you knew we're screwed when

We're definitely on the wrong path in this country when retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is described by a generally respected news organization as "liberal."

Centrist, maybe. Not-as-crazy-as-Thomas-or-Alito, sure. But liberal she is not.

I really hate it when the mainstream media suggest that anyone to the left of Dick Cheney might as well go back to their naked pot-smoking hippie gay communes.

It's all a matter of perception and semantics, I guess. I mean, you know how I feel about some of the supposed "liberals" out there. But do we have to lump everyone into overgeneralized categories all the time? Sure it comes in handy now and then (just kidding! well, kind of), but, for example, just because I don't think Hillary Clinton is liberal doesn't mean I think she's Ann Coulter's best friend.

(though does anyone else think that Hillary looks a little too much like Harriet Miers if Harriet went through detox and had a facelift? Just curious...)

And just because Sandra Day O'Connor hasn't used her free time in retirement to start to start vacationing with Pat Robertson doesn't mean she's liberal.

Maybe (but don't hold me to this) it's not conservatives that are ruining this country (except for a few particular conservatives, but that's a conversation for another time). Maybe it's actually our intense need to categorize and label everything and everyone and make a really messy world fit into neat little boxes so that we can sleep well at night.

Well, that and mainstream denial that that's what we're doing. But that's another conversation, too.

which one of these is not like the other?

Apparently the Pope, long known for wanting to take the Catholic Church back to its glory days, has decided to relax restrictions on the celebration of mass in Latin.

OK. I'm not Catholic (in case you didn't know) and I never gave this much thought, but what thought I ever have given it tended toward "if people want to, why not?" It doesn't seem like the world's most learnable or fun language. If they're really that motivated, my (completely ignorant) opinion on the matter is that it's not hurting anyone, so go ahead.

The curious thing is that "The decision comes after months of debate. Some cardinals, bishops and Jewish leaders have opposed any change, voicing complaints about everything from the text of the old Mass to concerns that the move will lead to further changes to the reforms approved by 1962-65 Second Vatican Council." (Yahoo News)

Does any part of that sentence jump out at you as a bit odd?

I mean, I would say there is truth in the stereotype about us being a particularly opinionated people, but frankly this suggests that some people have way too much time on their hands. Um, guys?* Don't you think there are some major theological, or, say, geopolitical issues of our own that we could be devoting this energy to?

*because yes, I'm sure the "leaders" implied here are men

right where i'm supposed to be

This past weekend I went down to New York City to meet up with some friends from my old job and visit another friend (and formerly my supervisor) and her husband who moved to Pennsylvania a while back and recently had a baby.

I haven't driven this far-too-familiar route between Brattleboro and New York since the month of hell (aka March) finally ended. Part of me never wanted to drive it again, and part of me really didn't care since I can drive it in my sleep. 91 to the Merritt Pkwy. Merritt to the Hutch. Hutch to the Whitestone Bridge and then onto the Bruckner.

Except this time I took the Bruckner to the BQE (that's the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, aka the Cheating Death Everytime Highway) and flew past my old house, continuing on to Brooklyn where two of my closest friends from college awaited my (late) arrival. They moved to the city just after I did, through total serendipity, and they're both about to move away. This past weekend was quite possibly the last time we'll all be together for a long time, much less in New York. So, as good college friends do, we celebrated our together-ness with margaritas.

And as many women our age can probably relate to, we spent most of the time competing for who has recently come across the most bizarre factoids about health and the body, mostly women's health stuff (yeah yeah, ewwww). (Though, because of the sketchy company I've been keeping lately, my weird women's health fact actually had to do with the reproductive systems of goats, because I was at my cousin's farm in upstate New York recently when one of her goats gave birth to twins.)

Let's be clear, here. We are NOT discussing our reproductive systems because we plan on using them anytime soon. We're more like halfway between high school health class and the dinging of our biological alarm clocks - we're old enough to learn and actually discuss really useful (or just fascinating) information, and young enough for this information to kind of gross us out ("my ovaries might WHAT??"). We're old enough to have watched a number of our friends marry and even have babies, and young enough for that to be totally freaky (well, except that one of the friends I was with is married herself).

It was therefore validating and ironic and lovely to spend Saturday with five good friends, three of whom are married (two of those to one another), and two adorable little baby boys (belonging to the married people). I'd never met the boys before, and it's a little tough to describe how I felt about this sudden babyness everywhere. They are beatiful and adorable and perfect, like all babies. They are also unpredictable and drooly and gross. Ten years ago I would have been terrified of the little creatures, and five years ago I would have felt some aversion and some indifference. This weekend I felt warmth and patience and not a little awe. I felt, dare I say it, really comfortable holding a baby in my arms. And perfectly happy to give the baby back to his mother.

It was validating to know that I could feel natural holding a baby and feel happy and comfortable letting it go. Yes, that could be right for me someday and I might even be good at it. No, that day isn't coming anytime soon, if I can help it (AHEM, no thanks to my health insurance provider).

But aren't the CUTE?



After the day with the babies we fought traffic back to the city and went out for a yummy dinner. On Sunday I sat in Prospect Park and called a bunch of people to say "hey, I'm in the city, come sit in the park with me!" which a lovely number of people actually did. We whiled away the beautiful afternoon, until I absolutely had to get back in my car and fight the end-of-the-weekend, leaving-the-city traffic to come home.

It was a perfect weekend in the Big Apple: I enjoyed what the city has to offer and saw some of the people I love best in the world, and I was so happy at the end of it to come back to my happy hippie valley in Vermont. There is no good Mexican food here, but there are lovely friends to discuss my reproductive system with, enough babies around to keep me from forgetting that talking about it is all I want to do with it for a long time, and enough potlucks and dances to feel totally socially fulfilled by my current single life no matter what most of society tries to tell me I *should* feel about it. The universe is giving me a lot of validation right now, and most of the time I'm remembering to be grateful.

an early summer night's dream

Last night I tried reeeeally hard to go to yoga class, just to get there and find that class was canceled this week because my yoga teacher is on vacation. OK fine. Luckily there was a back-up plan readily available right in the same town (because no, I don't go to a yoga class in the town in which I live. My class is, in fact, in a whole other state. That's partly because I really love this particular yoga teacher, and partly because I like to be absurd). So I ended up joining some friends at the local elementary school to watch their son's Little League game.

This wasn't just any Little League game. (In fact, I guess technically it wasn't Little League at all. It's Peewee League or whatever comes before Little League. I don't know such things; I played soccer.) This was the SEMIFINALS. Bernardston vs. Northfield. Northfield was the home team, and they were mostly big tough 4th graders. My friends were with Bernardston, which has a mix of 3rd and 4th graders, with a lot of kids who haven't hit their mid-elementary-school growth spurt yet.

This made for an uphill battle for our side, and there was competetive spirit like you've never seen. Bases were stolen. Bats were tossed. Tears were shed. Four-leaf clovers were searched for in the outfield during slow moments. This was serious baseball.

The evening was warm and humid, and we watched a storm waiting just over the mountains to the west with enough trepidation that people jumped a little every time a camera flashed. Bernardston started off strong, but then watched Northfield slowly creep back. Our best pitcher crumpled to the ground in the 3rd inning after getting smacked hard in the wrist as he tried to tag home. Northfield brought in a skinny little blond bomber of a pitcher who seemed to knock our kids down 1-2-3.

But our side kept at it, and after six innings (in only 3 hours!), with the rain seeming to close in, our pitcher (whose wrist seemed magically healed, which was good because the kid can throw some serious heat, though granted his heat often went nowhere near the plate) got strike 3: the last out. Bernardston was going to the championship, and everyone headed to the local creamery to eat ice cream for dinner.

And if that's not a perfect summer evening, I don't know what is.

Referrals Disease

Referrals Disease is when your visit to one doctor results in seeing multiple other doctors. In my case a general practitioner is leading to an orthopedist and a neurologist (no, I did not knee myself in the head; the issues are unrelated).

The good news is that the combination of mysterious health issues and lots of internet access means that I am learning quite a bit. Of course, how much of that is accurate is a different question, but I stick to the NIH and Mayo Clinic websites, which are said to be trustworthy. It's amazing how much information is out there! And how many weird things can happen to the human body (or that the body can do to itself)!

I must say, Google is probably the best thing that ever happened to hypochondriacs. I am not one, but the wealth of information out there makes it easy to imagine oneself fitting the descriptions of, for example, all 37,000 diseases possibly related to "fatigue."

No doubt having 37,000 diseases at once would be tiring, indeed.

random sports commentary, because i was up too late

There are sporting events, especially basketball games, whose wide final scoring margins belie the excitement and closeness of the game. Those games are fun to watch and leave you with something to talk about, because you can tell anyone who is interested exactly why the score should have been closer (or you can rant about it on your blog, because your friends are mostly hippie dancers who really could not care less).

Then there are games whose close final score belies the total boringness and pre-destiny of the game. Like the final score of the Spurs-Cavs game last night (the fourth and final game of the NBA Finals, for those who have no clue what I'm talking about). I stayed up 'til 12:30 in the morning for THAT?

The only reason it was (maybe) still worth watching at the end was to appreciate Manu Ginobli, who is as rock-solid a player at the end of a game as a team could ever dream of. In fact, I'd say he's why they won last night, because no one else was doing jack s--t. But at least the Cavs couldn't make a basket for most of the second half, except for their runs at the 7-minute mark and the 20-second mark.

At 20 seconds they started fouling and getting rebounds and LeBron woke up and got that Michael Jordan-ish, untouchable look back in his eyes. But as my friend who I watched the game with astutely noted, you start fouling with a minute left and making those baskets, you have a ball game. You start fouling with 20 seconds left, well... you have 20 seconds that take 10 minutes to play, an outcome that everyone knows anyway, and an 83-82 game that sounds far more exciting than it ever was.

It's great that the Cavs made it to the Finals, which was always their real goal anyway. LeBron finally has something of the supporting cast he needs and deserves (something that I, as a Minnesota sports fan, can only dream the Timberwolves will give Kevin Garnett someday). Tony Parker got a little more of his rightful recognition and a big smooch from a beautiful lady. So, everybody's happy, right?

Yeah. Wake me up for next season.

next thing you know i'll be eating freedom fries and watching hannity and colmes

The immigration bill is dead.

To me this seems to be a tremendous loss and a tremendous gain, all in one. Undocumented immigrants in this country - or at least some of them - just came closer to solutions to a couple of their problems than they have been probably in this lifetime. And personally, I think they should be breathing a sigh of relief that the bill died where it did. RIP.

I will admit right now that I say that based on only quick skimming of the TONS of coverage and commentary out there about the potential bill, and also with a brief but extremely informative background in both immigration law and Latin American social justice organizations. And here's what I believe - the proposed bill was about politics, not helping immigrants.

It was about figuring out how to appease the relatively open-minded voters and potential (future citizen) voters while not alienating (get it?) the Fox News crowd whose ancestors were, no doubt, sharing their corn with the Pilgrims and walking the Trail of Tears. This is why they can be so damn self-righteously opposed to immigration. (And, of course, because cultural diversity, bilingual education, and finding out what real Chinese and Mexican food tastes like will positively RUIN this country.)

There are many on the left criticizing the "hardliners" who killed the bill despite its supposedly wide support, and I think they're correct that a lot of people in this country would actually like to see a plan for more legal immigration opportunities and maybe even some amnesty. I don't happen to think it's because most people have any kind of a real understanding of the lives of undocumented immigrants or how screwed this country would be without them, much less how absurdly atrociously complicated and self-contradictory the U.S. immigration system is (example: when I worked for an immigration lawyer I regularly had to call the USCIS - formerly the INS - for answers to questions. They regularly gave me WRONG answers, which I would prove to them by reading them the most current version of the law, at which point I usually got hung up on). I do think it's because at least some people don't enjoy a) being hypocrites (see above: the Fox News crowd) or b) hearing about the horrible deaths people die in the Mexican/U.S. border desert or suffocating in the backs of trucks to get into this country.

I disagree very strongly, though, with the notion that a bad bill is better than no bill. How can anyone to the left of Hillary Clinton (and forgive me, but I don't consider her to be anywhere near the left, unless you catch her on a day when the left has taken out its wallet or voter registration cards in a big way, or she just has indigestion) honestly believe that logic? Do these same liberals believe the war on (that's not a typo) Iraq is good because it got rid of a torturous dictator? Is a bad war better than no war? Is a bad piece of seafood better than no seafood at all?

(Hint: No. Unjustified warfare that creates civil war and regional meltdown is really just bad. And no one wants E.coli.)

Give me a break. Maybe this is why people think liberals are naive. A bad bill would have been better than no bill only because there is no bill, so it's easy to pretend that the bill couldn't really have been that bad, could it? (answer: YES) and that our fearless leaders would have made sure that it was fair and benevolent and true to our country's ideals of tolerance and diversity and welcoming the huddled masses yearning to be free, yada yada yada.

Ever tried to read the federal tax code? Imagine it being more complicted. By about 1000 times. That's generally where the immigration code is. There are one or several types of immigration status for just about every letter in the alphabet (example: an L-1B is an intracompany transferee with specialized knowledge; an L-2 is his/her spouse or child), and obtaining one always involves lots of money and time and usually frustration and patronizing treatment. Even better, the laws change constantly, with every whim and pork barrel in Congress.

And that's just the law for people who have a shot at legal documentation. Then there's how we deal with the rest - giant fences, raids on businesses, people picked up for minor offenses - traffic tickets, smelling of marijuana smoke, being brown-skinned, etc. - being handcuffed to a bus seat for, oh, 35 hours and dropped off on the other side of the bridge in Tijuana.

(I'm not making that up, by the way.)

So no, I do not believe a bad bill would be better than no bill at all. I believe a bad bill would have been bad. I believe it would destroy more lives, create an even bigger bureaucratic mess than we currently face, and worst of all, allow most of us to pat ourselves on the back for accomplishing "reform" and ignore the ensuing chaos. I believe this president wouldn't sign a good bill even if the weak-ass Democratic leadership managed to get one to his desk, which frankly, I have no faith they would, because they're too busy being scared of their shadows.

If that makes me a hardliner... so be it.

is it so much to ask?

Call me crazy. Maybe I'm alone here. Maybe my concept of public, paid-admission musical performances is just different than most people's. Maybe I'm a freak.

But when I go to a concert, I want, really more than anything, to HEAR THE PERFORMER.

Not the people "whispering" - with full engagement of their vocal cords - behind me the *entire freaking time* (I'm thinking specifically of the Mason Jennings concert a few months ago - not that I hold grudges - but this seems to happen to me just about every single concert I go to).

And not, by any stretch of the imagination, the woman who feels like getting involved in the impromptu kora-guitar-more kora-singing jam session by hijacking it with an Aretha Franklin-soul-diva song about pajamas.

PAJAMAS.

We came to hear this amazingly gifted man, who traveled halfway around the world and then through the backroads of western MA, play his beautiful kora. OK, it turned into a jam session. And yeah, the woman had a pretty nice voice. Which I'd be fine putting up with sitting (preferably strong drink in hand) at a local dive bar's amateur open mic night, where presumably I would have paid far less for admission and had far lower expectations for my evening of musical enjoyment. NOT HERE.

Is it so much to ask?

thursday randomness (warning: many hyperlinks)

1. My coworker saw a black bear cub on the way to work this morning!

2. Tonight I'm going to a concert given by an amazing kora player from Mali (West Africa) at a fabulous little bookstore down in Massachusetts. Then I'll walk over to the town grange hall for the first in a new "First Thursday" (of the month) contra dance series being put together by my kick-ass friend Rebecca. World-class Malian music, a contra dance, a wonderful bookstore, and lots of friends throughout. And it's not even the weekend yet!

3. My lunch today was a huge salad of fresh spinach from my CSA, organic strawberries from the co-op, crumbled feta and chopped walnuts. And some balsamic vinegar mixed with a bit of walnut oil. YUM. It's true, food that's local (the spinach) and in season (spinach and strawberries) really does taste better.

4. I hope your day is as good as mine.

a state senator, a japanese restaurant, and the permanent representative of mauritius to the UN

All walk into a bar. No wait, that's a different story.

Today's story is about my first official victory over crisis in my job as a study abroad coordinator.

The background here is that working in study abroad is (or feels like, anyway) mostly about preventing or putting out fires. It's about the vast, amazing array of new problems, silly questions ("no, you can't travel to Brazil on your Argentina tourist visa. They're actually two whole separate countries."), and amazing pickles our students manage to have and get themselves into. Never a dull moment. It's part of what makes this job simultaneously stressful and fun.

Right now a colleague is out of the office so I'm covering as point-person for some of her programs, and yesterday I received a phone call from a student in one of those programs saying that she'd sent her visa application to the wrong address (there was a typo in the suite number) and now she has neither a visa nor her passport. She's supposed to leave the country for her program on Sunday.

Doh.

Some of the prerequisites for my job, as for being a good traveler in general, are flexibility, the ability to see humor in most situations, and the perspective to know the world will not end no matter what the outcome of a given situation. Also, the knowledge that flipping out rarely helps and often hurts your ability to solve a problem. In general, I have these attributes. This is the first time they were really tested in this job (they were tested plenty of times in my last job, so I wasn't too worried).

Okay, so the Bolivian consulate is in a big office buliding in New York City, in Suite 701, and she sent her application to Suite 801. My first thought was, gee, if the typo was in our visa instructions, that would mean that potentially ALL the students sent their applications to the wrong address. Which would be awesome. Since consulates often approve visas at the very last minute, we tell students not to worry if they don't get it until the week before they travel. Um, I'm glad this student worried, and called the consulate.

So, first step: call the Bolivian consulate. I spoke with a lovely woman who confirmed that they had issued visas for the other students whose names I gave her. HUGE sigh of relief.

Next step: find out who the heck is in Suite 801 and has absconded with this kid's passport. This required some detective work. Thank God for the internet. Having been unsuccessful in turning up anything through a Google search for the exact address and suite number, I decided to randomly call other businesses in the building and see if they knew who is in that suite, or could connect me to the building manager.

I started with a State Senator's office in the building, because they're there to help the public, right? Unfortunately the person I spoke with said the secretary, who would have the building manager's number, was out. Next I called a Japanese restaurant in the basement and thoroughly confused the woman who answered the phone. My next stop was the office of the Permanent Representative of Mauritius to the United Nations, who was gloriously helpful. From there I was able to call the building manager, who said "there is no Suite 801, but the Bolivian Misson to the UN is in Suite 802".

ah-HA.

So I called the Bolivian Mission office and spoke with a woman who insisted that she didn't have any visa applications, until I pressed and mentioned that the passport was in there and could she please double-check. Lo and behold, she remembered receiving a package with a passport. I ask that she please please please take it down to the consulate as the student needs her visa immediately. After explaining that no, I can't come pick it up because in fact I'm several states away, she promised to deliver it.

Luckily when I check in with the consulate a couple hours later and find they don't have it, the wonderful consular officer promises to go get it from the Mission and issue the visa right away. I called the student with this final update and walked around my office looking for someone to celebrate with. I solved my first official crisis!

Now if only the U.S. Passport Agency would get a move on and issue the passports of those student who are supposed to leave in a few days and who applied for their passports a very very long time ago. We get frustrated with other countries consular services, but the one that really drives us nuts is our own.

the ever-shrinking world

I went to college with a great guy named Tim. He was one of those people who's good friends with some of your good friends, who you see a lot, and with whom you definitely get along well but you never really quite become close friends yourselves.

After college Tim moved to St. Louis to get a Ph.D. in math. I moved with some of my closest friends to Minneapolis. One day I came home from work and there was Tim in my living room, visiting my friend/roommate Anne. I hadn't seen him in a couple years, and it was fun to hear about his adventures in math grad school (which involves more adventures than you'd think, apparently) and his recent decision to leave his grad program and pursue his other passion, jazz music.

Fast forward a couple years. I'm visiting a friend who is in law school at Northwestern, and while she's in class (with someone I shared a house with one summer in college, coincidentally) I wander down the street and find a coffee shop to sit in. Northwestern happens to be right dow the street from the New England Conservatory. Who walks in to the coffee shop? You guessed it - Tim, along with his visiting-from-St. Louis girlfriend. We hug and chat. I tell them that I'm rarely in Boston but I do come to western Mass. all the time to contra dance. His girlfriend, who seems awesome, loves to contra dance and has dragged Tim once or twice, though he's much more of a swing dancer.

Fast forward to last night. I'm in Concord, MA at the Scout House. (Side note: I'd never been there before; it's a lovely hall with a beeeeeeautiful floor, and - last night - an equally beautiful band. Uber-fun.) I'm in the midst of balancing and swinging my neighbor, and who do I see in the next line? You guessed it. I shout "Tim!" and he calls back "yes! I saw you!" and after that dance we hug and chat, this time while waltzing.

And then as I am talking to him during the break, many many people I know and love from dancing out in western MA come up and say hi to him. They're all friends. And then someone comes up and gives him a hug and turns to me and says "are you Rachel? Do you know Chanel?" Chanel is a girl she went to college with at Oberlin, with whom I became friends in the last few months before I left New York City when she came to work at Columbia/Barnard Hillel.

This is the sound of my world shrinking, in a fabulous way.

Did I mention that last weekend my parents and I discovered that the sister of a family friend of ours from home in central Illinois, who we had heard lives somewhere around Brattleboro, is - I kid you not - my next-door neighbor? Even better, I'd met her for the first time just that morning because she was having a tag sale (weird New Englanders call them tag sales, not yard or garage sales). I'd bought a rug and a book and a hat from her. Funny how it didn't come up that her sister has known me since my birth.

There are so many stories like these: Running into a childhood friend from Normal, IL while he's studying abroad in Buenos Aires and I'm visiting one of my best friends from college while she's there doing the same thing. Becoming friends with the roommate of a friend in California (actually the same Anne who Tim was visiting when we lived together in Minneapolis), then finding out that over a decade ago he was good friends with my good friend in Massachusetts, when they both worked at a camp in Maine.

What I wonder is how often we don't even discover the connections. That's why I try to always mention names in stories, because you never know when someone will connect the dots and say "oh, you grew up down the street from so-and-so? That's funny, I met her in a bar in Barcelona and we ended up traveling around Spain together" or some such randomness.

What a wonderful big small world it is, huh?