unwanted pregnancy.
Abortion is an agonizing choice. But sometimes it’s the right choice.
Ah well. This may all be a moot point, since Dubbya is threatening to nuke anybody who has dangerous weapons. Well, maybe not just anybody. Anybody *else* — all those rogue states who go around attacking weaker people unprovoked.
Bush reminds me of the drunk sprawled on all fours under the streetlight. When a cop comes up and asks, “What are you doing?” the drunk says, “Looking for my car keys.”
“Oh, you dropped them here?”
“No, I dropped them across the street. But I couldn’t find them in the dark over there.”
Iraq is not the enemy this time. But Saddam Hussein is right under the streetlight. Osama Bin Laden is still lurking in the dark. And I bet he’s laughing.
Published December 11, 2002 | Musical E-Mails
E-mails from two good friends.
Today, December 11, is the 94th birthday of American composer Elliott Carter, whose name is known to anyone who knows me. Carter is still active — more than active, actually. He is still composing with astonishing fluency (though I must say my own favorite music of his remains the great middle-period pieces composed from 1959 to about 1980). In October last year, as New York City was recovering from the shock of September 11, Yo-Yo Ma performed Carter’s terrific new Cello Concerto at Carnegie Hall, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. In April 2003, the Boston Symphony is scheduled to perform a new “Boston Concerto.”
If you do the math, depending on whether you date Carter’s discovery of his compositional voice with the Piano Sonata of 1946, the First Quartet of 1951, or even the Second Quartet of 1959, you find his “mature” period has lasted longer than Mozart’s entire life, and perhaps a year or two longer than Beethoven’s.
Yesterday, I received a brief e-mail from Carter expert and confidant David Schiff, who said he saw Carter a few days ago and he was in very good spirits, which is heartening news.
Joe
second e-mail
Oh, and I think Christmas is coming up, too.
J
The next e-mail is from another friend and is of a somewhat different import:
“George’s Song” (Author unknown)
To the tune “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”
If we cannot find Osama, Bomb Iraq.
If the markets hurt your Mama, Bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi
And the bank takes back your Audi
And the TV shows are bawdy, Bomb Iraq.
If the corporate scandals growin’, Bomb Iraq.
And your ties to them are showin’, Bomb Iraq.
If the smoking gun ain’t smokin’
We don’t care, and we’re not jokin’.
That Saddam will soon be croakin’, Bomb Iraq.
Even if we have no allies, Bomb Iraq.
From the sand dunes to the valleys, Bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections;
Let’s look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions, Bomb Iraq.
While the globe is slowly warming, Bomb Iraq.
Yay! the clouds of war are storming, Bomb Iraq.
If the ozone hole is growing,
Some things we prefer not knowing.
(Though our ignorance is showing), Bomb Iraq.
So here’s one for dear old daddy, Bomb Iraq,
From his favorite little laddy, Bomb Iraq.
Saying no would look like treason.
It’s the Hussein hunting season.
Even if we have no reason, Bomb Iraq.