In India many boys of my generation in school grew up on a staple diet of American/British comic books (to the great annoyance of our parents who felt we were neglecting our textbooks). I was delighted to read The Independent report that comic/graphic books are emerging stronger and gaining popularity in view of the failure of the media to satisfy public thirst for information regarding the raging conflicts, including the Iraq war.

Here is what The Independent writes: “They’re a far cry from Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk. A daring new generation of graphic novelists is using the conflict in Iraq to explore America’s relationship with the rest of the world – and itself.”

But what is this ‘graphic novel’? The term ‘graphic novel’, in the Comic Books genre, was first coined by Richard Kyle in 1964, mainly as an attempt to distinguish the newly translated works from Europe which were then being published from what Kyle perceived as the more juvenile subject matter that was so common in the United States. More here…

The Independent continues:“Today’s broad countercultural coalition in the US is often motivated by frustration at the news coverage of the Iraq conflict and its aftermath from traditional media outlets. In such a climate, comic books thrive by reflecting the public bad mood, and they remain streets ahead of many of their rivals in the creative industries.

“While authors and filmmakers have taken their time preparing fictional responses to the war, comics are a relatively immediate form. In theory…’you can write and draw a comic and see it on the stands three months later. A movie can take years’.”
More here…

In the week since he died, after all the millions of words about his life, there is the question of, beyond the self-love of media people celebrating themselves, why do so many people everywhere care so much about Tim Russert’s death?

Peggy Noonan has the start of an answer: “The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better…That’s what we talk about in eulogies, because that’s what’s important. We don’t say, ‘The thing about Joe was he was rich.’ We say, if we can, ‘The thing about Joe was he took care of people.’”

In the week’s outpouring of sentiment, there was a striking emphasis on Russert’s random acts of kindness-concern for people and their families far beyond the token gestures of a political life. After all the talk about his work, we are left with the residue of a sweet man who lived out E. M. Forster’s injunction, “Only connect!”

What we long for in our hyperactive, overcrowded and wised-up lives is some joining of what Forster called “the prose and the passion”–some sense of a feeling heart behind all the cunning and the calculation of it all.

Tim Russert of Buffalo and Washington knew just what E M. Forster of Cambridge and “Howard’s End” meant.

Cross-posted from my blog.

Everyone likes to look smart. Particularly in the high tension world of political debate, you never want to look like a dim bulb, even if you must privately admit that you wouldn’t know a Shiite from a Sunni if you tripped over them both in your kitchen. But when it comes to the written word, many traps and pitfalls await the would be analyst. That’s why I would like to take a moment this morning for us to visit with some old friends - the bugaboos of English that torpedo so many of our best efforts at making our point. Keep these in mind going forward and you’ll look much more like a genius, whether you’re penning your own op-ed column, screaming in the comments about my inane political blatherings, or corresponding with Aunt Fanny about how fabulously the corn is growing this year.

Itty Bitty- Perhaps one of the most common mistakes arises in the use of “its” and “it’s” in sentence construction. So much fuss over such a tiny word! While it may seem counter-intuitive, the apostrophe is only used when substituting a contraction for the phrase “it is.” Example: “It’s funny how Barack Obama’s ears stick out like open taxi cab doors.”

The possessive article never uses the apostrophe. To wit: “For a man like Obama, virtue is its own reward.”

You should ensure you have insurance, I assure you - These words get messed up all the time. “Ensure” is interchangeable with “to make sure.” As in, “Bob Barr’s staff must ensure he is on the ballot in as many states as possible.” The word “assure” means to instill confidence in someone. “Bob Barr assured the audience he would work to shrink the size of the Federal government.” The only time you use “insure” is when you are actually speaking of insurance. “Bob Barr insured the package for twice its retail value before mailing it.”

It’s the principle of the thing! - When writing “principle” do you end it in “ple” or “pal” in each instance? Principle denotes a fundamental truth, law or value. “John McCain is a man of great principles.” The other version refers to two main usages. One is the headmaster of a school. “The principal felt that John McCain was a very poor student.” It also refers to the base amount of a loan in financial transactions. “The principal on Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt was staggering, to say nothing of the interest owed!”

If you need a really simple way to remember this one, keep this sentence in mind: “The principal is my pal.” The one referring to a human being ends in “pal.”

Compliments are free, but insults cost money -The pairing of “complimentary” and “complementary” is a more obscure one, but everybody seems to get it wrong. “Complimentary” spelled with an “i” refers to two cases. The first implies flattery, as in paying a compliment to someone. “Barack Obama was very complimentary to everyone he met in a transparent effort to win votes.” The same spelling is used when referring to something that is provided for free. “The lobbyist gave John McCain many complimentary perks during his free junkets around the world.” The only time you use “complementary” with an “e” is to describe associated pairs. “Conservative and Liberal are complementary political ideologies.”

These are only a few of the most common errors we make when writing. Feel free to suggest others in the comments section and I’ll add them in to the column. But for now, take these handy tips with you as you go forth and argue your political views, readers. Good luck!

e-mail the author: jazzshaw@gmail.com

UPDATE: Yes, gentle readers, the comments and e-mails have begun, reminding me yet again that one should never write a column on English usage with insuring… errr, assuring… no, wait… ensuring that you are 100% in compliance yourself. Who knew there were so many grammarians lurking out there in the darkness? Other cases have been offered up as well. We’ll need to extend this column after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »

After some terrific news for our nation last night, the New York Times had some terrific news for wine drinkers this morning. In an article titled “New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging“, the Times writes that red wine may be”much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan.”

We all know that “in vino veritas.” (Don’t we wish that George would start drinking wine, again?). Now perhaps it is also “in vino vita.”

If one wanted to know the difference between being an American and being a European, this article from France’s Le Figaro newspaper would be a very good place to start.

From Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to client number nine Eliot Spitzer and ‘Kristan,’ Europeans have looked at the effect that sex has on American politics with a collective shake of the head. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week it emerged that one of Norman Mailer’s mistresses, former actress and model Carole Mallory, sold her personal papers to Harvard’s Houghton Library. On Friday they gave the UK’s Times OnLine an exclusive preview.

Harvard? Why Harvard?

Leslie Morris, the Harvard library’s curator, said the main reason the university had been interested in so seemingly unacademic an archive was that Mailer’s hand-written amendments appeared on several manuscripts.

“The edits to me were the important things,” said Morris, who lost the biggest Mailer prize when the author sold his manuscripts to the University of Texas for $2.5m three years ago. “We don’t have that kind of money,” she said.

She declined to reveal how much Mallory was paid, but Mailer scholars may conclude it was worth every penny to read some of Norman’s amendments.

If you’re not going to clickthrough to read the lurid and steamy details, the headline claim is that Mallory “suspected him of having an affair with a male friend, was worried that he might contract Aids and refused to indulge his fantasy of three-way sex with a gay man.”

Yawn.

With its perpetually (and historically) rocky relationship, the Arab and European worlds have seldom met in a peaceful manner (or without suspicion) during the past half a millenium ever since the downfall of the Moorish civilization in Spain. In this context the on-going London Book Fair, with the “Arab World” as guest of honour and Arab writers present in force, provides yet another opportunity to build a bridge between the two worlds.

The Independent writes: “Imperial bureaucrats, soldiers and scholars on one side; radical nationalists, pious militants and oil-rich oligarchs on the other – all have had their various axes to grind, and to wield. Now, perhaps, the writers of the Arab world can begin to find a voice in the West again. It’s always easier to love distant stars when they can shine, plainly and legibly, on the page in front of us.

“The (London) fair will be the culmination of a long-term plan, steered by the British Council, to forge firmer cultural bonds. And, although he comes from far beyond the Arab world (and writes in English), the Afghan author Khaled Hosseini’s double coup in topping the UK charts both with The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns has helped to put a spring in the step of everyone who wants to widen the readership for literature from the Middle East and North Africa.

(The Kite Runner novel was the third best-seller for 2005 in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan. It’s been published in 38 countries, translated into 42 languages, turned into an Oscar-nominated movie – and sold more than 10 million copies — one of the publishing industry’s greatest success stories. Now the search is on for the next big thing to come from the East. The Kite Runner is a 2007 Academy Award-nominated film directed by Marc Forster based on the novel of the same name by Khaled Hosseini (click here for more…)

“In the Gulf, lavishly funded new competitions such as the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the ‘Arab Booker’) and the Sheikh Zayed Awards have signalled the intention of the emirate of Abu Dhabi to build up its name as a global centre of culture. Not to be outdone, and fretting perhaps at its current reputation as the world capital of bling, neighbouring Dubai begins a new literary festival next year. Also in Abu Dhabi, the Kalima translation project has launched an ambitious, state-financed programme to bring, at the rate of 100 per year, classic and contemporary books from around the world into Arabic for the first time and to distribute them across the region. ” More here…

I lived in London during the mid-1970s. I extensively covered there a major “World of Islam Festival” for The Statesman newspaper in India. The festival was opened by Queen Elizabeth II. “As far as anyone can remember, such an attempt had never been made before—and probably could not have been. It is only recently that one civilization has been capable of looking at another civilization objectively, rather than as a potential rival or convert. Read the rest of this entry »

3,232.

3,547.

3,689.

Anybody remember these numbers?

I don’t, and for that I’m a bit ashamed.

But 4,000, well, that one seems to give us pause. For some reason the sight of three zeros makes us turn our necks long enough to pay attention, ask more questions and continue to find few real answers.

So here’s my question on the anniversary of this 4th set of three zeros: Was it worth it?

And more broadly, how has the Bush administration demonstrated that this war has:

1. been worth the cost in lives,
2. been worth diverting attention and resources away from domestic issues,
3. been worth diverting our attention away from other foreign policy issues,
4. and made us any safer?

The only tangible benefits seem to be that a bad dictator is gone and people have been freed. Fair enough. These are good things.

But Saddam was a bad guy who had no ties to al Qaeda. And, forgive me for being cruel, but it’s not up to us to make sure the entire world is free. If that were the case, we would have started with Darfur, not Iraq.

Here are some sobering facts for Iraq right now. 25 soldiers died in the last two weeks. There’s news that the Iraqis we’ve hired to fight al Qaeda haven’t been paid yet and are dangerously close to quitting. Violence across the country claimed the lives of 58 citizens over the weekend. But the worst news? The breathing room our troops gave the Iraqi government via the surge strategy is being wasted.

Another fact that seems to get missed in all these discussions…our intelligence estimates say that al Qaeda is stronger than ever before.

This is why more and more Americans don’t accept the premise that, if we stay there, things are going to get fixed and, if we leave, everything is going to go south. What we’re all starting to collectively realize is that the longer we’re in Iraq, the more chances there are for things to go wrong both there AND here. And what a continued presence in Iraq will most likely result in is we’ll have less say in how we’ll ultimately exit the country. Because we will exit at some point. We all know this. The only way we can control our own destiny here is to set realistic timetables and stick to them.

And yes, al Qaeda will claim victory, but I say let them think they’ve defeated us. Let them believe we’re tucking our tail between our legs. Let them put out their inane little videos. People, just because they say it doesn’t make it true.

Does anybody think if we pull out of Iraq that we’re going to stop tracking down al Qaeda heavies? Does anybody believe the broader fight against the Islamic extremists is going to stop? In fact, now we can start this shadow war in earnest and allocate our vast resources to that fight instead of continuing to throw billions down a hole in Iraq. Can you imagine how many top al Qaeda we could have captured by now using those resources that lay at the bottom of that hole?

Also, is it just me or have we forgotten that we won the war against Saddam and Iraq? Seriously, it was won. Saddam was defeated. We just haven’t been able to secure peace. The difference between those two things is very significant, and I think most of us are accepting the reality that there’s no way we’ll be able to stem the insurgent violence completely. So the fact that Bush and McCain continue to say that withdrawal means “defeat” just shows you how ass backwards our current foreign policy reasoning has become. Again, we all know we have to get out of Iraq at some point, so who’s truly setting us up to fail, the “Defeatocrats” or the “Republican’ts”?

It’s time to go. The sooner the better. Otherwise, we’ll be meeting back here in about a year and talking about the lives that were forever changed between now and 5,000.

In the Indian subcontinent the virtues/benefits of “selfless-giving” is not only woven into the religious/social/spiritual discourse in all religions from time immemorial, but commonly practised even by those whose financial position may be just above the subsistence level. Now a “scientific study” (from the very bastion of self-acquisitive culture) tells us that “money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else.”

“Spending as little as $5 (about 2.52 pence) a day on someone else could significantly boost happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found,” reports Reuters. “Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably happier when they spent money on others — even if they thought spending the money on themselves would make them happier. Indeed, although real incomes have surged dramatically in recent decades, happiness levels have remained largely flat within developed countries across time.”

More here…

“There are many references that support the concept of donation in Hindu scriptures. ‘Daan’ or ‘Daanam’ is the original word in Sanskrit for donation, meaning selfless giving. In the list of the ten ‘Niyamas’ (virtuous acts) Daan comes third. Daan, however, is the process whereby the good things in the universe are made to circulate in the whole community instead of being locked up in the stagnant individual centers, whether it is money, time, knowledge or actions; and daan is thus a means of breaking down the barriers of egoism. Therefore, when actions consisting of yagya, daan and tapas are performed, through such actions, both the individual and the society prosper in a sustainable natural environment. And this, we are told, is the ultimate goal of governance for all the good governments of the world.” More here…

For a somewhat academic piece on this subject please click here…

It would have been a damned shame if Tennessee Williams couldn’t write, because I can’t think of any man of letters whose family and friends provided so much rich material.

Williams, who was a gifted playwright and a not bad short story writer, drew long and hard from the deep well of tormented and eccentric souls who populated his life from childhood on and appear in various guises in his best known works, including The Glass Menagerie (1945), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and The Night of the Iguana (1961).

Then there is A Streetcar Named Desire (1948), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was a Broadway hit with Marlon Brando, who played the immortal Stanley Kowalski, and Kim Hunter, Jessica Tandy and Karl Malden. Two years later, Streetcar was remade more or less intact for the big screen with Vivian Leigh replacing Tandy.

I don’t think I was ever in the same place (which is to say probably a restaurant or bar) with Williams, although our paths might have crossed in Key West in the 1970s without me realizing it.

My appreciation for him was based solely on the movie versions of Cat, Iguana and Streetcar until I began working with scholars who visit the rare book and manuscript library where I work. They come to study our fine collection of Williams typescripts, most of them heavily annotated by the man himself, who was notorious for repeatedly rewriting big chunks of his plays, in the case of Streetcar right up to the night of its Broadway opening.

These typescripts are extraordinary windows into his creative mind.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

In fact, Barack Obama is your new bicycle. According to this site, he:

Best of all:

I’d definitely catch the ‘Obamamania’ if he folded me an origami crane.

There are many more Obamaffirmations if you just click this link and refresh. Spread the word!!

I just love hearing Sylvia Poggioli say her name - I always have. Doesn’t matter what she’s reporting.

But this morning, she helped Frank Deford preview this weekend’s Super Bowl game during Morning Edition. You can read the “play” here or listen to it here. I have a suspicion that this is going to be one of those Deford pieces that gets a lot of “just give us the sports, would ya?” e-mails, and I actually didn’t understand a lot of the references - sports or Bard.

But as a diversion, it was excellent. And with barely 30 minutes before the Republican debate in the Reagan Library in California, who couldn’t use a good diversion?

If you peruse this list of policy initiatives provided by The White House in relation to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address last night (transcript is here; C-SPAN video is here), you may notice that two topics concern science and technology, two topics concern education and no topics concern the arts.

[NB: The final topic on that list, about worldwide compassion, stands out to me because I recently read about Compassion, which is a faith-based initiative that will use word of mouth blog power in Uganda next month. (If you’re interested in how non-profits are trying to leverage blogs and blogging and bloggers’ enthusiasm, you might want to follow Beth Kanter’s blog and read about How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media; she is one of the top experts in this area.) But I digress.]

So, while it’s nice that President Bush leaves us with his thoughts on science-related issues and makes sure to mention education (given No Child Left Behind’s continued existence, it’s unlikely we could forget Bush’s role there), some groups are demanding (or trying to demand) that the presidential candidates pay attention to their specific issues: Science Debate 2008, Ed in ‘08 and Arts Vote 2008 are three examples. Read the rest of this entry »

As I was watching the Iowa results last night, a friend asked me what the Latin root of the word ‘caucus’ was. I had no idea, but vaguely remembered knowing at some point in the distant past that ‘caucus,’ while sounding vaguely Latin [or Greek] in origin, wasn’t. So off to the OED I went, and found this etymological explanation:

“[Arose in New England: origin obscure. Alleged to have been used in Boston U.S. before 1724; quotations go back to 1763. Already in 1774 Gordon (Hist. Amer. Rev.) could obtain no ‘satisfactory account of the origin of the name’. Mr. Pickering, in 1816, as a mere guess, thought it ‘not improbable that caucus might be a corruption of caulkers‘, the word “meetings” being understood’. For this, and the more detailed statement quoted in Webster, there is absolutely no evidence beyond the similarity of sound; and the word was actually in use before the date (1770) of the event mentioned in Webster. Dr. J. H. Trumbull (Proc. Amer. Philol. Assoc. 1872) has suggested possible derivation from an Algonkin word cau´-cau-as´u, which occurs in Capt. Smith’s Virginia 23, as Caw-cawaassough ‘one who advises, urges, encourages’, from a vb. meaning primarily ‘to talk to’, hence ‘to give counsel, advise, encourage’, and ‘to urge, promote, incite to action’. For such a derivation there is claimed the general suitability of the form and sense, and it is stated that Indian names were commonly taken by clubs and secret associations in New England; but there appears to be no direct evidence.]”

Then, as if on cue, a post from J.L. Bell over at Boston 1775 came across the transom. That 1763 quotation mentioned above, the first known use of the word ‘caucus,’ was from a diary entry written by [drum roll please] John Adams. He wrote in February, 1763:

“Boston Feby. 1763. This day learned that the Caucas Clubb meets at certain Times in the Garret of Tom Daws, the Adjutant of the Boston Regiment. He has a large House, and he has a moveable Partition in his Garrett, which he takes down and the whole Clubb meets in one Room.

There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one End of the Garrett to the other. There they drink Phlip I suppose, and there they choose a Moderator, who puts Questions to the Vote regularly, and select Men, Assessors, Collectors, Wardens, Fire Wards, and Representatives are Regularly chosen before they are chosen in the Town. …”

Bell’s got more on the process, and promises another post today on the origins of the Boston caucus. I’ll post a link to that when it’s up. [Update: John’s follow-up post is here].

[Originally posted at PhiloBiblos]

Like many a child of the Sixties, I exalted over the writings and the adventures of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and the other Beats, but it was a free spirit by the name of Neal Cassady who held a special attraction for me.

For want of a better way of saying it, Cassady was the Beats’ mascot. He was the catalyst for many of their writings and figured most prominently in the novels of Kerouac. While an underachieving writer who had a tortured relationship with his own literary muse, Cassady is credited with weaning the author of On the Road and Dharma Bums, my favorite Kerouac book, from his realist moorings into his now legendary stream of consciousness approach.

Years later – and after a fair number of adventures myself, including some with a friend who is in some respects the epitome of Cassady – I came to understand that there was a dark side to some of the most prominent Beats: A raging narcissism, alcohol and drug abuse, thievery, plagiarism and a “Me First Always” approach to life that left friends and lovers feeling victimized.

As I wrote here in an article titled “The Summer of Love Reconsidered,” much the same can be said of the hippie movement that grew out of the Beat Generation. Cassady was a central figure in some of the most hallowed antics of that era, most notoriously as the driver of Furthur, the road trip bus of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s marvelous Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.

There certainly was a dark side to Cassady, which is on full display in Neal Cassady: The Fast Life of a Beat Hero, a newish book by David Sandison and Graham Vickers.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

I lived in Paris for a few months in the mid-1970s. One of my favourite haunts was Bibliothèque Nationale. I had heard in whispers about its ambitious and controversial official project then on to collect France’s erotica and pornography.

So I was not surprised by the latest news report that “France’s official hoard of erotica and pornography, lovingly assembled by the Bibliothèque Nationale over a period of 170 years, will be thrown open to the startled eyes of the public for the first time this week.

“More than 350 books and prints from the forbidden section of the state library – officially known as “L’Enfer” (hell) – will be presented in an academically meticulous, but often frankly filthy, exhibition in Paris for three months from tomorrow.

“The ‘Enfer’ section of the Bibliothèque Nationale – books and prints and photographs purchased, confiscated or donated over almost two centuries – is believed to be one of the largest and richest collections of pornographic and erotic materials in the world. The Vatican’s secret stash is said to be even larger but that, presumably, will never be opened to the public.

“The collection – over 1,700 books and many more prints and pamphlets – was obtained partly by raids and confiscations. A large part of L’Enfer came from the private library of a political opponent of the Emperor Napoleon III, who was raided by police looking for anti-Imperial tracts in 1866. They found hundreds of old works which were judged ‘contrary to good public morals’. A court ordered the books to be burned but the then head of the Bibliothèque Nationale insisted they should be saved for posterity.”

To read The Independent story please click here…

The above cartoon, Suggestive Dream, from My Extra Life drawn by Scott Johnson ©2007 All Rights Reserved.

Congratulations to all.

A cartoon/ comic may seem simple to readers of them. Ah, that’s the deceptive magic of the one who draws them… Inking a comic actually requires the skills of writing believable dialog, finding a wry storytelling style, developing a drafting style, being able to conceptualize each frame and the overall concept.

The talents required are not just a joke and a pen. It also helps to see in thought-images. To have the cojones/ ovarios to create consistently. Too, there is a de rigueur requirement to be at least a little to a lot strange as a person.

I’m trying to teach myself to draw editorial cartoons … I’ve been working at it for quite a few months now but …not ready for prime time. I have likely enough oddness in place as a person, but not sure yet whether I have any or all of the other talents needed. My figures still look more like The Blob, rather than like humans. BUT, I admire those who have all the talents required in one place and who clearly work hard at their craft: Here are the folks who were placed in the top ten in the 2007 Weblog Awards for Best Comic Strip, out of literally thousands of comic strips online.

The winners
1. xkcd http://xkcd.com/
2. Day by Day http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/
3. Girl Genius http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
4. Penny Arcade http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic
5. Basic Instructions http://basicinstructions.net/
6. My Extra Life http://myextralife.com/
7. PvP Online http://www.pvponline.com/
8. Sluggy Freelance http://www.sluggy.com/
9. Least I could do http://www.leasticoulddo.com/
10. Attack Cartoons http://attackcartoons.com/

Try to say that really fast ten times.

UPDATE: The Nobel Peace Prize Goes to………
Tonight it was announced that Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPPC, are sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee says the recipients merit this award “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change…”

My first thought presently about Mr. Gore winning this prize is that I bet he dearly wishes his dad were still alive to see this moment in his son’s life. More later.

Here is the rest of the committee’s statement:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming. Whereas in the 1980s global warming seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent.

Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world’s leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.

By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.
Oslo, 12 October 2007

Background of the Peace Prize: Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 with Frédéric Passy, a leading international pacifist of the time. In addition to humanitarian efforts and peace movements, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded for work in a wide range of fields including advocacy of human rights, mediation of international conflicts, and arms control.

Here’s the article I posted at TMV yesterday:

>>>>>Al Gore: Nobel Swarming Toward Gore’s Global Warming?
Try to say that really fast ten times.
Seriously, here’s the likely answer: From the San Fran Chronicle website:

Carla Marinucci: UPDATE - Gore cancels appearance at Boxer fundraiser

Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office just contacted us to say former Vice President Al Gore has been called “overseas” for a trip related to his work on global warming and has canceled his scheduled appearance Thursday in San Francisco at a fundraiser for Boxer’s re-election effort. So the Boxer fundraiser — which was to include Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne — is off until Nov. 9.

Here’s a note Boxer sent supporters about the change:

I just got a call from Vice President Al Gore. He told me that he needs to travel abroad tomorrow for an exciting and urgent mission that could result in a major breakthrough in the fight against global warming.

Unfortunately, this means that we must postpone our Thursday, October 11th event with him until Friday, November 9th. I wanted to be sure to e-mail you tonight in case you were planning on attending…

Well, what else could possibly be so compelling across the drink that would take The Gore from The Boxer’s table?

In other Nobel news: the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature went to Doris Lessing from Britain, “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.” One interesting item, she is 87 years old and was born in Kermanshah, Persia.

Do you remember the 2006 Nobel winner in Literature? Mr. Orhan Pamuk, from Turkey, nearly 56 years old.

And for 2005? Well his initials are HP. No, not Harry Potter. Harold PInter from Britain, 77years old.

Elfriede Jelinek from Austria, John M. Coetzee from South Africa, Imre Kertész from Hungary, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad (VS) Naipaul from the United Kingdom, and Gao Xingjian from France (he was born in China)… are the other Literature Nobel awardees for this century thus far.

In case you were hoping to be considered for the prize in Lit: here is what the Nobel decision committee had to say about other Nobel winners’ works:

Gao Xingjian: “for an Å“uvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama”

VS Naipaul: “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories”

Imre Kertérz: “for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history”

John M. Coetzee: “who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider”

Elfriede Jelinek: “for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power”

Harold Pinter: “who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms”

Orhan Pamuk: “who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures”

I know, I know, first thought=wrong thought in this case. We will NOT win a Nobel by writing a bitter, ingenious set of books about the historicity of the outsider who is eaten by barbarians whilst eschewing prattle. No.

I know, I know, we all want to know who writes the bracing quotes about the Nobel authors; is it fiat by committee, or does one poor soul chosen by a black dot lottery have to hole up with a coffee urn and blank pages while sweating out a concise ultra-literate phrase for each writer… one that is acceptable to all the other judges.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see the cross-outs: Um, “This astute, no no, cross that out, This enlivening, no no, cross that out, ah, this exceptionally smooth… what’s wrong with smooth? Smooth is too a word. Smooth is definitely a venerable old word, what do you mean too colloquial? Jingoistic, surely you jest, just exactly who do you think you are talking…

And the beat goes on.

Maybe your grandmother is like mine; they see the world with ‘other eyes.’

My grandmother would sometimes say upon seeing the glee in her little dog’s eyes when she returned home: Dogs are heart medicine for humans. Other times when her butter yellow canaries would sing and sing just because the sun rose, she would say, Birds are heart medicine for humans. But then, when her kitties would adorn various kitchen cupboards to help her cook by waving their tails like pendulums, she’d say Cats are heart medicine for humans.

I was thinking of this, because a friend who is so ill, has an oncologist who understands the grandmother/ grandfather wisdom… and lets patients lie in big green vinyl recliner chairs wearing their living kitty mufflers, kitty aprons, and kitty head warmers during IV chemo.

Blessed oncologist whose chemo rooms are like a menagerie. When I’ve been there for my own infusions… another story for another time, I have a recurring anemia… the most unusual thing is that the dogs lying against people’s legs or lying quietly in laps, and all the kitties are on a mission; no fighting goes on there, no scouting for mates, no being sidetracked. Each creature, fully present to their person. It must be so: Creatures are medicine for their humans.

We’ve got Mother’s Day, whether every mother is ‘good enough’ or not. Same, Father’s Day. But no Cat Day. No Dog Day. No Bird Day. Some of the very few creatures on earth who will try to uncritically stay with us no matter how weak, how strong, how strange, upset, preoccupied we act, no matter what.

So two stories, each mythic in its own way; they are from two different cultures where many people are still fighting, arguing and hating one another over a war that occurred 67 years ago. But also their two cultures despite all else… have a great unifier: their shared love of cats, large cats called tigers, and smaller tigers called cats.

The first story is a true one that came in a news release from China some time back.

The Tigers In the Temple

Walking fully grown tigers on a leash is all part of a day’s work for a group of Buddhist monks who have taken on the task of protecting the endangered animals by offering them a home within the walls of their temple.

The sanctuary is run by head monk Phusit Khantidharo, who insists all 10 tigers living at the Pha Luang Ba Tua temple in western Kanchanaburi province in Thailand have adopted peaceful Buddhist ways.

“We are a big family here and we live together, not just with the tigers but many animals,” said Phusit, sitting cross-legged on a rock surrounded by five large tigers that take turns to affectionately nuzzle up to their saffron-robed master.

The tigers, with names like Storm, Lightning and Great Sky, live among monkeys, horses, deer, peacocks, geese and wild pigs in a scenic gully where they are free to roam and feed during the day.

Visitors to the remote temple, about 200 kilometers west of Bangkok, are invariably stunned by the sight of the monks frolicking with tigers as if they were ordinary domestic cats.

One monk, who weighed less than half his furry companion, was bold enough to crouch down and mock fight with the big tiger, which gently lunged back with its deadly claws retracted.

The monks have documented the personalities of all the big cats in a booklet with profiles varying from “likes to be a star and loves showing off” to “pretends to be tame and gentle but will bite.”

The first tiger was brought to the temple in 1998 after being injured by a hunter, but died within days.
Soon after, two very ill cubs arrived with large knife wounds in their stomachs. Inexperienced hunters had tried to cut them open and inject them with the preserving agent formalin in a bungled attempt to stuff them for a collector. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m back from the Berkshires, and present my review of the final Harry Potter book. Spoilers inside, so be aware.