Recession -- we thought so!

Dragon Mood? -- a little smug

S and I had a long, thoughtful conversation yesterday about the current state of our lives. She has way too much stress from her job in its current incarnation, along with taking classes as mandated by her employer. I have a job that feels so purposeless that I gain little to no sense of worth and/or contribution from it.

(S has two more classes to go. She will hopefully be done by next June. Then, her employer will bestow on her the god-almighty certificate that they have been dangling out there as a carrot for the past several years. With that certificate, she can take a state-licensing professional engineer's exam and leave this job, if she so desires. I digress.)

Anyway, from our conversation, we concluded that not only are we in a slump, but that the whole country is in a slump. Rather than things getting better, we're just trying to hold on. We're trying to keep our jobs, keep our health insurance coverage, keep our bills paid, and keep our sanity. The proverbial wolves feel like they're circling right outside our door. We concluded that our country is in a RECESSION.

While S and I reach conclusions all the time (the logical result of being fairly opinionated!), it isn't every day that we find one of them validated in a newspaper the very next day:

Here are the numbers, a sober and powerful counter-argument to any declaration that the recession is long over and good times are back for everyone. Poverty is up in the United States for the third consecutive year, the Census Bureau says, with 40 million people now afflicted. Median household income is stagnant at a little more than $43,000 a year. That, after three years of decline and still lower than it was in 1999. And the number of Americans without medical insurance is up, too, as it has been each year since 2001, to 45 million.

Dreary numbers under any circumstances. Only now they come close to the height of the presidential campaign. They carry a significance that should rival what President Bush had to say the same day of the Census Bureau report, that he miscalculated what Iraq would be like after a U.S.-led invasion.

"Because we acted, our economy since last summer has grown at a rate as fast as any in nearly 20 years," Mr. Bush said Thursday. "Since last August, we've added approximately 1.5 million new jobs."

What he didn't say, of course, is that there are fewer jobs, and fewer people working, now than when he took office.

I can't wait to tell S. And, while I feel a bit smug, this article confirms what we have been feeling: we are not feeling secure in our professional lives and our financial circumstances, and things are not getting better.

Vulnerable Women

Dragon Mood? -- sad

I meant to post about this Thursday. There was a front-page article in the Detroit Free Press about a schoolteacher named Mary Ellen Moffitt, a very successful woman by all accounts, who smothered her five-week old child and then, herself, as a result of severe post-partum depression. It was an incredibly sad and poignant report.

Then I had checked in at dooce, a young woman's account of her life, particularly with the birth of her first child, Leta. This young mother, Heather, is a truly gifted writer and an incredibly funny one at that. Her writing is fresh and smart and frequently has me not only chuckling, but laughing out loud. Thursday, she wrote to say that she would be away for awhile as she was checking into a psychiatric facility for severe post-partum depression. I just checked again this morning and her husband, Jon, has this update, (thankfully upbeat).

Oh my God. What is going on? Is this some tragic, scary coincidence or are there a lot of vulnerable child-bearing women out there? Is this a new health risk for women having children --or-- is this being more openly reported (finally)?

"...enormous glittering malice ..."

Dragon Mood? -- snorting fire to vote Nov 2nd!

Take a look at this. Garrison Keillor has just published "Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America," in which he offers this comment on the Grand Old Party:

"They are a party," writes Keillor, "that is all about perceptions, the Christian party that conceals enormous glittering malice and is led by brilliant bandits who are dividing and conquering the sweet land I grew up in. I don't accept this."

On a lighter note, he talks about the homespun Scandinavian wisdom that informed his childhood -- "Don't Think You're Special Because You're Not," which is just the local way, he notes, of reminding people to take care of their neighbors.

Prayer-full

Dragon Mood? -- even dragons need to pray

From frogblog comes this prayer/mantra from the New Zealand Common Book of Prayer:

God forgives you.
Forgive others.
Forgive yourself.

Now, at first sight, it looks like a nice, simple prayer. But, I have to admit, upon some reflection, I felt some irritation with it.

Why the negativity?

When I read this, I'm troubled by the prayer/mantra's premise: forgiveness implies that we are intrinisically "in the wrong," that our essence requires pardon or being excused.

Yes, in this life we are separated from God but does that make us inherently worthless?

With apologies to frog, and no irreverence meant, here's my "beatnik" rendition of that prayer/mantra:

God is cool with you
Be cool with others.
Be cool with yourself.

And here's my "passionate" version:

God passionately loves you.
Passionately love others.
Passionately love yourself.

Why does conversation with God imply that we are bad? That we need forgiveness? I'm not being sarcastic -- I would really like to know.

Remembering August 26, 1920

Dragon Mood? -- proud to be a woman

Once upon a time, August 26th, 1920, to be exact, American women earned the right to vote. And I and all women of today stand on their shoulders, enjoying the benefits of their long, painful efforts.

Here's what CNN says about this moment in history/herstory:

On August 26, 1920, the United States took a giant democratic leap when Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving millions of American women the right to vote for the first time in the nation's history.

. . .

Men dominated America's culture and power structure. Most women were not encouraged to attend college or to build a professional career, but rather they were urged to marry young, bear children and maintain the family home.

The very idea of allowing women the right to vote -- a drastic reform, with females making up roughly half the U.S. population -- was unthinkable to many American men, as well as many women.

Such strict social parameters contributed to the struggles of the American women's movement, which many trace to the 1848 Seneca Falls women's rights convention in upstate New York.

. . .

"Their clashes [with police] and their cooperation [with one another] and the use of nonviolent civil disobedience like chaining themselves to the White House fence and embarrassing the president" did much to win women the right to vote, according to National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy.

. . .

Eventually, [President Woodrow] Wilson publicly came out in support of a constitutional amendment, giving it increased national momentum. On June 4, 1919, Congress approved the amendment, sending it to the individual states.

The draft read: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex."

On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was approved by Tennessee, the 36th and final state needed for ratification. It became the law of the land eight days later.

. . .

Now, at the beginning of a new century, NOW's Gandy believes more efforts are needed to further gender equality.

"Women don't even have equal treatment when it comes to filing a lawsuit for discrimination," Gandy said.

As an example, she said defendants who lose a racial discrimination suit could be ordered to pay a financial penalty that isn't limited by federal law. But in a sexual discrimination suit, "there's a cap on what you can recover, no matter how great your suffering or loss has been," Gandy said.

Gandy also said more must be done to even the so-called national income gender gap. On the average, American women who work full time year-around continue to be paid less than men with comparable jobs and schedules -- 73 cents for every dollar men earn in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"That could not be explained by anything other than plain, old-fashioned sex discrimination," Gandy said.

In addition, Gandy complains that schools do not sufficiently emphasize the history of the women's rights movement.

Desires and anxieties

Dragon Mood? -- puzzled

From Astrodienst comes my personal daily horoscope:

Evasive maneuvers

During this time it may well be that you hide yourself away somewhere to avoid having to deal with the tension between your desires and your anxieties. Or perhaps you give in to your desire, but only half-heartedly, so that you get only half of something in the end, which is not what you actually wanted. This quality of time can indicate where your difficulties lie, i.e. in acknowledging your desires and completely giving yourself up to certain experiences. You will perhaps ascertain that this has to do with an insecurity or feeling of inadequacy of yours. That is why you should find out which experiences you actually avoid ­ then you can make a conscious effort to share these experiences with an understanding, sympathetic person who will not injure you anew.

Venus Opposition Chiron
activity period from 19 August 2004 to 21 August 2004.

Many times I read these daily horoscopes, digest it and say, "Okay." This one ... I'm considering a little more thoroughly. The part about, "having to deal with the tension between your desires and your anxieties" is what I'm pondering. What does that say to me? What could it mean?

And then, about flow and work

Dragon Mood? -- ???

So, while I'm talking about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and flow, he also wrote a book called Good Business, which I have not read -- yet.

Given all the bitching and kvetching I've done in the "pages" of this online journal (which is my blog) about my job, it seems appropriate that I may want to remember this book and perhaps even read it.

Here's what Amazon's review and reviewers say about the book:

The premise of the book is that our jobs are a primary component in our life and that when we are happy in our work we are the most productive and of the most value to our business.

Mihaly reviews the concept of "flow" from his earlier studies which is a state where we fully utilize our skills and capabilities and how we are able to reach that state and what inhibits us from reaching it. We also learn about our own development stages and how we improve through the combination of realizing our uniqueness and by valuing human relationships.

This book teaches us about good leadership qualities and how we (being led) can find satisfaction in our work.

Organizational leaders must clarify the goals of a business and ensure it is well communicated.

Three levers are available to managers to enable flow and create a great organization:

• make the environment attractive and comfortable;
• imbuing jobs with meaning and value;
• and by rewarding individuals who find satisfaction in their work.

Flow presents opportunity (such as finding more satisfaction) and challenge (as in the case of changing a job that sucks the life out of people). [I didn't even write that -- someone else did!]

An outline of the conditions for flow:

1. Clear goals - you know your tasks and have the appropriate skill
2. Immediate feedback - you understand the effect of your efforts
3. Balance opportunity with capacity - you always learn to seek opportunity
4. Concentration - don't over think
5. The present is what matters - you exist in the 'now'
6. Control is no problem - you become immersed in the work
7. Time is altered - you 'slip through the cracks in time'
8. Loss of ego - you focus on giving not taking or defending

Time to add this book to the Santa-baby, maybe?-list.

Alice experienced curiouser and curiouser

Dragon Mood? -- somehow being curious makes my nose itchy

Once upon a time I got a health newsletter that had a link to here.

From there, I learned about things like Signature Strengths and a fellow named Dr. Martin Seligmann, who is a psychologist and the leading spokesman for a movement named postive psychology. I still occasionally get emails from his organization, Authentic Happiness, and recently received one about curiosity.

Now, based on some work that I did with a personal coach over a year ago, I learned (finally -- surprise, surprise) that I'm a pretty curious person. Remember Curious George? -- the cute little monkey always getting into scrapes and unusual situations because of his curiosity? Well, I guess I'm a dragon-y female version of Curious George . . . call me Curious Mary.

Here's some things this newsletter said about curious people, along with benefits and the downsides of curiosity:

• Curious people have an ongoing, intrinsic interest in both their inner experience and the world around them. Curious people tend to be attracted to new people, new things, and new experiences, and they are rarely bored.
• Everyone possesses curiosity to some degree. People differ according to the strength and breadth of their curiosity and their willingness to act on it.
• Curiosity benefits our social and romantic lives. Curious people are often considered good listeners and conversationalists.
• Curiosity is associated with intelligence and problem-solving ability.
• Curiosity is associated with high performance in both academic and work settings. There is evidence to suggest an upward spiraling relationship between curiosity and knowledge. The more we learn, the more we want to learn, and so on.
• Curiosity in the absence of good judgment can lead to trouble.
• When curiosity clashes with social norms, further trouble can ensue. Anyone with a small child needs no further elaboration on this point. Curiosity can motivate the youngster to ask questions such as, “Why don’t you have any children?” or “Is that man’s belly big because he’s pregnant?”

Then the newsletter talks about building curiosity:

All things considered, the benefits of curiosity far outweigh the possible risks. Cultivating this strength can lead to both personal and professional rewards. So how might we go about developing this strength? One idea comes from the work by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, one of the founders of the field of positive psychology and a pioneering researcher in the area of flow.

According to Cskikszentmihalyi, there is a direct relationship between our attentional resources and our interest in the world: Nothing is interesting to us unless we focus our attention on it. Rocks are not interesting until we begin collecting them, people in the mall are not interesting until we become curious about their lives and where they are going, and vacuum cleaners are not interesting until we need to buy a new one. According to Csikszentmihalyi, we can develop our curiosity (and fight boredom) by making a conscious effort to direct our attention to something in particular in our environment.

I like the idea of being curious about all kinds of things and people . . .

Flow

Dragon Mood? -- happy when I'm in the flow

(Listening to The Paul Schwartz Project's CD, Earthbound)

A number of years ago, I read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book, Flow. I was stunned that someone could write with such clarity about something that feels so elusive as creativity and the losing of oneself in creative endeavors.

Mr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

I experience "flow" when I'm doing certain things, like playing the piano, drawing and/or designing on paper, riding my bicycle. Just this weekend, I spent four or five hours beading, making myself an eyeglass necklace, as well as several bracelets. I don't know where the afternoon went!?!

Mr. Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist at the University of Chicago. His last name is pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee.

Happy Friday the 13th!

Dragon Mood? -- Friday-happy

Yippee! It's Friday the 13th, a number that I consider a lucky one!

I'll have to check my facts, but I just read about the first Friday the 13th back in the Middle Ages. Was the guy's name Pepin the Fat?? Gotta check, folks. I think he arranged to have a bunch of the Knights of Templar slaughtered all over Europe on a Friday the 13th -- and hence, Friday the 13th took on unlucky connotations.

What a day for gays!

Whew! What a day! First the California Supreme Court voided all 4,000 of the marriages performed in San Francisco back in February and March. Hearing that makes me just wanna swear! But ... I'm being hopeful. This is only Round 2. More to come.

. . . And then, I checked CNN before heading home and the governor of New Jersey announced his resignation today, saying that he had an extramarital homosexual affair and, "My truth is that I am a gay American."

I applaud McGreevey for telling the truth! . . . but this will precipitate more fall-out about how the country is going to hell-in-a-handbasket because of GAY people from the right-wing politicos. Another reason to swear!

Bush on Tribal Sovereignty

Dragon Mood? -- ???

Thanks to Rayne for bringing within earshot yet another demonstration of how November 2nd can't get here quick enough.

Have you heard of Cheri Honkala?

Dragon Mood? -- is-this-America?-dismayed

Here is quite a compelling teaser to read at Salon.com

Aug. 5, 2004 | On August 30, the first day of the Republican National Convention in New York City, Cheri Honkala is going to march from the United Nations to Madison Square Garden with or without a protest permit. Behind her will be homeless women and their children, men furloughed from rehab centers, public housing tenants, wheelchair-bound people without health care and poor people hanging on to life by their fingernails. Arrayed against them will be walls of police in riot gear, armed with the latest in high-tech crowd-control devices and ready for mass arrests. For the past two weeks, Honkala and her followers have been marching across New Jersey, and undercover police have been videotaping and photographing them. Fearing violence, Honkala's put out a call for international human rights observers to watch over her group during the RNC.

Linguistics and root words

Dragon Mood? -- tripping over my dragon tongue

(continued from the previous post) . . . Then Mr. Kumar goes on to talk extensively about root words, offering the following example as one "brick" in the edifice he's building for his case:

Sometimes scores of Indo-European words may have been derived from a single root-word. For instance, the Indo-European root-word pele (JS-299-300) has been ascribed by the scholars a number of words which occur in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, German, English, Russian, etc., such as:

pur, Cawnpore, Singapore, Jodhpur (and all the other place-names with pur in them), pletho, plethoria, plethoric, pleos, pleonasm, pleonastic, Pleiades, poly-, pleois, pleistos, Pliocene, Pleistocene, hoi polloi, polemos,polemics, polis, -polis, Tripoly, Naples, necropolis, acropolis, cosmopolitan, metropolitan, metropolis, Minneapolis, police, polity, policy, politics,politico, Politburo, plenus, plenary, plenum, pleni-, plenitude, plenty, replenish, plein air, pleo, implement, complement, supplement, compliment, pletus, replete, complete, deplete, impletion, repletion, expletive, supply, comply, manipulum, maniple, plus, plural, plurality, pluri-, pluperfect, piu, publicus, public, publican, publicist, publicity, publish, publisher, republic,,republican, pueblo, plebs, plebe, plebeian, palpo, palpate, palpitate, impalpable, palpebral, papillon, pavillon, palma, palm, palmer, palmistry, palmetto, llan, Llan-, lawn, full, fulfil, fyllan, fulsome, fill, filler, felan, feel, feeler, feeling, folc, folk, folklore, folkways, folksy, Herrenvolk, Volkswagen, Volkslied, plus a number of other words.

I'm fascinated that all those words listed above could share a common root. Isn't it curious and odd-feeling to find Greek and Latin words that also may be derived from pele? As students of Western culture, Greek and Latin have always been at the end (or rather, beginning) of the line, so to speak.

"I think I want to read more about the origins of languages. And -- whah-duh-ya-know? -- Amazon has just the book for me: The Origin of Language : Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue by Merritt Ruhlen. Maybe I'll ask Santa for it???

If I could have been a linguist . . .

Dragon Mood? -- do dragons have tongues???

Following up on the previous post about Dravidians, I ran across a fascinating (for me, anyway) article about the connection between Dravidian languages and the supposedly mother-of-all-languages, Indo-European.

Here's an excerpt from this lengthy linguistic monograph by V. Keerthi Kumar, written in 1999, where he talks about the "Dravidian birthmarks on Indo-European."

"It was in 1786, that Sir William Jones, an English judge of Supreme Court in Calcutta who is more famous as the founder of Comparative Philology, pronounced a statement in his address to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, which subsequently proved to be a milestone in the history of the Indo-European languages. Sir Jones stated: "The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the family."

[Wonderful history, wouldn't you say?]

It should be pointed out that many other scholars of his century had conceived similar ideas concerning Indo-European languages, but it was Sir Jones who distinctly departed from their main thinking that Greek and Latin were derived from Sanskrit. He emphatically stated that all three: Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin were derived from a common source. Thus, Sir Jones was the first one to fully and cogently articulate the testimony for the common source, the ancient parent language of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and other languages which were mentioned by him in his above noted statement, and to the short list of which more than a hundred Indo-European languages spoken by more than half the total population of the world have been subsequently added by other scholars. It should also be pointed out that this realization of the common source of Indo-European inaugurated a period during which a number of eminent European scholars advocated an Asiatic origin of the Indo-European languages, even though they did not look for its seat of concentration as far down south as southern India where not less than twenty-seven Dravidian languages are spoken in their purest available form today.

[And I love hearing Mr. Kumar talk about Jones' creative thinking, going against the popular and established ideas on language origins.

Some of these scholars were also convinced that prehistoric Europe was populated by a dark-haired people, an opinion echoed even by relatively recent historians such as H. G. Wells. In a letter to the Polish Prince Adam Czartoryski, Sir Jones himself had written: "Many learned investigators of antiquity are fully persuaded, that a very old and almost primaeval language was in use among these northern nations, from which not only the Celtic dialects, but even the Greek and Latin are derived."

[Again, fascinating history, yes? Don't you wonder who those dark-haired people were?]

Curiosity about the Dravidians

Dragon Mood? -- what else but curious?

As a naturally curious person, history is always a field of enormous appeal to me. So many things to be curious about, so many questions to ask!

Have you ever heard of the Dravidians? I read Gore Vidal's novel, "Creation," a while back, which mentions the name. I was talking with one of my favorite history teachers about this book (set at a crossroads in time -- including the historical personages, Zoroaster, Xerxes and the Persian king, Darius) and I asked her who the Dravidians were? She replied they were an ancient people from southern India.
So, I've returned to this topic with more curiosity and found this:

The most basic division of the Indian society is of Aryans and Dravidians. According to this division, nearly 72% of Indians are Aryans and 28% are Dravidians. The north Indians are the descendants of Aryans and the south Indians are Dravidians.

According to general Indian legend, the Aryans arrived in north India somewhere from Iran and southern Russia at around 1500 BC. Before the Aryans, the Dravidian people resided in India.

The Dravidians originate from the Mediterranean and they were the largest community in India.

That sounded a bit simplistic, so I dug down a little further in Google's lists and found this:

There is general agreement among ethnologists that the Dravidian population is a branch of the Mediterranean race, or at least a closely allied one. While the Mediterranean race is white, the Dravidians are much darker, ranging from the dark Greek and Italian complexion to black. There is also a wide range of difference in the shape of the skull, the color and texture of the hair, the color of the eyes, and the shape of the nose. These deviations can be explained with a probable interbreeding between the Dravidians and Mundas, as it is still taking place in the Chotanagpur region between the Dravidian Oraons and the neighboring Mundas.

The Dravidians entered India before the Aryans, before 2000 B.C., after passing through Mesopotamia, Iran, and Baluchistan where the Brahuis, a Dravidian race, still live. On grounds of cultural affinities such as inheritance through women, snake cults, organization of society, and structure of temples, some historians connect the Dravidians with the Elamites and Mesopotamians. The evidence of Indian skulls from the Indus Valley indicates that the Mediterranean stock became established in north India before the Harappab Civilisation came into existence around 2000 B.C.

Of particular significance is archeologist B. B. Lal's contention that the Dravidians probably came from Nubia, Upper Egypt. This theory would give them among other things their Mediterranean features and dark complexion. Lal writes:

"At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical."

According to Lal, the Nubian megaliths date from around 1000 B.C.

More to come on this . . .

A day of amorphous anxieties

Dragon Mood? -- restless dragon energy

For some reason, I'm feeling this nagging, back-of-the-mind anxiety.

Part of it is this horrible feeling that terrorists may attack us. Tom Ridge's heightened security code has triggered enough adrenaline in my brain, with its fight-or-flight results that now . . . I AM feeling anxious.

Part of it is that my daughter, Lina, is currently riding on the back of a Harley-Davidson Road King through the hills and plains of South Dakota as I write this. She is with a friend, on her way to Sturgis for the big biker rally held there every year. Now, I remember . . . remember feeling this way last year, too. So, I'm sure that is contributing to my general sense of dis-ease.

And . . . part of it is that I'm just plain tired. I think I played a leeeeeeeeeeeetle too hard this weekend. Stayed up too late, not enough sleep. I had to come back to work to not play so hard!

Lest we forget

Dragon Mood? -- troubled

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"The area my clinic's in is essentially a suburb of the Third World. It's a shame no one seems to know that the problem in Africa looks like the problem in inner-city Houston, Chicago and New York."
--DR. JOSEPH C. GATHE JR., who directs a nonprofit AIDS clinic in Houston, on the impact of the disease.

"It's the economy, stupid."

Dragon Mood? -- Saturday-morning relaxed

From CNN, an unscientific poll:

Q: Which is the more important issue for you in the presidential election?

A: With over 80,000 respondents, 66% replied "Economy" and 34% answered, "Terrorism." So, it appears that by 2-to-1, people are more concerned with the economy.

Will Dubya have the same lesson to learn as Daddy Bush?

Europe Takes New Alerts With Grain of Salt

Dragon Mood? -- ???

From the N.Y. Times:

PARIS, Aug. 5 - Britain aside, the response in Europe to the latest announcement of terror threats in the United States has ranged from official calm to unofficial cynicism.

Since the Bush administration raised the terror alert to orange for five financial targets in and around New York and Washington, European governments have left their risk assessments unchanged.

Although British officials have arrested a dozen suspected Islamic militants, the possible links between those arrests and the American terror alerts remain unclear.

And while Germany, France and Britain have all confirmed that they remained on high alert, as they have been since coordinated train bombings in Madrid killed 191 people on March 11, they said their national intelligence services had unearthed nothing to suggest that terror attacks on European soil were more likely than before.

In a measure of how little the latest alerts raised concern in Europe, the European Union's counterterrorism director, Gijs de Vries, remained on vacation.

. . .

Some European counterterrorism experts have said that a highly publicized threat three months ahead of the presidential elections on Nov. 2 needed special scrutiny.

Ha-ha-ha! Don't you just love the humor of those Times reporters?

Salivating

Dragon Mood? -- dragons love toes!

Excuse me, enough with the world's problems.

I have to go post at Bliggity about a proposed Dutch law to outlaw unsolicited toe-licking.

Automakers, health care and money

Dragon Mood? -- irritated by corporate arrogance

Evidently there are a bunch of automotive manufacturing execs meeting up in Traverse City, Michigan, this week. The Detroit Free Press has been reporting on it all week. Today's article is about automakers and health care:

A confluence of events, including a growing number of auto retirees, higher prescription-drug bills, a contested presidential election and the influx of foreign automakers that don't have to pay directly for health care have pushed the issue to the forefront for anyone in the industry.

Combined, GM, Ford and the DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group estimate they spent $9.9 billion [my emphasis] in 2003 to provide health care to nearly 2 million workers, retirees and dependents. GM had the biggest tab by far at $4.8 billion and expects that to grow about 8 percent to $5.1 billion in 2004. Overall, the bills Detroit's three automakers pay are rising from 8 percent to 12 percent a year.

"The auto industry, more so than any other segment of the U.S. economy, is wrestling with all the demons of today's troubled health-care industry," said Mark Finucane, a speaker at the conference who oversees Ernst & Young's health-care practice. "Health care threatens the long-term future of the auto industry, if not all manufacturers in America." [I love this quote. Welcome to the club --that is-- the rest of us feeling threatened!]

He and others noted GM and its two Detroit rivals spend more on health care than they do on steel, at GM on average about $1,400 per vehicle, according to various studies, versus about $650-$700 for steel per vehicle.

Holy health care crisis, Batman! Isn't it amazing that when corporate bozos suddenly take their heads out of the sand and notice the crisis that the rest of us schmucks have been worrying about for quite some time -- then it's something worth printing in the newspaper.

That's just one reason this article irritates me.

Outsourcing and moral confusion

Dragon Mood? -- I'm SO confused!

From Salon.com, here is an article entitled "How India is Saving Capitalism." These segments caught my eye:

• "All that really matters is who is online at any given time. In this Web-based development environment, notification is by e-mail, the browser is the interface and deploying means giving someone else a URL."
• Add a lot of cheap bandwidth to the mix and anything is possible.
• . . . But the merging of offices across time zones and international borders is, on a global scale, a consequence of the advances in computer and telecommunications technology. Outsourcing, viewed from the technological perspective, is not surprising, nor is it necessarily exploitative. It's just what happens when you connect the world together.
• . . . a senior software engineer . . . puts the power dynamics of the traditional outsourcing relationship in stark terms: "Enterprise offshoring is a kind of colonialism, like growing pineapples in the Philippines or bananas in Hawaii. It's very demeaning and counterproductive: Do this and shut up."
• "A 21-year-old who just got out of school here with $100,000 in debt, what did he get for that debt? What does he have to look forward to now?" says Rall. "We don't hire those people anymore. We only hire senior engineers." He's not the only one wondering, since in the U.S. the the number of unemployed college graduates has recently surpassed the number of unemployed high-school dropouts.
• . . . "We saved the jobs of the people who are employed in San Francisco by hiring people here [in India]," he says. "I don't know that we would be around as a company if we hadn't done that. What was the right thing to do, morally?"

Given that I just got notice yesterday of a mandatory five-day layoff, this article takes on more meaning and pertinence for me. What is the right thing to do, morally?

Saudis responding to "Farenheit 9/11"

Dragon Mood? -- fire-breathing mistrust

From Salon.com:

Aug. 4, 2004 | LONDON (AP) -- Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain on Wednesday responded to some of the claims made in Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" and in a book about the Bush family's relationship with Saudis going back to the 1970s.

The film and the book, "House of Bush, House of Saud," by Craig Unger, say the U.S. government helped 140 Saudis leave the United States on Sept. 13, 2001 -- two dozen of whom were relatives of Osama bin Laden.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to London and a nephew of Crown Prince Abdullah, said there was nothing improper about the departures.

The Saudis "were properly vetted by the FBI, nobody left without being questioned, nobody left without permission and nobody left without any protocol being involved," al-Faisal told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

In his film, Moore claims that the Bush administration helped a number of Saudi princes and members of the bin Laden family to flee the United States at a time when American airspace had been closed to all commercial traffic.

But America's 9/11 commission has said it found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals took place before the reopening of national airspace on Sept. 13.

Unger, who was interviewed for Moore's film, wrote in his book that he found some $1.4 billion in investments and contracts going from the House of Saud to companies in which the Bushes held prominent positions.

Al-Faisal said he didn't believe there was any direct connection between the Saudi royal family and the Bush family.

"Saudi Arabia deals with the whole world community in business and otherwise," he said.

"We may have invested in the same companies ... It doesn't mean we were in cahoots with the Bush family about that."

Since when do Saudis know words like "cahoots?" . . . unless they hang out with slang-y Texans?

Five day lay-off

Dragon Mood? -- bummed and cynical

I just got notified this morning of a five-day mandatory lay-off between now and the end of the calendar year for our entire department, including me. The only "good news" is that I get to choose when I am laid off.

And here is a news article that validates the reasons why my employer is having budgetary problems:

Asian automakers had a boffo July, with record sales for nearly every brand they make.
...
The U.S. companies were also still dependent on discounts, from low-interest loans to rebates, to draw consumers to their products.

The Chrysler Group, which has a lot of new models, said its incentives were roughly flat. But GM and Ford continue to lose market share even as they add to already sky-high incentives.
...
Almost three years after no-interest loans were introduced to revive auto sales after 9/11, consumers have come to take the big come-ons for granted.

"They almost look at 0 percent like standard equipment. It's like windshield wipers. . . . To go beyond the current level, in our view, is pretty much throwing good money after bad," said George Pipas, Ford's sales analysis manager.
...
Nissan reported its best-ever month in the United States, building on the launch of many light-truck models out of its Mississippi plant, which opened last spring.

Total Nissan brand sales rose 40 percent [my emphasis] to 80,935, and Infiniti brand luxury sales rose 14 percent to 12,362.

Toyota posted an 18-percent increase in July sales to a record 200,206, aided by almost 15,000 sales of Scion cars, the company's new brand aimed at the youngest buyers.

Rival Honda posted record July results for its mainstream Honda brand and its luxury Acura brand.

Just so I'm clear, I'm not mad about domestic automakers not doing well. I think they are fat, bloated, and out-of-touch with what consumers want these days. I don't think that working for a domestic automaker today is necessarily a good or secure place to have a job.

Meanwhile, S is being pushed to "buy" five days of vacation from her employer. I think we're going to put our heads together and plan a nice vacation for ourselves. Lay-offs and "mandatory" vacations, be damned!

Stepping OUT

Dragon Mood? -- whew!

In the past week, S and I have:

• finally visited the local lesbian bookstore
• tried out a new local creperie, replete with spinach crepes, wild mushroom crepes and a tasty, homegrown cabernet franc red.
• participated in a local pub crawl that included 13 bars. We made it to (shamefacedly) only three.

Perhaps I will try to explain later.

Grandfathers and Grandmothers

Dragon Mood? -- thinking in the vein of the "Clock of the Long Now"

Living in a "retired" Christmas tree forest, with mature pines towering overhead, rocking to and fro in a breeze, I have come to realize how much I love trees. They feel like spiritual creatures to me, "grandfathers and grandmothers," if you will, that are old, protective, silent; and yet, they have great wisdom to impart.

So, you may better understand my latching onto this article from the N.Y. Times about trees:

"Last summer, on the site of 35 former hat factories where toxic mercury was once used to cure pelts, city officials in Danbury, Conn., deployed a futuristic weapon: 160 Eastern cottonwoods.

Dr. Richard Meagher, a professor of genetics at the University of Georgia, genetically engineered the trees to extract mercury from the soil, store it without being harmed, convert it to a less toxic form of mercury and release it into the air.

It was one of two dozen proposals Dr. Meagher has submitted to various agencies over two decades for engineering trees to soak up chemicals from contaminated soil. For years, no one would pay him to try. "I got called a charlatan," he said. "People didn't believe a plant could do this."

He will begin to assess the experiment's success this fall. But his is not the only such experiment with trees.

In laboratories around the country, researchers are using detailed knowledge of tree genes and recombinant DNA technology to alter the genetic workings of forest trees, hoping to tweak their reproductive cycles, growth rate and chemical makeup, to change their ability to store carbon, resist disease and absorb toxins.

The research is controversial. Environmentalists and others say that because of the large distances tree pollen can travel, altered genes will migrate to natural populations, leading to damage to ecosystems and other unforeseen consequences.

Dr. Jim Diamond, a retired pediatrician who is chairman of the Sierra Club's national genetic engineering committee, sees trees as a bastion of the natural world.
"It's quite possible the stands of trees that are left will be domesticated new varieties of trees and the natural varieties will cease to exist," he said. "Where do you draw the line?"

Dr. Meagher's toxic-avenger trees are intended to remove heavy metals from contaminated soils in places where other forms of cleanup are prohibitively expensive. Because mercury is an element, it cannot be broken down into harmless substances; the Danbury trees release the diluted mercury into the atmosphere, where it dissipates and falls back to earth after a few years.

...

Dr. [Steven] Strauss [a professor of forest science at Oregon State University,] is also trying to use genetic engineering to address climate change. He wants to create trees that would store more carbon in their root systems - "sequestering" it from the atmosphere, thereby cutting atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas. In a project sponsored by the Department of Energy, Dr. Strauss and colleagues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory are modifying tree architecture and cell wall chemistry to increase the amount of carbon stored below ground.

Much of the research relies on basic tree genetics - made easier by the sequencing of the poplar tree genome, a major effort in forest biotechnology whose results are to be made public this month. Scientists can now study classes of genes that affect absorption of sugars and carbohydrates, which in turn can change the chemical processes that affect the rates at which trees rot and release stored carbon.

"In the U.S., there are about 40 million acres of excess, surplus or idle agricultural land," said Jerry Tuskan, a researcher at Oak Ridge, who led the effort to sequence the poplar genome. "If we could economically capture those and deploy fast-growing trees bred and created for carbon sequestration over a 10-year period, we could reach 25 percent of the Kyoto prescription for the U.S." The Kyoto treaty, never signed by the United States, calls for reductions in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

The aboveground portion of the trees would be harvested every 10 years and used for ethanol, which Dr. Tuskan believes would offset the use of petroleum and, by extension, carbon dioxide emissions.

In another forest biotechnology project that has been making strides, researchers are using genetic engineering to produce a disease-resistant strain of American chestnut, a tree that once dominated Eastern forests but was decimated by the mid-20th century by a fungus introduced from Asia. The American chestnut project has proved among the least controversial, in part because the tree's demise was caused by human intervention.
..."

There is something little-girl comforting to me about the thought of trees, whether adolescent cottonwoods or grandfather-or-grandmother pines fixing our stupid human errors, transforming our messes into something good for the earth.

Waning Gibbous

Dragon Mood? -- moon-struck!

I can't believe I didn't post about this -- yet!

Late Friday evening, actually early Saturday morning, we had a blue moon. It was the second full moon for the month of July and it was a beauty! (See CNN's interesting article about blue moons and the origin of the adjective, "blue.")

Well, actually it was a beauty last night, Saturday night. Friday night it was overcast and raining here in our neck of the woods, so there was no moon to be seen. But, last night, S and I took a sweet, unexpectedly delightful walk through the neighborhood, the dog in dog-heaven, running from this rapturous scent to that one, and the moon cast its cool moonrays over all three of us.

I just checked Calypso Dragon's sister site, Bliggity Bloggity Blog, where there is a moon phase chart and it tells me that the moon is now Waning Gibbous. Some how, I feel sad just hearing that term. Sad, -- but also put in mind of declining monkeys?

Music in my head

Dragon Mood? -- thought-full

When I'm not at work, I am here . . . our home, our residence, the place where we celebrate birthdays and holidays with our children and extended family. This is where my piano lives.

My piano. It's a beautifully-restored Mason-Hamlin 1916 AA grand. It is a rich walnut color. The legs are intricately carved and remind me of Victorian ladies' bloomers. (smiling) Jim Reeder and his skilled craftsmen at Reeder Pianos brought this beauty back to life and then I had the privilege of buying it and bringing it into our home.

Playing the piano represents a significant part of who I am and what feeds my soul.

On the weekends, when I'm not sitting here at the computer, blogging or reading the latest current events, I usually play the piano in the morning. The house is quiet (as S is most usually sleeping), the sun is shining through the pine trees into the living room and my audience is the dog, Cisco -- a rapt audience if there ever was one.

I mostly play classical music. I'm laughing, because that is virtually ALL I play. I find that is what appeals to my ears. And, for the past year or so, I find that I want to play Bach. Yes, good ol' Johann Sebastian Bach. I want to play Bach, I need to play Bach, and that is what I have running through my head when I'm driving in the car with only silence for company. God knows my fingers need the work-out and exercise that Bach's music provides and his music certainly challenges me musically, as well. Occasionally, I'll play a little Mozart or Beethoven, but I always return to Bach.



I play many of his preludes and fugues from the "Well-Tempered Clavier," Czerny's edition in two books, in the old, familiar buttery yellow covers. This morning I started working on "Prelude 21" or "Preludio XXI" as it is entitled in the book. It is a longer prelude -- four pages in this edition -- written in the key of B-flat, 12/16 time. I'm smiling to myself because it is annotated to be played "Vivace" -- which is very fast. As I am just beginning to learn this, learning the notes and the fingerings, I am playing it somewhat slower -- I would call it a "train-wreck" tempo. Imagine trying to hurry through or past a train wreck on a railroad track and you get the picture.

So, I have started a new Bach piece, the music is lilting in my ears, haunting my thoughts and delighting my soul. Life is good.