Letter to an Unknown Iraqi: The Urge to Help, The Obligation Not To

An extraordinary essay by Ariel Dorfman. He was a political exile from Chile; he explains why he believes the war in Iraq is a bad idea, even though Saddam Hussein is undoubtedly an evil ruler who tortures and murders his own citizens.

Sure, We’ll Rebuild as Soon as the War Is Over

Mark Fiore demonstrates reconstruction — I mean, rebuilding the nations devastated by war. The cartoon requires Flash.

New Mirror Site for Salam Pax

Salam Pax, the blogger in Baghdad, has a new URL and a mirror site in Santa Clara. So many people were worried about him over the weekend that the server crashed.

Recent Reading

Why We Hurt, Frank T. Vertosick Jr. Interesting look at causes and cures for various kinds of pain. Written by a neurosurgeon. It’s good but not great; the author never offers the insight into disease, pain, and personhood that characterizes his distinguished colleague Oliver Sacks. Still, worth getting from the library.

Crimes of Passion: An Unblinking Look at Murderous Love, Howard Engel. Annoyingly faux-scholarly look at true crime, without offering much in the way of new insight into why love goes wrong. The pedestrian style makes it no fun to read, while the many minor inaccuracies cast doubt on everything he writes. A fair bit of it seems to be cribbed from a couple of sources.

The Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh and Dorothy L. Sayers. Using information gleaned from Sayers’ writing, Walsh comes up with a new story of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane during the early period of World War II. It’s OK, definitely worth the trip to the library, but the dialogue doesn’t sound like the characters, and too many plot elements are swiped from the earlier books. Also, what happened to Mango, Harriet’s maid? If she’s gone off to do war work, we should be told. Not nearly as good as Thrones, Dominations, in which Walsh completed a Sayers manuscript. I could see the seams in that one, but I’ve gone back several times to reread it anyway.

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, Tony Horwitz. Fascinating, even-handed look at the voyages of Captain Cook. Examines everything from the conditions of life on board a sailing ship to the effect Cook and those who followed him had on the societies he discovered. Plus examinations of modern Tahiti, Australia, and other far-flung places Cook reached. I was left marveling at the courage of the captain, but also lamenting the way European culture and germs destroyed other societies. Highly recommended. So is Confederates in the Attic, a previous book by the same author.

Springtime Update

Even in sunny California, there are seasons. Now that we’ve passed the Equinox, the wisteria are in full bloom, heavy clusters hanging like pale grapes. The rosemary is also thick with blossom. It comes in two colors, lavender and blue, which would be lovely planted together. Rosemary here is not confined to herb gardens or sheltered windowsills. It’s a tough, drought-resistant plant that grows so rampantly it’s used as a ground-cover and in the median of highways.

The orange and lemon trees are heavy with fruit. I think we’re going to make more lemon-ginger marmalade with the lemons from our tree. Actually it’s a neighbor’s tree, but one branch hangs over our fence, and we pick the lemons from that. We do have a couple of orange trees of our own.

The view from my bedroom window is a Cezanne painting: the sky, a neighbor’s red-tiled roof and creamy ochre walls, the silvery green leaves of a eucalyptus, and the brilliant emerald and orange and yellow of the citrus trees. Soon enough I’ll be putting up the dark, heavy curtains to keep the heat out, so I enjoy it while I can.

Help, Help, I’m Being Repressed! Come See the Violence Inherent in the System!

You are the disgruntled peasants. You are outspoken
and believe that Arthur should not be King
because “strange women lying in ponds
distributing swords is no basis for a system of
government.”

Which Monty Python’s Quest For the Holy Grail character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Something Practical to Do

Whatever your take on the war. there’s something kind and practical you can do for the soldiers: send them books. This site explains how and offers you a chance to send a soldier something s/he wants to read.

I know where some of our books are going.

Wow, It Finally Works

I’ve been unable to post here since Monday. No matter what the content of my post, I keep getting the 203 error, which is supposed to show up only if you’re posting ampersands and other symbols the Bloggerbrain can misinterpret as programming instructions. So I’m trying the little “Blog This” program, hoping it will work better than the old-fashioned way.

Note on Thursday night: It didn’t. I kept trying to edit and republish the post, but that didn’t work either — until now.