An NGO I've started following and supporting a little recently is called Search for Common Ground; they focus on mediation, conflict resolution, etc. -- getting Hutus to talk to Tutsis, pro-choice activists to pro-life activists, Democrats to Republicans, Israelis to Palestinians. They also support ecumenical efforts that acknowledge the real, serious differences between religions -- and so make one a lot less queasy than the "You know, deep down, we all believe the same thing" types. Anyway, in their latest article packet was an op-ed by one of their officers, an Arab American, in the Detroit Free Press, calling Arab Americans to help step up to the plate in offering leadership in the whole obviously horrendously stalled "peace process", and also offered the following aside, which I found compelling: "What remains baffling is that topics that are off-limits for discussion in the United States get a much fuller hearing in Israel itself. Compare the diversity of critical opinions that appear in Israel's major newspapers to those in the United States -- you'd think the United States had a greater stake in defending the occupation than does Israel."

Been sampling some German pop these days on iTunes.de. Right now the only artist stepping above novelty value is Nena (of 99 Luftballons fame). Some of her more recent stuff reminds me of Julieta Venegas, my current fave-en-espanyol.

"Mortally wounded, Garfield lay in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance electrical device which he had designed. On September 6, Garfield was taken to the New Jersey seaside. For a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jg20.html

"Today, Garfield the comic strip appears in nearly 2,600 newspapers around the globe, and its readership is estimated at 260 million. If the readership number is right, then 4 percent of the world's population reads Garfield every single day."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102299/

Discovery of the day: German country-Western music, specifically a guy called Tom Astor who, in addition to singing a mean "Country Roads Take Me Home", has a power-trucker-ballad called, no kidding, "Sturm und Drang", as well as a song for which I found the following possibly-poorly-transcribed lyric:

Fahr in die Redneck Riviera,
Marguaritas, icecream, Florida sunshine,
Cowboys, pick-up-trucks and Dosenbier,
Redneck girls, die gibt es nur hier.
nur in der Redneck Riviera.

I suppose all this shouldn't seem quite so bizarre -- after all, I come from a line of German Texans. And there's a genuine country-western classic called "Fraulein", about an American longing for his German lover, which I came to know from Townes Van Zandt's great cover, though just last week I heard a version of it in French, on a Quebec Internet radio station.

[email fragment] Books: Cormac McCarthey, "All the Pretty Horses", and another Wendell Berry novel, and "All Souls Day" by this Dutch guy Cees Nooteboom -- the latter quite good, a heartwarming novel of ideas with some wonderful descriptions of sausage dinners. I also found this book C.S. Lewis wrote in Spanish, something about a lion and a closet, which I'm reading in hopes that less pretension will equal greater comprehension. And this collection of Joan Didion essays from the 1960s.

"Therefore was one single man created first, Adam, to teach you that if anyone destroys a single soul from the children of Man, Scripture charges him as though he had destroyed the whole Universe -- and whoever rescues a single soul from the children of Man, Scripture credits him as if he had saved a whole Universe."

-- Sanhedren 4:5 of the Mishnah

[via the wonderful epilogue to Lawrence Weschler's A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers]

Perhaps the most euphonious headline ever written, from Radio Australia:

Typhoon Tingting roars through Micronesia

I just want to keep saying it over and over. Typhoon Tingting roars through Micronesia. Typhoon Tingting roars through Micronesia. Typhoon Tingting roars through Micronesia.

[email fragment] I've just taken delivery of a set of 300 or so unused European postcards, collected during the 1970s by an elderly woman from northwest Washington, D.C., and auctioned on ebay for the grand sum of $10. From this point on my location may become unclear.

Radio Australia/Pacific Beat: "Job descriptions for some members of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands may have to be re-written to include "crocodile hunter". Four locals on the main island of Guadalcanal have died recently as a result of crocodile attacks. And it seems the success of RAMSI's gun amnesty may be the reason for the increase in the numbers of man-eating crocodiles. In less than a year, RAMSI has successfully restored law-and-order and confiscated most of the high-powered weapons previously used to kill the crocs." Ah, unintended consequences. And with teeth.

Wonderful resource: bobdylan.com, full searchable lyrics, RealAudio samples of every song -- I'm kind of shocked at how useful the site is, at least for answering my questions, because a) it's corporate; b) it's for an artist who's not, as the Zulus say, of the eGeneration; and c) is famously reclusive, purposely mysterious, etc.

Though now iTunes gives the artist site a run for the money, at least when it comes to title searches and audio (I found a great Mac utility, itunesMSP that will play in order every song sample that shows up in an iTunes music store search, which eliminates much clicking).

Atlantic Monthly on the badness of campaign TV ads.

Writing systems of the world: my are there many of them

My latest Spanish reading is none other than "Naufragios", the conquistador/explorer/what-not Cabeza de Vaca's account of his shipwreck and journey overland from Florida to Mexico City. It was written sometime in the 16th century, but I seem to be understanding enough to at least follow the basic plot.

My other new project is a little herb garden on this second-floor deck we've got. It's kind of inspired by Nelson Mandela, who kept a rooftop garden during his final years in prison. He'd give the guards vegetables to win their favor. My parents weren't too happy at first when I mentioned this comparison ("What does that make us? Prison guards?") but they came around in the end ... anyway so far I've got oregano, rosemary, basil, chives, and two kinds of thyme.

Against my better instincts I watched some of the Miss Universe pageant last week. All the finalists kept making me think of praying mantises -- long and lithe and firm, triangular heads and enormous eyes. Actually, most beauty and bodybuilding contestants strike me as at least vaguely insectile.

In other news, watched Monsoon Wedding this week -- a good 'un.

The German Air Guitar Federation

[email fragment] This morning I finished reading "Swann's Way". I'm not sure how many volumes of Proust you have to've read before you can say things like "well, I've been reading Proust and ..." I'm also halfway through Lauren Bacall's autobiography, which evidently won the National Book Award back in the late 70s. I still can't tell whether that was because it's a good book in its own right, or just a good book considering it was written by a movie star. Still, interesting Bogart tidbits.

Radio Australia/Pacific Beat: "The sea cucumber may seem an unlikely icon to attract tourists, but it has been chosen by the Guam Visitors Bureau to promote the rich marine life of Tumon Bay. The bay is central to Guam tourism, as it is where most hotels are located, but encounters with sea cucumbers, or 'balate', have been keeping tourists away from the water. To change this, the Visitors Bureau has decided to turn the creature into a cartoon character and its latest educational tool."

"The Third Unheard: Connecticut Hip-Hop 1979-1983"

I came up with an interesting a philsophy-of-surgery question the other night while watching the latest horribly, horribly written earthquake-disaster miniseries on NBC. Anyhow, there was a surgery scene and I was struck (though it wasn't really anything new) at just how fully masked everyone in the OR is. I understand why that is, of course, in terms of keeping things sterile and all that, but I wonder what the psychological and sociological effect the masking ritual has on the whole process of surgery. I was reminded of an article I read last year in The Economist, on the child-soldiers of LURD, the Liberian revolutionary group, and their penchant for cross-dressing, putting on makeup or wigs of shower caps before committing their various atrocities -- the point being that it was likely a modernization of traditional W.African usages of mask and costume, the idea being that once you don the mask (even one that doesn't conceal your identity), you become in some sense a different person, and so can't be held responsible for your actions. I suppose the Western traditions of Carnival, Halloween, or, in a different mode, bank robbery, are a long similar lines, though with a bit less emphasis on full possession.

Anyway, given the (often necessarily) ritual nature of surgery, it seems at least metaphorically significant that masks are involved -- perhaps as a way of distancing the surgeons from the patient, or indeed from each other, and I guess of disguising the emotions and keeping things as scientific/mechanistic as possible.

Perhaps just a bunch of psychobabble, but my question's this: if someone invented a perfectly transparent surgical mask, hat, etc. -- that would provide all the antiseptic effects as the current system, and allow for full view of facial expressions in the OR, would surgeons go for it? And how might it change the operating room dynamics, both between members of the surgical team, and, at least in one direction, between surgeon and surgee?

[email fragment] First off, Norfolk Island is not, technically, between Australia and New Zealand, in the sense that one couldn't travel in a straight line and intersect all three. It's a little too far north. But we can accurately say it's between New Zealand and New Caledonia, or between Australia and Fiji.

Secondly [in relation to a discussion of the distinctly un-pine-like Norfolk Island Pine], you really should listen to the Australian-born, Norfolk-Island-Recordin' country singer I emailed you about, Kasey Chambers. If only for her song "These Pines", which takes on oodles of new meaning when you consider where it was recorded:

These pines are not the ones that I'm used to
They won't carry me home when I cry
Am I too far gone to recover
Or can I turn if I try
Should I trade my soul for another
Should I stay and pretend that I'm happy
Like so many times before

Yeah these pines
Are not mine
They don't smell so sweet
like the ones in my mind
And I search the needles
'Til I run out of time
But I don't see you in These Pines.

These past few months I've been doing a lot of searches at iTunes.com for the frequency of specific words in song titles, mostly to see which words of a particular set had the most songs with them in the title. i.e.:

Morning 1481
Afternoon 173
Evening 301
Night 4250

Monday 226
Tuesday 83
Wednesday 31
Thursday 29
Friday 186
Saturday 293
Sunday 549

I also learned that, while iTunes has 564 songs with "mile" in the title, and 68 with "inch", only 9 contain "meter" -- and of those, none of the usages is in the sense of distance.

After that I dredged up an older question, at last near-answerable, about whether (and why) certain names were much more common in song titles than in real life. i.e.:

iTunes Counts for Top 10 Female Names in USA (1990 Census)

1. Mary 685
2. Patricia/Patty 33
3. Linda 134
4. Barbara 66
5. Elizabeth/Beth 111
6. Jennifer/Jenny 161
7. Maria 587
8. Susan/Susie/Sue 577
9. Margaret/Maggie/Meg 200
10. Dorothy 14