End of one year…

My puzzle-a-day Kakuro calendar now has all of its pages ripped off… 2007 is no more (almost). It makes me sad. And you know why? Because I like the number 7, and have never liked 8. I remember being annoyed with the New Year’s in 1988 for the same reason. Wow–that was 20 years ago. In 1998, I was too worried about surviving my first year of teaching to really think about what year it was, at least in any way that I recall.

So, what are the highlights of 2007? I’d say, the turnaround in the Iraq War has been particularly poignant to me, connected as it is with the fact that I rang in 2007 in Baghdad. In my tin can trailer, listening to helicopters overhead… no fireworks but lots of small arms fire and explosions in the distance. It took me a while after I got back to react positively to fireworks!

I’m going blank trying to think of any specific personal highlights, besides surviving/returning from my deployment, and all that was associated with that. After April, in some senses it feels like this was one of those “lost years” I’ve had from time to time, where no real significant changes take place, no major life events rock the boat. I think I needed the rest, but I’ve got to say I’d prefer a more eventful 2008. (And yes, I’m fully aware that sometimes “eventful” means unpleasant… give me unpleasant over bored any day! Or so I say now, when I’m bored and emotionally intact…)

Isn’t it interesting to think what we’d have thought about the coming of 2008, back 20, or even 10 years ago. Today, when I was checking on Google hot trends , a very interesting list of the most popular searches in the web and their trends over time, I saw “myspace New Years’ comments” as one of the top links. It segued into a thought that I’d had only the night before (watching a commercial for one of the many smartphones being marketed to average middle-aged people) that we’d never have imagined the Internet would become this kind of life-force, this zeitgeist of contemporary life… It makes me wonder what we’ll be seeing as normal in 2018, or 2028–stuff we probably can’t even imagine today, except for the very outside edges of it.

Well, that’s probably enough end-of-the-year speculation/pontification. Now I need to go start thinking about resolutions!

A round of travel adventure

I flew out to Arizona yesterday… Though I didn’t end up flying from Montgomery, after all. You see, we’ve got a teensy little airport, in Montgomery, Alabama, and it’s never busy or very backed-up. Which, over time, has made me a little lackadaisical about getting there in time for my flight. I left the house early yesterday, with the intent to mail a package to my brother and his family, then stop at a bookstore, then head to the airport (this because the airport has no convenient bookstore). Well, I got there with only a short while to spare, but, unfortunately, after the baggage cutoff limit! Eeek!

And then it turned out that there were no other flights to Atlanta that would allow me to get to Tucson… I started asking about flights the next day (but this being the Christmas season, there were no open seats), when another worker came up to the counter and mentioned that I could drive out to Atlanta and catch my connection there. This was at 2 p.m. Central, and the Atlanta flight was leaving at 6:40 Eastern (effectively leaving me 3 h. and 40 min. to get there).

I took the option–it was the only option I had, really–and hopped in the car and drove the 2 h. 15 min. drive to the next city over. I had a brief scare with traffic when the interstate narrowed down to one lane and there was some stop-and-go, but I made it to the airport with about an hour to spare, and managed to drag my heavy bags to the baggage check-in and make it to the terminal with about a half hour to spare before boarding.

But let me tell you–I don’t remember ever having been more tense in my life! All the muscles in my back are sore today from the rigidity and tension I was carrying through that whole drive yesterday! I guess I learned firsthand that I should not be QUITE so cavalier about making it in time to the airport. Funny how these lessons by experience are the ones that we remember. I’m just glad I was flying through a nearby city and not somewhere else.

But I made it to Tucson and am now staying at my parents’ house for the holiday week. (My poor kitties will have to tough it out alone for a bit… undoubtedly I’ll have to clean up after them a bit when I get home.) My mom’s two golden retrievers are ecstatic to receive me here, and I’m just a bit baffled by all the doggy behavior which is, after all, rather unlike cat behavior. So, maybe it will be a merry Christmas after all!

Snow and Shadows

I spent an enjoyable portion of an hour, building snowflakes at the above site… Just like cutting them out of paper, only with a mouse, and you can attach messages to display to the world! Since I am unlikely to see much snow this year (going from Alabama to Arizona for the holidays), I guess this will have to do. I miss snow… Although I certainly don’t miss digging my car out of it, or the way it feels when your wheels spin without traction and you’re not sure if you can make it up the hill to your parking space!

I’m officially on my Christmas break now, though I won’t be flying out yet for a couple more days. At present I’m cleaning and wrapping presents and doing my last-minute shopping… Oh, with a break today to watch Shadowlands and spend an hour or two crying as a result. Sigh. I shouldn’t watch weepy movies when I have things to do! Though it is nice to have that catharsis, and over something entirely innocuous like a movie.

I remember when Shadowlands came out–it was toward the end of my time in college, and I went with about six other girls and one guy. I remember quite distinctly how uncomfortable he was having to deal with seven weeping women when we emerged from the movie; of course we were all embarrassed about having cried, and trying to joke about it.

It is interesting to me, though, that what really got to me when I first watched it (when Jack cries in the attic), was so obvious that it wasn’t even that moving this time. No, it was really linked to the talk about the pain now being a part of the happiness then (and vice-versa; you’d have to see the movie for it to make sense, I suspect), and the ideas the film explored about life in safety versus true experience that pushes us out of the nursery and makes us grow up. Pain–suffering–being a necessary part of what we need to grow up.

Funny how much you can change over a decade or so… hmmm.

We all won

The culture wars are over… and we won! This seems to be a consensus view on one of the historical-theory forums that I visit. That, and the articles that I read in different magazines and online publications. The interesting thing is that the culture wars must, indeed, be over–because everyone is claiming victory.

Those on the right point to the fact that hard-line abortion advocacy is pretty much a career-killer for politicians, and that in order for those on the left to win political battles, they have to take on the social perspectives that were at one point the demesnes of the right. On the other hand, those on the left claim that even hard-line evangelicals, etc., have accepted that climate change and environmentalist policies are things to be taken seriously. They point to Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Giuliani as proof positive that hard-line right-wingers are on the way out.

I’m not sure what to think of this. I think it’s good if we’re going to see a lessening of the shrillness that has been characteristic of the political landscape lately, though with a Clinton all but assured of a ticket to the presidential elections, I’m sure we haven’t had our fill of vitriol yet. (I read an article a while back that pointed out that, should Hilary Clinton be elected to office in ‘08 and ‘12, it’s entirely possible that we could spend a total of 24 years having presidents from one of two families.)

But as to actual winning of the culture wars? I doubt anyone did. More, we’ve come to a situation where every group has gained a little, lost a little, and I think we’re focusing on our gains now, rather than our losses. Perhaps. (Until the next elections produce a president-elect that we hate, that is!)

Wow–I almost understand it!

I discovered a new radio station on my satellite radio, and I’ve been enjoying it, lately… Bandeàpart, from Canada. It’s actually pretty exciting to hear a foreign language but know at least 60% of what they’re saying! (Remember, I’ve been listening to Arabic pop where I’m lucky if I catch one word out of twenty.)

I’ve been trying and trying to find good a good sampling of French language music on youtube that’s indicative of what plays on the site, but at present I haven’t been paying a whole lot of attention to who’s singing what. It’s so interesting, though, hearing the range of musical styles from hip-hop to heavy metal to country(esque)… they play quite a variety! Personally, I just like hearing the DJs talk, because every day that I listen I can pick up more of what they’re saying…

Oh well–nerdy language pursuits strike again!

Here are a couple clips from a concert that the radio station sponsored (the first is instrumental, the second has words):

The doom that didn’t materialize

Every so often, I wake up with a sense of impending doom. I don’t know why, but today’s going to be a bad day… That was this morning. Oddly, the day was perfectly fine… busy, with a lot of tasks that I really hate and dread doing, but turned out pretty well, in the end.

I’ve been fighting with the State of Ohio about taxes… they say I owe them money, I say (correctly!) that I was not, nor have I ever been, a resident of Ohio, so I owe them nothing. And they sent me to a collections bureau, which will wreak havoc with my credit until I get it resolved. What makes it even more lovely is that I didn’t know they’d done this until last night–I actually thought I’d taken care of this whole problem back before I deployed, last year! Silly me, thinking that just because I don’t hear from them after I send them my residency records, they’ve done what they were supposed to and taken me off their books…

Oh well. I got to talk to the base legal office, and, though this is the first time I’ve had to resort to legal counsel, it was quite heartening to know that they’re on my side in this. It sounds like we’ll be sending a cease-and-desist letter to the state and insisting that they reverse any action that they’ve taken against me that would impugn my name… (that is, my credit rating)

It’s funny–the amount in question really isn’t too terribly large, and I could afford to pay it. I’m half-tempted to, just to get this whole matter resolved–but that’s setting a terrible precedent, so I need to stick to my guns and make them do the right thing. (Apparently this isn’t an uncommon predicament for active duty military folks to find themselves in–something about the “living here but not a legal resident of the state” doesn’t compute when it comes to state tax time. Fancy that!)

However, while I was worried about being sent to collections for money that I do not legally owe them, what really worried me and made it so hard to get up this morning was the prospect of all the phone calls I was going to have to make. For some reason, I’ve got this weird variant of social anxiety that’s attached to telephone calls. I absolutely hate using the telephone, and will often do anything that I can to avoid it.

I’m not sure if this is because of a slightly embarrassing incident in my childhood–we had an assignment in elementary school to call our local government offices and ask them for some sort of informational materials. When I hesitantly asked for the brochures, the civil servant on the other end of the phone irritably chewed me out for wasting her time (or if not, that’s what I got out of it) and hung up the phone on me. It was traumatic–I remember feeling like an utter fool to this day. (Oddly, these are some of the things that I remember most clearly about childhood–all the times I felt foolish and embarrassed at having done something gauche or inappropriate or stupid. I can recall those incidents in exquisitely painful detail. That probably says all sorts of things about me, doesn’t it?)

But, by the end of the workday, a dozen calls behind me (and none the worse for wear–not one person chewed me out and I got to threaten legal action), I remember that, just like getting a shot at the doctor’s, a phone call–even to a stranger–really isn’t that big a deal, after all. And certainly isn’t worth the effort of waking up with premonitions of doom…

On the other side

Driving on the Interstate this morning, I noticed a delivery truck with one of the semi-obligatory “How am I driving? Call 1-800-555-1234″ (OK, the number’s wrong, but who really pays attention?) Anyway, I was reminded of one of my first jobs (pre-military), where I worked for a little print shop that made quite a few deliveries. The driver of the delivery truck was a rather wild-and-crazy sort who, you could tell just by looking at him, was likely to be a semi-scary driver. And we–the owner, rather–got daily call-ins on the 1-800 line from the “How am I driving?” stencil on the back of the truck.

Standard operating procedure: He’d talk apologetically with the complainant on the end of the line–”I’m so sorry our driver cut you off without signaling, ma’am, I’ll be sure to have a talk with him,” and then, once he’d hung up, come into the back room and relay the entire complaint to us, where the whole staff would laugh over the incident. Our general feeling was this was the way to placate annoyed retirees who spent most of their time complaining about things. (The store was located in the Sun-Belt so we had LOTS of retirees as customers.)

Anyway, having spent a relatively short time, even, on that side of the phone call, I’m much less likely to ever use one of those lines, even if the driver in question is a maniac. After all, who really wants to be mocked (behind one’s back) for trying to be civic-minded?

I suspect that most of these kinds of customer-centric innovations end up being like that: ways to allow a customer to vent their frustration and get the impression that something is being done to correct the problem. I found quickly, doing customer service, that the only way to soothe an irate customer was to be apologetic and concerned, so that they felt that they were being heard and understood–that way they go away faster. Then you laugh about their belligerance and inflexibility later on with your coworkers. And who really wants, when all is said and done, to be the punchline of the day?

The Marsh Arabs

Here’s an article about part of the Iraqi restoration that goes largely unnoticed in the main stream media. When I worked in the Embassy in Baghdad, I’d go by some of the offices upstairs (I forget the specific organization, but it was one of the government offices that dealt with restoration) and they always had posted updates about the progress of restoring Iraq’s marshlands and the people that dwell there.

It’s too bad we don’t hear about this more often–it’s a reminder of exactly how bad Saddam Hussein was and what benefits the restoration of Iraq has provided (despite ups and downs in the process) in terms of restoring both the environment and the people of Iraq. Heck, isn’t it a good thing to preserve (or rehabilitate) wetlands? (Full article.)

The Mesopotamian Marshlands — home of the Marsh Arabs — exist at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Many have imagined this area the site of the Garden of Eden. Until the early 1990s, this “Eden” was the Middle East’s largest wetland, covering about 7,500 square miles. The Marsh Arabs — also known as the Madan — are among the oldest peoples on earth, dating back 5,000 years. They are a link to the Sumerians. For all these millennia, they have lived in their marshes, gliding in their skiffs, called “mashoofs,” and dwelling in their reed huts. They have subsisted on fish and water buffalo, chiefly. The British explorer Wilfred Thesiger made them famous in the 1960s, when he published his book The Marsh Arabs.

The marshes were always a mysterious place, a haven and hideout for rebels, bandits, dissenters. When the Shiites failed in their uprising against Saddam after the Persian Gulf War, many of them sought refuge in these marshes. And the local residents, hating the regime — like most Iraqis — sympathized with them. Saddam decided that the area and the people had to be eradicated.

What happened next is a picture of pure evil; it can scarcely be absorbed. In a massive push called the Third River Project, the regime created dams, dikes, and canals — and dried up the marshes. One new canal was called the Mother of All Battles River; there was also the Fidelity to the Leader Canal. With amazing speed, this vast wetland became a desert. The plants died, the animals died, water was nowhere. One newspaper report had residents saying that it was as though someone had pulled a plug. Saddam destroyed a full 90 percent of the Mesopotamian Marshlands, establishing a military zone in their place.

But there’s much, much more. The elimination of the marshes caused the people to starve, flee, or die — and Saddam did all he could to make sure they died. He poisoned the lagoons; he shelled villages; he set reedbeds ablaze; he imprisoned, tortured, and executed; and he attacked these Iraqis with WMD — with chemical weapons. He left no technique untried. In August 1993, a British writer and filmmaker, Michael Wood, said that the dictator’s “slow genocide of the Marsh Arabs is nearing its climax.” Yet it had not been so slow, really.

…

And then the war came. The second they could, what Marsh Arabs remained punctured dikes, knocked down sluice gates, and otherwise tried to undo Saddam’s project. Speaking of moving reporting, here is some by the New York Times’s James Glanz:

. . . when Mr. Hussein’s government fell in April 2003, villagers went to [a particular dike] and gouged holes in it using shovels, their bare hands and at least one piece of heavy equipment, a floating backhoe. Since then, something miraculous has occurred: reeds and cattails have sprouted up again; fish, snails and shrimp have returned to the waters; egrets and storks perch on the jagged remains of the walls, coolly surveying the territory as if they had never left.

Those mashoofs glided once more, and reed huts were built again. Desert was disappearing; wetlands were returning. Journalists from around the world collected expressions of gratitude and joy, and I offer a sampling: “The water is our life; it is a gift from God to have it back.” “Everyone is so happy; we are starting to live like we used to, not the way Saddam wanted us to live.” “[I am] like a person detained in prison who is set free.” “This war has brought two joys for us: the end of Saddam and the return of the water.” “This is what we call rebirth.” And here is a snippet from the Washington Post of April 14, 2003: “[Men of the Wafi tribe], Shiite Muslims, said they had been banned from observing their religion until last Friday, when their imam was free to preach for the first time in years, and gave a talk ‘thanking God and the coalition forces for giving us freedom,’ as the sheik put it.”

You can read more about the restoration of Iraq’s wetlands here, here, and here.

Lost in time

I spent my weekend immersed in a fictional landscape… A universe, at that, so compelling that it’s a little difficult to tune back in to the silly annoying details that make up my life. A large part of my brain is currently in Italy in the year 1634, going through adventures with the intrepid characters of a small town from contemporary small-town America that somehow landed in the middle of Germany of the Thirty Years War…

You can read the first two novels for free (1632 and 1633), and by then you’ll probably be hooked like I am. (Well, assuming that you like alternate history / sci-fi. It is something of a niche genre (if you know nothing about history or don’t care about it, then it might just seem boring). It reminds me of something that I’ve missed for a long time–the sheer scope and enjoyability of reading a new series by a good author, and immersing your imagination into a new world that stretches your mind.

TV (somehow) never really makes my brain work that hard. Imagine that! I suppose, with the writers’ strike going on as it has been, and plans for a spring season overwhelmed by reality shows, I might just have to get used to this whole reading thing. I’ve gotten out of the habit of consuming books, because it’s been too hard to find books that I really like. I read some chick-lit because it’s light and fun, but it’s about as taxing on the imagination as is a standard TV show. Which is to say, not very.

And while I always used to love the sci-fi and fantasy genres, it seems that much of fantasy has been hijacked by “dark” writers who dwell on vampires and off-norm sexual practices and incest and all that which is (and probably should continue to be) hidden and taboo. While the first few vampire novels I read were interesting and, indeed, a novelty, once it became a formula of its own it ceased to be appealing. I reached a point where I realized I didn’t care to fill my head up with stuff that I found revolting.

Sci-fi… On the other hand, sci-fi has always been a little hit-or-miss for me. I get bored by a lot of it, especially when it’s of the “galactic adventurer” variety and involves almost a Western-in-space theme to it. They get too weird when they’re set too far in the future (IMHO) to follow easily, and besides, the part that I really like is the world-building. (Which is what I used to enjoy in fantasy, until they got too sidetracked on incest and gore.) I like the “soft sciences”, I guess, the questions about how it would affect people if the world was like this or if that happened to them. Even more engineering questions appeal to me, like “how could an Average Joe/Jane from now manage to rebuild X technology if transplanted into Y type of world?” (Which is what you find in this time-travel themed novel such as the ones I’ve been reading.)

I’m not sure if I’ll find a good answer–I’ll happen upon good authors every now and then and inhale everything that they’ve written, then go through more dry spells until I find someone else to read, I guess. That’s how it has worked up to now…