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?