Today marks the 25th anniversary of my employment at the University of Illinois.

It's hard to believe this much time has passed. That first day in 1982 may not seem like yesterday, but maybe it wasn't really a quarter century ago.

Current Mood: sleepy

The Chicago Tribune's Julia Keller won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her "gripping, meticulously constructed account" of the tornado that killed eight people in Utica, IL in April 2004. The Pulitzer judges' description is accurate; Keller's three-part series is a stellar work of journalism.

The series can be read here.

Today, November 9, marks the fifteenth anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall, the accursed "wall of shame" that divided the once and future capital of Germany for 28 years and separated neighbor from neighbor and family member from family member. For those of us who grew up during the Cold War, there was nothing so symbolic of the contrast between freedom and totalitarianism than the ugly gray mass of concrete, cinder blocks and barbed wire that began to go up during the wee hours of August 13, 1961.

And likewise, when the leaders of Communist East Germany opened the border during the early evening of November 9, 1989, the moving images of throngs of elated but dazed Germans pouring through the once-impermeable Berlin Wall made it clear that the Cold War had ended. The physical and psychological barriers had begun to come down throughout eastern Europe that fall, but no event had the magnificent, monumental symbolism even approaching the opening of the Berlin Wall. </p>

I can't begin to imagine the feelings of shock, fear, and disheartenment as Berliners awoke on that Sunday morning in 1961 to find that their city had been divided by rolls of barbed wire soon to become an ugly concrete and cinderblock wall. Neighbor was separated from neighbor, family members from family members.

The boundary between zones (and between two ways of life) ran down streets and through back yards. Imagine your city torn in two by a wall of concrete, guarded by marksmen with submachine guns with orders to shoot to kill any would-be refugee.

( Read more... )

From The Nation comes this excerpt:

In the media spin world, it doesn't matter that Dick Cheney has spoken publicly about his gay daughter or that she attended the Republican convention with her girlfriend and was even shown on TV. It doesn't matter that Mary Cheney, currently managing her father's campaign office, has not only been out of the closet for a decade, she's a kind of professional gay conservative — faced with a national boycott during the 1990s due to its antigay policies, Coors hired her to spruce up its image among gay beer-drinkers. No one is asking why this grown-up woman is not speaking for herself: to reinforce the damsel-in-distress motif? </p>

Thus are positions reversed: Kerry, the gay-friendly candidate, becomes the victimizer of innocent daughters, and Bush, who supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and who relies on homophobia to excite his fundamentalist base, becomes the generous protector. But if there's nothing immoral about being gay, and if Mary Cheney has herself made her sexual orientation public, what did Kerry do that was so monstrous?

The Mary Cheney gaffe is ... a blip, a nothing, a wisp that the Republican wind machine wants to whip into a tornado of hysterical outrage. And because so much of the media are frivolous and lazy, it can. The tactic doesn't work for long ... but it doesn't need to. It only needs to push the right buttons — propriety, prurience, politeness — for a few crucial days.

Every minute people are focusing on what John Kerry said about Mary Cheney is a minute they're not talking about Iraq, or Guantánamo, that swamp of injustice and torture, or the plain basic fact that Bush, who lost the popular vote, has used his four years in the White House to turn the country over to lobbyists, ideologues and charlatans.

It's a minute they're looking at Kerry's character and not at Bush's. It means they're not demanding action on the mushrooming scandal of pro-Bush vote suppression and fraud, and not just in Florida either — the intimidation of black voters, the trashing of Democratic registration forms by GOP-contracted firms and their rejection by state authorities on flimsy pretexts, those paperless electronic voting machines.

Defending Mary Cheney lets Republicans look concerned for a gay person while preserving their basic homophobic agenda.

But then ... this is a man who will say or do anything to further his career.

Read the whole commentary.

The Chicago Tribune today endorsed Barack Obama to represent Illinois in the U. S. Senate.

</p> ( Read the Tribune's endorsement verbatim )

In an editorial that succinctly sums up the candidates' records, and their strengths and weaknesses, the Washington Post on Sunday endorsed John Kerry for President.

( Read the Post's endorsement verbatim )

Woman Disrupts Laura Bush Speech in N.J.

By JOHN P. McALPIN
Associated Press Writer
Published September 16, 2004, 7:10 PM CDT

HAMILTON, N.J. -- A woman wearing a T-shirt with the words "President Bush You Killed My Son" and a picture of a soldier killed in Iraq was detained Thursday after she interrupted a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush.

Police escorted Sue Niederer, of Hopewell, N.J., from a rally at a firehouse after she demanded to know why her son, Army 1st Lt. Seth Dvorin, 24, was killed in Iraq. Dvorin died in February while trying to disarm a bomb.

As shouts of "Four More Years" subsided, Niederer, standing in the middle of a crowd of some 700, continued to shout about the killing of her son. Local police escorted her from the event, handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police van.

Niederer was later charged with defiant trespass and released. [Emphasis added.]

The first lady continued speaking, touting her husband's record on the economy, health care and the war on terror to those attending the rally in this suburban community of 90,000 people near Trenton.

She made several references to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and said that many in New Jersey, including some in neighborhoods near the firehouse, lost family members that day.

"Too many people here had a loved one that went to work in New York that day," Bush said. "It's for our country, it's for our children, our grandchildren that we do the hard work of confronting terror."

Interrupting someone's speech may be rude, but hey, that's part of the territory when one's a public personality. And, rude or otherwise, it is what I would consider "free speech". What the hell is "defiant trespass"? Does anyone believe in the First Amendment any more?

Current Mood: pissed off

Twenty five years ago today, August 19, 1979, I arrived in Champaign-Urbana. I was a scared, shy, sheltered and skinny 18-year-old who was about to enter the University of Illinois. My parents helped me move my belongings in to the dorm, helped me get them organized a bit, and then we bid a tearful farewell.

I had no inkling on that hot sunny August Sunday that I would make Champaigh-Urbana my home; at the time, I figured on four years of school and then assumed that, like almost every Chicago-area kid that lands at the U of I, I'd wind up going back after four years here to enter the working world in suburbia. I never imagined being here in 10 years, much less 25.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: nostalgic

The accompanying pictures show the result of a mere two hours of modest labor. I have never seen raspberries so plentiful in my life; I was expecting the crop to be mediocre due to the cool, cloudy weather we've had recently. But evidently the unseasonably cool August we've had didn't have any ill effects. There were so many berries that I got lazy; I skipped the ones that were less-than-perfect, or that were slightly out of reach. The good thing is that there are plenty more (I barely scratched the surface), there are thousands of berries that will ripen in the coming week, and the bees were busily contributing to the process of making raspberries for future pickings.

The weather was fantastic today; not the usual ghastly heat and humidity of mid-August; it was rather like a day in late September; it was warm enough for shorts and t-shirt, but not so warm as to get all sweaty. There were enough clouds to provide a bit of relief from the brightness of the sun. I know some people who are decrying the "abnormal" weather we've had this summer, but I rather like the relief from the usual weather that makes me lose interest in being outdoors. This is indeed not normal for Illinois, but I'll take it while it lasts.

Amazingly, I got rather tan this afternoon — more tan than I seem to have obtained in recent years hanging out at the pool. Picking berries isn't exactly hard outdoors work like cutting hay or harvesting corn, but it surely feels a bit more "honest" than the way I usually wind up getting tan — i.e., it's obtained by working outdoors rather than by lounging in a reclining chair with my eyes closed.

Another thing I enjoyed about this afternoon's activity was the stress relief it provided. I was able to shut out thoughts about anything important at home or work. It was unbelievably relieving to have nothing to occupy my mind but the straightforward and repetitious (but enjoyable) task at hand.

I feel tired, too, but in a good way. I think I'll have very little trouble falling asleep tonight. Now to figure out all the delicious ways to enjoy this largesse of berries....

Current Mood: happy

While I was busy churning out software and debugging other people's code, Zydeco apparently had a productive day of her own killing mice and leaving them strategically situated for me to find upon my return home after a long day at the office.

Current Mood: accomplished