HAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, New Zealand was young and overmatched, and the last time against the US got drubbed 7-1, but this morning's game was exactly what the US needed going into the quarterfinals. The Americans scored four goals by four different players, allowing none, and for the most part displayed a short control game mixed up with a few long balls that, while again coming against a relatively low-pressure defense, represents a vast improvement over the opening match against Norway.

Heather O'Reilly has been the player most consistently churning up the field with a killer workrate, showing patience when needed, aggressiveness when needed, threading crosses, finishing close as well as from distance. The distance shot came 40 seconds into the game when she caught the Kiwi keeper off her line after a goal kick and nailed the upper corner from, what, 35 yards out? Chalupa returned from the knock on the noggin suffered in the first match and put on a clinic for what attacks out of the back line should look like. Boxx turned in another solid game in the center mid, and A-Rod finally showed a deft touch to go along with her innate sense of how to time runs to beat the offside trap, converting a run off a beautiful long ball from Rampone (I think) in the second half.

Since Norway inexplicably got destroyed by Japan (two Japanese goals coming off defenders' feet a minute apart did them in), the US goes through as the first-place finisher in their group, and I understand fuck all about how the other groups shake out. I think we go against Canada in the quarters, miraculously avoiding both Brazil (o cagado) and Germany (ach scheisse) until the semis, if we make it that far. Because as good as they looked this morning, those two teams are light years beyond New Zealand. The US back line has managed to cover for each other when, say, Rampone makes an inexplicable weak pass, Cox loses her mark, Markgraf loses a footrace, or, like this morning, Beuhler flies up on the attack but is slow coming back on the counter. Mitts and Chupa have been strong on the wings, despite Mitts' one miscue this morning of attempting to beat a Kiwi forward on the dribble and losing the ball ten yards outside her own box, but they haven't faced anything like Marta or Christiane, and the center backs haven't shown enough to convince me that they will be able to reliably dispense with surgical German crosses. In either matchup I think I want Wagner in the middle with Boxx rather than Lloyd, who has been maddeningly inconsistent when it comes to finding either feet or the frame. If we do draw Canada in the quarters, I would like to see her as an early second-half sub. Precise distribution out of the middle will be the key against the big guns. Hopeful whacks aren't gonna do it.

A ver, as they say in Peru--a notoriously poor footballing country, but a good phrase.

Olympic Moments

Anything to get the Edwards post off the top of the page, I suppose...

Women's national team: much, much better against Japan. The team appears to have settled down and rediscovered the midfield. Boxx turned in a very good performance after looking shaky against Norway and Lloyd managed to put her shots more or less on frame, with one of the "more" category finding the back of the net. Cox is still a liability at left back, leaving the Japan wing open more often than not or getting beaten on the dribble. Rodriguez is fast, fast, fast.

They play again sometime. Tomorrow morning? It's all a blur. I'm sure someone will wake me up at the appropriate time.

Water polo looks like it sucks to play. That is a serious amount of treading water in a funny hat while the other team is trying to drown you. I would angle to get penalties called on me as often as possible so I could sputter over to the floating penalty box and hang on to the ropes for a while.

Things I have not watched with any degree of rapt attention include horses, archers, and rowers. Synchronized diving was cool, volleyball's cool, and other things are probably lovely as well. Three cable channels running simultaneous and sometimes repeated coverage have exceeded my capacity to keep anything straight. Thus ends the Olympic update.

Oh, for Fuck's Sake

Seriously, John? Seriously?

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday admitted to an extramarital affair while his wife was battling cancer. He denied fathering the woman's daughter. Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter but said that he didn't love her.

He said he has not taken a paternity test but knows he isn't the father because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

A former Edwards campaign staffer claims he is the father, not Edwards.

Banging somebody else while your wife was battling cancer and, by the way, tirelessly fighting off the GOP slime machine for you? What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, what the flying fucking fuckity fuck fuck is fucking wrong with you? Did you think nobody would find out about this? Did you think even a teeny tiny bit about the amount of ammunition you were stockpiling for Republican campaigners who you knew would gleefully use it to blow holes in whoever your party nominated? Or was it just more important to be able to stick your dick into somebody who wasn't going through chemo? Way to keep us reasonably close to the moral high ground, asshole.

Maybe we should be grateful it wasn't a 20-year-old intern. That would have been marginally worse, but the whole baby issue cancels out the appropriate age issue. Asshole.

If It's Friday, It Must Be a Hodgepodge

Uno. Hey, the men's U23 soccer team acquitted themselves very nicely against Japan yesterday, coming away 1-0 winners in a match they really dominated more than the score indicates. Maurice Edu, Marvell Wynne, and Robbie Rogers particularly impressed me--Edu and Wynne with their solid defensive play and Rogers with his elegant footwork and ball distribution. The team as a whole looked pretty sharp, although Michael Bradley didn't have his best match and Freddie Adu needs to look up for open teammates now and again rather than consistently dribbling into pressure until he loses the ball. Oh, and Sacha Kljestan, this is not Argentina. Please cut your hair. Or at least wash it.

Dos. See, it's not just me.

Love is too weak a word to describe how some people feel about Rachel Maddow. They lurve her, loave her, luff her. New York magazine’s online Intelligencer column recently ran an item headlined Why We’re Gay for Rachel Maddow, and the blogosphere is dotted with posts like “I’m totally gay for Rachel Maddow.” The “gay for Rachel” meme appears to transcend gender and sexuality. Women, men, straight and not straight: they’re all gay for her. In a year in which we have decided to become postracial and postgender, Maddow may embody a media in which adoring fandom is postgay.

Tres. I try to support locally owned businesses over chains when I can, but sometimes a corporate entity comes along that is simply so delicious that my slender principles are no match. Grimaldi's Pizza (work warning: musical website) is owned by somebody in the Evil Northern Empire of Scottsdale, or possibly Brooklyn--who can tell? not me--but damn. Damn, damn, damn. One of my New Yorker co-workers fussed that it's "not real New York pizza," which probably explains why it tastes so good. It is a thin crust, but its crisp body refuses to be folded, and the rich tomato sauce sings with marjoram and possibly the slightest hint of rosemary, just enough to perk up your tastebuds with a delighted oh, what is this? Even the really unforgivable move of the waitress bringing me an already-opened Stella because they were out of the Sierra Nevada IPA I'd ordered (after being told they were out of the draft Nimbus IPA and had never had Sam Adams, despite its being on the beer list) wasn't enough to make me want to firebomb the place. The pizza was that good. Oh, and it's baked in a coal-powered oven, so the carbon footprint of your meal covers vast swaths of southwestern Pennsylvania. But it is so. freaking. tasty. Chalk it up to a guilty pleasure.

Cuatro. No, I'm really not a fan of Stella Artois. Meh, Belgian Budweiser. But now I guess all Budweiser is Belgian anyway. Maybe they can consolidate their brewing and save some money.

Cinco. Cake Wrecks. Just because.

Quote of the Day

Is it Friday? No? How can it only be Thursday? Jesus. Anyway. Obama played Elkhart (Indiana) yesterday, and left us this gem:

I know that Senator McCain likes to call himself a maverick, and the fact is there have been times where in the past he did show some independence, but the price he paid for his party's nomination has been to reverse himself on position after position, and now he embraces the failed Bush policies of the last eight years--politics that helped break Washington in the first place. And that doesn't meet my definition of a maverick.

Well, as the kids say, w00t. It's about goddamn time.

In other news, McCain also admitted yesterday that keeping your tires inflated is a good idea after all, forcing his campaign to scuttle plans to continue to distribute Obama tire gauges to the press corps. 89 days to the election.

Cubs! Woo!

Clutch fucking hitting. That's all you need to know. Unreal.


Mark DeRosa.


Alfonso Soriano.

You don't even notice when half these guys are hitting under .270, because they step up and knock one when it's needed most.

Sports Corner: Well, That's a Problem

Hmmm. The US women's soccer team opened their Olympic run with a 2-0 loss to Norway, and when I say "opened" I mean "really really opened," as in "at least they waited for the ref to start the game before giving up two quick goals."

Shite.

The first came at 1:07 off a Norway cross from the left side. Hope Solo went to punch the ball away but collided with Lori Chalupny, which resulted in Solo missing the ball but making good contact with Chupa's head. The ball, happy to have escaped a beating at Solo's hands, went off the Norwegian attacker's noggin and skipped into the goal, whistling all the way. Opinion is divided as to where the fault lies for that one, but I'm inclined to say, meh, these things happen. Solo came off her line and made a play for the ball, Chupa went up to try to get a head on it. Maybe Solo should have broken earlier or called the defender off more vociferously, but whatever. It happens. It just sucks when it happens before sleepy viewers quite have it straight which way each team is going.

The second one hurt. Kate Markgraf attempted a back pass that turned into a beautiful through ball to the Norwegian attacker she didn't see behind her, and that was pretty much it. Solo, left hung out to dry, covered the near post like she was supposed to and was beaten high and away by the kind of nice finish you expect to see at the international level. This was at 4;46, more or less, and that was it.

The US was rattled and took quite a while to settle down. Defensively, Markgraf looks like a liability. Love Kate, but aside from a solid shot from outside the arc late in the second half, her game didn't have much to recommend it. Heather Mitts--sit down if you aren't already, because I never expected to hear this from me--was hands down the best US back. She has been nothing less than solid since returning from her ACL injury and has turned into a good attacking back as well. The central midfield was weak. Apparently this is my day to bust on aging Domers, so here we go. Love Boxxy, but she was awful today. Her first touch was rusty, her passes rarely found US feet, she biffed two open chances in the box, and she was hacking Norwegians at a rate that left me surprised to see the Swiss Miss, referee Nicole Petignat, keep her card in her pocket. On the outside, Heather O'Reilly was the most effective attacking player the US had on the field, showing an eagerness to take on defenders one-on-one and fight for every ball. Lindsay Tarpley was off her game, sending way too many crosses and through balls to spaces that didn't have a US player within 20 yards. Tash Kai was too random in the first half; interestingly, as she started to fatigue in the second half, she did a far better job of showing patience on the ball and finding open teammates in front of the goal rather than whacking at the ball mindlessly.

Not that there weren't bright spots, or at least a few sequences that gave me hope that the team is finally moving beyond the one-dimensional long-ball attack of the Ryan era. Ball movement as a whole was not great, with too much panic showing through in the first half. They settled a bit in the second and managed to link a few passes and play possession for brief spurts, which created a handful of scoring chances late. The magic final pass is still elusive, for the most part, and when it was there the finishes were mostly lacking.

Substitution patterns continue to mystify me. Bringing Rodriguez on in the second half was a no-brainer, but for Tarpley? I expected to see her come in for the ineffective Boxx, with Hucles moving back to the midfield. I would very much like to see the young, speedy players all on the field at the same time, A-Rod, Tarp, and HAO all at once, just to see what happens. Chastain wants to see Aly Wagner start at center mid in the next match. She's getting up there in years and hasn't had much playing time recently due to injury, so who knows if her legendary distribution skills are still there? There has to be another answer. Brazil and Germany looked monstrous in their game today.

I don't mind crawling out of bed at the crack of dark if they play well, but the match today was hardly even worth tivoing.

Heh.

Loathe Paris Hilton. Lurve this:

And, as always, lurve hat-tipping Top!Secret G-woman for passing awesome things along.

McCain's New Rallying Cry vs. Reality: Guess Who Wins?

John McCain went to the Sturgis motorcycle rally yesterday. The salient bits of his address boil down to this:

“We’re not going to pay $4 dollars a gallon for gas (when I am president) because we are going to drill offshore and we are going to drill now. We are doing to drill here and we are going to drill now,” he said.

Awesome. One teeny tiny problem with that, though. The government's own research contradicts him. The Energy Information Administration (the Department of Energy's independent stats and analysis organ) pretty bluntly dismisses the notion that drilling here, drilling now will solve our gas pump price shock any time during the next president's administration. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

And that's a best-case scenario that assumes "local infrastructure issues and other potential non-Federal impediments will be resolved after Federal access restrictions have been lifted." Want a picture? There's also a picture. The green line just above the blue line illustrates the expected gains.

What about all that oil those stupid caribou and polar bears are squatting on in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? That would make a big dent in foreign oil dependence and prices at the pump, right? Uh, no.

The EIA also researched the impact of crude oil production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. To put it in scale, ANWR is believed to have a potential for 10.4 billion barrels of crude oil, a little more than half of the projected potential for the offshore areas McCain has proposed opening.

ANWR would add only 1 to 2 percent to the overall world oil supply, said Philip Budzig, who authored the report for the EIA. The report concluded drilling there would subtract anywhere from 41 cents to $1.44 per barrel of crude oil around 2025. That translates to a savings of just a couple pennies per gallon at the pump. Again, in 2025.

Budzig noted that the report was prepared when oil was going for about $65 a barrel. It’s now double that. So, in theory, savings might be double what he projected last year.

So, (a couple pennies per gallon) x 2 = what, like four cents? In 2025 pennies? Are we even going to have pennies in 2025?

What will make a difference right away for all Americans' wallets? Let's see. John McCain says drill here, drill now. All the evidence indicates that magically conjuring fully functioning derricks positioned over every sweet spot in Alaska and the continental shelf will not tide me over to my next paycheck. The McCain campaign, which every day exhibits more and more evidence of being run by first-keg frat boys, has been handing out pressure gauges to mock Barack Obama's suggestion that if people want to reduce their own personal reliance on foreign oil, they should keep their tires inflated.

Let's check back with that notoriously liberal, tree-hugging entity known as the US government.

The Department of Energy estimated in 2005 that U.S. motorists wasted 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline a year from driving on underinflated tires -- roughly 61 million barrels of oil.

The government also offers "Tips to Improve Your Gas Mileage," and if you go through the whole onerous list of things like keeping your car tuned up, changing the air filter, and inflating your tires, you can see a fuel economy improvement of up to 17%, which at $3.96 a gallon translates to a savings of 68 cents per gallon, or over eight bucks per fillup on a 12-gallon tank. Compare the immediate 17% decrease in gasoline consumption you get from tuning and tires to the best-case 7% increase in domestic oil production by 2025 and tell me which makes the most sense in the short term. Then McCain and the 20,000 idiot bikers who cheered him in Sturgis can explain to me why a party that constantly touts self-reliance ridicules the notion of individuals adopting thrifty behaviors when it comes to gasoline. Never mind we're paying half what Europe does. We want ours and we want more, more, more, and we want it to be handed to us on the cheap right now.

Barack? You need to call him on this bullshit now, not "compromise" when the compromise is directly built on the bullshit idea that drilling is the solution to anything but Exxon's quest for the next quarterly earnings record.

Knock Me Down with a Fucking Feather, Part Ninety-seven: Anthrax

Oh, goody. You probably heard over the weekend that Dr. Bruce Ivins, the prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, has committed suicide, giving the FBI the opportunity to say well, that's that, then, and slam the door shut on the investigation. You may or may not have heard that we now know that the government's original assertion, repeated breathlessly by Brian Ross over and over and over on ABC, that the anthrax was definitively tied to Iraq, was utter bullshit. Utter and deliberate bullshit. Glenn Greenwald blows it open.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since — as ABC variously claimed — bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.”

ABC News’ claim — which they said came at first from “three well-placed but separate sources,” followed by “four well-placed and separate sources” — was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It’s critical to note that it isn’t the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News’ “four well-placed and separate sources” fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein.

Outstanding. You know, when lying about WMD just isn't enough, well, use a very convenient unrelated terrorist attack as the basis for a whole 'nother set of lies. Works like a charm, every time. I am not willing at this point to entertain borderline tinfoil notions of Bruce Ivins as the point man for a deeper conspiracy. There's enough to be pissed at without that. Things like... this, for example.

It's a bad movie script that's taken on a life of its own and keeps promulgating increasingly bad, unbelievable, downright awful plot twists. But it's real, and if today's depressing Rasmussen daily tracking poll is any indication, it may not stop any time soon. Work this bit of news into your daily conversations with anyone who still thinks the Bush administration and John McCain aren't so bad, yes?

Emirates or Exxon: Either Way You Take It in the Shorts

Maddow brought up an interesting point yesterday I hadn't thought much about before--no, I am not obsessed, thank you; I simply recognize quality when I see it--namely, that the drill here instead of buying oil over there camp falsely conflates "domestic oil" with "United States" rather than "US oil companies." In the absence of nationalized oil companies--quelle horreur--opening up the coastal shelf to exploration and production simply provides us the opportunity to pay a US-based multinational corporation for our gasoline instead of paying the Sultan of Oman. A company like Exxon, for example, which just shattered its own US record for quarterly earnings with a staggering $11.7B profit posted in the second quarter of this year. That's billion.

And, she added, most of that profit isn't even coming from sales to the US consumers they currently have under their thumbs. Can this be true? I did some looking. Everyone who is convinced that domestic oil production and gasoline refining are the solution to all of our woes needs to take a deep breath and take a look at this.

A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.

The surge in exports appears to contradict the pleas from the U.S. oil industry and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

"We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country," President Bush told reporters this week. "We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home."

We need to find more crude oil here at home so we can... ship it overseas in order to fatten ExxonMobil's wallets even more? The argument to increase domestic production would make sense if we had a Department of Petroleum whose revenues flowed directly back into the nation's infrastructure or even just a giant petty cash drawer for little things like schools and up-armored HMMVs. But we don't. What we do have are companies that operate in the global market and will move their product to the area with the highest profit margin. They exist to line their own portfolios, not to alleviate the skyrocketing prices that are gobsmacking low- and middle-income Americans.

The exports were also equal to half the 3.2 million barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products the United States imported each day over the 4-month period.

Throwing open ANWR and the continental shelf will marginally increase the global oil supply and maybe cause a small, short-term ripple in prices. But don't fool yourself into thinking that adding another million or so barrels to US corporate oil tanks will do anything but give them more options for their export markets and decisions on refining capacity, and provide the opportunity for 11.7 billion to be chump change down the road.

Drilling domestic oil does not mean domestic market relief and thumbing our noses at the sheikhs. It just means more discretionary product in the hands of private companies whose last interest is giving you a break at the pump.

A Question for the Guy Next Door

Dear Guy Next Door,

I am deathly curious to learn the exact nature of your yard improvement project, specifically, the attributes it possesses that are so crucial to the continuation of the species that you needed to be out pounding rebar into the ground for it at 5:30 this morning. I suspect you were simply moving your horseshoe pit, since the daily round of clank-thud commenced shortly thereafter. Actually, I guess I have a second question now: precisely how careful do you want me to be when I cut down the salt cedars on our shared property line? Mull that over before you haul out the sledgehammer tomorrow morning.

love,
Boltgirl

But First

As much as you are certainly dying to continue with the historical Loop tour, we must take a side trip right now to watch Dr. Maddow shred Pat Buchanan. The kinda worn-out Intarwebz acronym IOKIYAR truly should be updated to IOIYJMcC; the right can howl to their hearts' content that Obama coverage has far outstripped McCain coverage, but when over 70% of said Obama coverage has a negative slant, well, the liberal media myth continues to inhabit the realm of Bullfinch. So remember, it's OK for John McCain to refer to himself as "President McCain," but if Barack Obama shakes hands with a foreign head of state in the Willard Building instead of from the other side of a rope line, he's acting like he's the president or something and that's just uppity and uncalled for. Huff, huff.

Note: the following exchange has been scrubbed from the MSNBC website. If even they are protecting Pat Buchanan's delicate sensibilities, conservative media bashers really don't have a leg to stand on.

Second note: video link originally courtesy of commenter rhit over on the Maddow blog.

Historical Chicago History Post

Getting back to my summer vacation before it hits the month-ago mark... I spent the July 4 weekend in the city doing a few things I'd done before and seeing a whole lot more I'd managed to miss during the nine years I lived there.

First stop: the site of the Haymarket Riot of 1886. From the plaques at the base of the memorial, which depicts labor activists speaking from a wagon before the meeting turned ugly:

On the evening of May 4th, 1886, a tragedy of international significance unfolded on this site in Chicago's Haymarket produce district. An outdoor meeting had been hastily organized by anarchist activists to protest the violent death of workers during a labor lockout the previous day in another area of the city. Spectators gathered in the street as speakers addressed political, social, and labor issues from atop a wagon that stood at the location of this monument. When approximately 175 policemen approached with an order to disperse the meeting, a dynamite bomb was thrown into their ranks.

The Haymarket Memorial, 151 N. Desplaines St.

The short version of the aftermath is that 7 cops and 4 civilians were killed by the bomb, thrown from Crane's Alley, here:

Crane's Alley, east side of Desplaines.

The slightly longer version is that, despite the failure to identify the bomber by either name or affiliation, the organizers of the meeting and several other people with unpopular pro-labor political beliefs were arrested and imprisoned after sham trials. Two organizers and two speakers were executed; another was murdered in prison while awaiting trial. The Haymarket Affair ultimately became a rallying point for the modern labor movement.

From the memorial at Desplaines and Randolph, it was a decent walk down to the ultimate Chicago historical site: the origin point of the Great Fire. The O'Learys built their barn on DeKoven Street just east of Jefferson. October 8, 1871: cow, lantern, wind, history.

Poof.

The red brick building behind the monument? The one that says "Chicago Fire..."? Yeah, the full sign reads "Chicago Fire Academy." Too fittingly, the original fire site was taken over by the fire department to build their training academy; the back of the brick building is lit up at regular intervals to teach cadet firefighters how to ameliorate the effects of modern day O'Learys.

Boltgirl demonstrates callous disregard. It wasn't me, honest!

From there, a stroll up to the south Loop, where Dearborn Station overlooks the south end of Printer's Row.

Dearborn Station's tower, somewhat shortened after a fire--what else?--destroyed its original high peaked roof.

Next time: fun architectural details from historic Loop buildings. For now, the Cubs won in Milwaukee and are sitting in first by four.

Goodness How Time Flies

My grandpa was an old-school music man, beginning with the dance band he led as a clarinet virtuoso in high school and culminating in a full career as the head of the music department at the high school in the little southern Illinois town where we lived. He also conducted the city band, which I believe is the longest continually performing municipal band in the state of Illinois (the Cummins Band in Olney, formerly populated by musicians who had played with John Philip Sousa).

One Wednesday evening in late July of 1992 my dad walked over to his house as he got ready for his retirement concert, the last he would direct after 40 summers at the town park's bandshell, to give him a bit of news about me. Well, Grandpa replied, maybe on the night I lay down my baton I'll get a great-grandson.

It didn't happen that night, but it did on the next. So happy birthday to my now 16-year-old son, who I shamelessly claim as the best boy ever. Grandpa would be beyond proud. Shout out!

My Week in the Gender Wars...

... is only three days old so far, and the chucklehead contingent is already batting .667 if you're scoring at home.

Sunday night was the more personally irksome incident, on the soccer field during a co-ed game. One of my male teammates runs pretty hot and tends to respond to overly physical play with verbal attacks. He has a knack for identifying the basest target he can aim for and hitting it right away, whether it's relating details to his opponent about the opponent's mother or, as was the case Sunday, loudly informing his fully transitioned MTF opponent through word and gesture that he still has his penis.

At halftime I told him he needed to knock that shit off. Well, she pushed me, he said. I don't even know if it's a she or a he or what. She's a she, so push her back, I replied, but do not bust on her for being transgendered, and just do not even say that stupid shit to anyone, ever again. After the team captain and her mother for good measure chastised him as well, he went over and apologized to the other player, who amazingly accepted his apology instead of just kicking him in the nuts to check to see if he still had those too.

Monday passed without incident.

Today I'm at the gym lifting weights when two early-20s guys come in. It's not the hugest weight room in the world, and there's no music or anything, you can hear pretty much every conversation that goes on. First guy does some curls and passes the barbell off to the next guy, who reracks it and grabs a lighter one. First guy snorts with laughter. Well, if you're gonna be a vag, I guess you're gonna be a vag! Seriously, fellas? Seriously? I'm old enough to be your mother, I actually have one of those dreaded vagi, and oh, by the way, I'm outlifting both of you. Like, OMG, STFU already.

On Sunday, the crime wasn't the push so much as the perceived affront against nature, manhood, Jesus, Thor, and all of existence represented by a guy trading in his dick for a vagina and becoming a woman. Today it was a guy demonstrating physical weakness and thus, for all practical purposes, simulating a woman, which meant, of course, being reduced to the only really relevant part of a woman in his buddy's mind, which--despite being a very desirable part said buddy undoubtedly likes having wrapped around his dick--is something to be despised, something shameful to be equated with.

In neither case did the poorly behaving guy exhibit any shred of awareness that what he said was much different from lovely weather we're having today. The guys in the gym went on at full volume, despite half the people in there being female. The guy on the team thought it was funny until his teammates let him know in no uncertain terms that it wasn't.

It's hard work being a dour, humorless feminist. And it's only Tuesday.

Ugh

It is hot hot hot humid humid humid and I am a perpetual pool of perspiration. Christ. Everything is damp. I lean forward onto the table and come away with napkins and whole sections of the newspaper stuck to my forearms.

I loathe this time of year. Absofuckinglutely hate it. The thunderstorms are lovely, when they fire up over midtown instead of just taunting us from the east side, the south side, the northwest, but they don't come every day. Just the clouds and the oppressive thick air, clothes that won't dry, a swamp cooler that snorts with laughter and says yeah right, talk to me again in October.

Floor fans. Cold lime seltzer water from Trader Joe's. Immobility. These are the top priorities today.

Memento Mori, in Stone

And so the threatened photodump from my summer vacation begins.

Maybe ten years ago I happened on Scott Sanders' In Limestone Country in the "midwest" section of Bookman's. Hmmm, nifty. Over the years the book metamorphosed from an interesting read to a pilgrimage guidebook on my trips back to southern Indiana, which happens to be underlain by the finest building stone the planet has to offer. Indiana limestone built the Empire State Building, the National Cathedral, and several statehouses across the country. The book talks about the history of quarrying in two counties southwest of Indianapolis, but, best of all, also describes quirky places and monuments you might miss if you weren't looking for them.

So I've been looking for them.

Past trips have taken me to the Empire Hole between Oolitic and Needmore, where, if you took the Empire State Building apart and laid it back in, block by block, you could fill the hole back up to ground level. The edges of the great hole are lined with trees, and the walls stairstep starkly down to the green water that's filled most of the yawning opening in the intervening decades since the rock was cut out. All the old quarries have similarly been converted by time and rainfall to overgrown swimming pools, deserted except for the birds and weeds, and everywhere, everywhere, stacks of extra or rejected stone piled up like so many giant babies' building blocks.

Generations of men spent their lives in the quarries working the stone. When they died they were buried in shallow graves right on top of it, with a limestone monument placed above them, sandwiched for the rest of forever between layers of gray stone. The past trips also led me through tiny Oolitic, with its limestone statue of Joe Palooka downtown, to Bedford, the seat of Lawrence County and the absolute center of the Indiana quarrying industry now. Specifically, I went to the cemetery in the middle of town to see its amazing hand-carved gravestones from the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the cutters were honored with monuments of limestone rather than the modern granite, obelisks and tablets but also lifelike tree trunks covered with carved vines and ferns so detailed as to be identifiable to species. Doves perched on bouquets of stone flowers. A full-sized golfer standing with his bag of clubs. A carver's workbench covered with tools, all preserved in stone by the man's grieving workmates, a stone snapshot of his bench on the day he died.

Those were past trips. This time around I was with a bigger group that had been promised a geode hunt, but the flooded creeks and my inability to remember exactly where we found the good ones a long time ago made that a bust. We still made it to a Limestone Country landmark I hadn't found before, Hopkins Cemetery, a tiny burying ground perched on a peninsula of unstripped land surrounded on three sides by steep quarry walls, south of Needmore, where old Indiana 37 has been chopped in half by a quarry, directly north of the Empire Hole. Graves at the northern edge have begun tumbling over the side.

It's still an active cemetery, but it's old. We walked around quietly looking at the stones. It didn't take long to notice that a lot of families lost a lot of kids at very young ages, or that even this small community had stark disparities in wealth. (if you'd like to see details, all images can be embiggened with a click)






















A finely worked scroll and a verse for Joseph Massey.


















A lamb for Zella.























A bouquet and an unconscious dove for Hershel.























An obelisk for a newborn.

But this one is the one that got me, a simple uneven tablet that was carved with an unpracticed but loving hand, for Kenneth Dale Moffatt, dead at nine. Click to enlarge the photo and you can make out, in the upper right, "Asleep in Jesus," with the J carved backwards, the dates of the boy's too-short life awkwardly squeezed at the bottom under his name, and in the top left corner, in what my stupid sentimental mother's heart sees as a gesture of love and hope, and perhaps a memory of happier times, a sun rendered like a child's drawing.

A stone for Kenneth Moffatt.

It wasn't sadness that quieted our steps as we wended through the gravestones raised by the families of the rich and the poor so long ago so much as the contemplation you can't escape when you come to a place like this. Must've been a hell of a life, my brother said softly as he examined the row of stones set by a family that had lost five children before the age of two. So many kids, so many women dying young, so many men who barely made it past fifty before silicosis or blocks unexpectedly breaking free of their lines caught up with them. But they kept on. And they poured their regard for each other into the stone they carved to set up in memory.

Many of the inscriptions have been rendered unreadable now by decades of rain and wind; limestone's softness makes it excellent for carving but not so great when it comes to permanent memorials. But it's that failing that makes it the best medium, I suppose, for carving out initials to mark peoples' brief stay here, the eyeblink of their lives above the stone. The grass gets mowed and the weeds get pulled and flowers get left even as the names fade from the faces of the monuments, toppled obelisks are carefully propped back up, and the graves sliding out of the north end of the cemetery are, I hope, occasionally grabbed back from the precipice.

Brrrrrrrrrrr

I have never been on a bad acid trip--well, or on any acid trip at all, regardless of quality--but I think this might make up for that. Mommy.

Physician Recommendation

My doc is pretty cool. In the market for a new GP? Give her a call. Aside from being chronically susceptible to schedule creep--get the first appointment in the morning if a quick in and out is important to you--she is on top of her game, is open to discussion, has a no-bullshit attitude, and has a wickedly sarcastic sense of humor. We get along great. She also wrote an op-ed for the Daily Star this morning.

On June 17, I got married in California. Somehow, this was deemed newsworthy. We had two paragraphs in The New York Times, were the lead story on KOLD-TV at 5 and 6 o'clock, and had a multimedia slide show in the Palm Springs Desert Sun, to name only a few of our contacts with the media.

The reason we garnered so much attention was that I married a woman.

I could have married a man I met on the street and if I died the next day, he would get my Social Security benefits. Yet my partner of 18 years, who has stayed home for the last 10 years to raise our sons, would get nothing.

There is something inherently wrong about that.

Attagirl, Melissa.

When In Doubt and Not in the Mood to Photoblog, Talk about Wambach

"Talk" here means, of course, "fling up a link to a real journalist and call it a day." The inimitable Andrea Canales discusses Wombat's conference call today talking about her surgery and outlook on rehab and the team's prospects in the Olympics without her. I am grudgingly, slowly, grindingly swinging toward maybe dialing my opinion of her back up a couple notches with every instance of remarkable chin-upness she's displayed since the second after the nasty double-bone break last Wednesday.

Abby is asked why she didn't scream in pain upon the break. She says she hasn't seen the hit. She says she thinks her experience and competitiveness helped. She didn't want to negatively affect the team by making a scene. She wanted to set an example for her teammates...

She plans to watch the games with other injured players. She intends to grow from this experience. "There's not question in my mind whether or not I'm going to make a comeback - it's just a matter of time. I want to come back and be great again." Abby says she's ready for the hard work that will involve. She's aware of her responsibility as a role model in dealing with challenges and wants to be inspired by that. She wants to show kids how to react when things get tough. She vows to come back...

When she's asked to name three players who people should look out for, Abby says she can name 18.

Not bad, not bad at all.

After watching the replay of the game last night, I am increasingly impressed with Amy Rodriguez' speed and work rate. She is desire for the ball embodied and whizzing around the field on a blur of legs. Lauren Cheney has been brought up as Wambach's replacement on the front line; watching the two of them together is going to be very interesting. And hopefully will create unanticipated problems for the opposition.

Updated: the link to the audio of the conference call is up at US Soccer.

Wombat Health Update

I was going to lead off with something about still being wary when it comes to re-pledging my allegiance to Wambach, or the entire WNT, for that matter, after the Incident at the World Cup, but you know, meh. It's been hashed and rehashed to death (if you want one more go 'round, it's here; find the money quote explaining why my Wambach-related drool has stayed dried up and win a prize).

Anyway. Wombat's surgery was successful, and she now has a shiny new titanium rod to keep her tibia company on cold nights; no word as yet on whether Megan Rapinoe continues to be a component of those cuddle plans. However, the initial 12-week estimate for a comeback was probably premature and not realistic.

“She’s sustained a very significant injury to her bone,” said Dr. Valletta. “It can sometimes take a year to return a professional player to her previous level of activity, but the expectation is that we will have an aggressive rehab program and progress her weight-bearing rapidly to minimize her time lost for competition.”

Speaking from the pretty much completely unrelated experience of a bone bruise, that aggressive rehab will not be pleasant. She's proven the ability to gut it out through a broken toe and a split-open, stapled-back-together head, and she's seen teammates come back from equally bad injuries ahead of schedule without losing much of a step, if any, so I believe she'll get there. What the team she returns to will look like is the bigger question at this point.

People Are Starting to Notice

If I must share my massive crush with the rest of America, so be it. Le sigh.

Well, That Explains Why It Takes Me So Long to Get to Flagstaff

I've just been doing it wrong all these years! Cindy "Regular Folks" McCain sets me straight (click 'n' zip forward to the 1:30 mark).

If you don't have the patience for non-embedded video, this is her key point:

...in Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane.

Delivered without a whiff of self-consciousness, maybe because she specified "small" instead of "737." But Obama is the elitist in this election, and don't you forget it.

Oh, Sad. Sad!

Mmmm. Mmm, mmm, mmmm. The WNT finished up with a 1-0 victory over Brazil last night in a friendly that rapidly devolved into anything but. I didn't see any of the Peace Queen matches, obviously, and didn't follow it closely enough to know if Brazil carried their hack-a-minute defensive style straight through from the World Cup to Korea to San Diego, but if they did take a break in the last tournament, they were back last night with a vengeance.

Brazil play dirty. Period. And they don't need to. Jesus, they absolutely don't need to, at least not when their holy trinity of Daniela, Cristiane, and Marta--otherwise known on the BigSoccer boards as Fast, Faster, and Fastest--are playing. Which they were not, in this series of stateside friendlies, and the US still barely escaped each time. The only consolation from last night, the only thing that kept the Wambach injury in the ah shite category rather than prompting me to whisper in Dick Cheney's ear that Brazil harbors prime al Qaeda training camps, is that it came on a clean play. It's a microscopic consolation at best.

What's this mean for the Olympics, with the Wombat watching from the sideline on crutches with a titanium rod in her shin? Amy Rodriguez brings one-on-one creativity and fearlessness on 21-year-old legs. Lindsay Tarpley and Heather O'Reilly have shown great flashes of combining well when they're on the field together. Carli Lloyd has power, turns well on the ball, and isn't afraid to shoot from distance, but sometimes has trouble keeping the ball on frame. Tash Kai is a huge ball of random puppy energy. Just ask the Brazilian player she barreled into when she came on the field in the second half. Her entry into the game turned the fire back on in the US attack, and she did get the deciding goal, but can she magically find the focus knob and learn which direction to turn it in the next three weeks before the Olympics start?

Final notes. Things I was wrong about: Mitts can play after all. She was very strong last night, and obviously worked her ass off to come back from her ACL tear suffered just before the World Cup. Angela Hucles' continued presence on the roster is no longer a mystery to me. Solid. And a thing I wasn't wrong about: completely aside from Wambach's behavior during the Great Hope Solo Fiasco, completely aside from how she may or may not comport herself with teammates, damn. The woman is made of rock, iron, and any number of other extremely tough things. After snapping both bones in her lower leg (watch the replay for the rebound after her left leg hits the ground and then undulates up in a way it's really not supposed to), she calmly waved for assistance and smiled a little rather than doing anything I would have done in that situation, which probably would have involved scream, puke, pass out, repeat.

Career-ender? I hope not. Her eyes as she rode the gurney off the field will haunt me for weeks.

Two ways to look at it. The door's open now for the young talent to show what they can do up top. Or there's now a huge hole up top left by the absence of one of the most prolific active goal-scorers in the game, who incidentally in the last year had added a decent amount of speed, foot skill, field vision, and distribution to her formerly head-based arsenal. Three weeks, Pia. Get to it.

Oh Dear

Uh, spoiler warning, sorta, if you're into the WNT and aren't either watching the game on Fox Soccer or following it online.

They were looking decent against Brazil, playing more of a control game with some tantalizing 20-yard through balls onto perfectly timed runs by the forwards, creating some chances.

Then Abby Wambach snapped her left leg.

Brazil have been fouling through the entire first thirty minutes, hitting Wambach in particular, but this was a 50-50 ball, no foul. Just a full-speed followthrough by the Wombat's left shin into the Brazilian defender's full-speed onrushing right knee. Still no score at the end of the first half, but my god. The decent crowd at Torero Stadium in San Diego is stunned and subdued. The team is soldiering on, almost scoring in near the end of stoppage time, but Christ.

Maybe it's not as bad as it looked. Wombat kept a brave face while being loaded into the ambulance, but her eyes told the story. Maybe it's not as bad as it looked. Maybe.

The Inevitable Next Step Comes a-Trip-Trappin' Down the Hall

Don't worry about that little Conscience Clause thing, they told us. It only protects the delicate sensibilities of fundamentalist pharmacists who don't want to hand you certain kinds of perfectly legal and prescribed medications. After all, you're an American, right? You like freedom of religion, right? So don't think of your inability to get contraception when you ask for it as the elevation of one person's religious beliefs over your own, or your lack thereof. Just reframe it as a constitutional celebration and you'll be fine! Would you like some pre-natal vitamins instead? I would be happy to give you those. What? You still want those birth control pills? Well, then maybe you should have thought about going to pharmacy school and opening your own abortifacient candy shop before you had sex, you stupid slut. Now step aside. The guy behind you needs his Viagra and has been waiting four full minutes while you've been here whinging.

Predictably, now the conscience meme has spread beyond the initially promised narrow spectrum of pharmacists, nurses, and doctors to the entire range of healthcare funded by the federal government. The Department of Health and Human Services, perhaps bolstered by the growing tendency of state education departments to decide "science" means "whatever we damn well say it is," has taken the mind-bending step of basing crucial biological definitions on public opinion polls. Zogby polls. Which typically have an error in the +/- four million percent range.

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services. The "Definitions" section of the HHS proposal states,

Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term "abortion."

Something like 40% of Americans also believe in the Genesis creation story and eschew evolution, so I expect HHS to make the administration of medications based on evolutionary biology optional as well. Enjoy your camphor oil, people, and be sure to close up your windows tight so you don't get the night vapors!

Jesus. Why does this matter? It matters because of this:

Up until now, the federal government followed the definition of pregnancy accepted by the American Medical Association and our nation's pregnancy experts, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is: pregnancy begins at implantation. With this proposal, however, HHS is dismissing medical experts and opting instead to accept a definition of pregnancy based on polling data. It now claims that pregnancy begins at some biologically unknowable moment (there's no test to determine if a woman's egg has been fertilized). Under these new standards there would be no way for a woman to prove she's not pregnant. Thus, any woman could be denied contraception under HHS' new science.

Any woman could be denied contraception by HHS. If your employer-provided health plan continues clinging to a slender thread, you'll be okay, provided, of course, you have access to a pharmacy whose employees are required to do their jobs rather than proselytize. If you rely on federally funded clinics--in other words, if you tend disproportionately to be low-income and/or a woman of color--you're screwed. Twice.

All together, please. Science is indeed a consensus, but it's not a democracy. Public opinion is lovely but has exactly no relevance to the definitions portion of the program. Against abortion? Don't have one. Really super duper against it? Don't go into healthcare.

Thanks to Top!Secret G-woman for the tip, and for starting my day on a very stabby note.

Mmmmmmaddow.

Still catching up on several years of journal reprints and data tables I'm sure are important for something, because otherwise I never would have stacked them in teetering piles all over my office. And whilst doing the re-stacking today I am also catching up on a week's worth of Rachel Maddow guest hosting Countdown, so in lieu of anything resembling a thoughtful post, I give you Maddow's presentation of John McCain on reproductive freedom:

Back to the Grind

The falls, McCormick's Creek, southern Indiana.

This is where I was. And it's where my mind still is, mostly, when it's not off wandering North Side neighborhoods in Chicago looking for the next bakery with promising cupcakes. I came home to a Tucson that is much greener and damper than when I left, although the big monsoons have yet to fire up overhead since I've been back. Half the flowers in the yard are dead, a bumper crop of weeds is springing up, and green fuzzy stuff that is probably mold but that I'll hopefully call short moss has taken over one of the rock terraces in the back.

My office failed to spontaneously combust during my absence, so today I have to make good on a vague promise to myself that the piles of paper will be plowed under at least once a year.

Politics rage on. Bush is lifting the offshore drilling moratorium, causing Bomb Bomb McCain to clap his hands with glee. The New Yorker has put out a deeply satirical cover this week portraying the Obamas as angry black Muslim terrorists, forgetting that most of the country doesn't (a) recognize satire or (b) know that the proper response is not fuck yeah that's what Rush has been saying for months! And the people who led the fight against Arizona's most recent anti-gay-marriage amendment are admitting that they were only in it for the straight couples who might have been adversely affected, and so aren't really interested this time now that gays are the explicit, exclusive target. Awesome. Thanks for the welcome home, guys!

Will Somebody Just Hurry Up and Hand this Guy a Puppy or Something, Please?

Another day, another Obama moment that stops me in my tracks.

My only point is this--historically I have been a strong believer in a woman's right to choose with her doctor, her pastor, and her family.

This was part of his clarification of statements about abortion made in an earlier interview. Statements indicating that he thinks mental illness doesn't count as debilitating enough to terminate a pregnancy, that "partial-birth abortion" is valid terminology to continue slinging around, that women pop off to the abortionist on a whim because they periodically feel a little down.

Now, I don't think that "mental distress" qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term...

The new explanation:

It can be defined by serious clinical mental-health diseases. It is not just a matter of feeling blue.

Okay, look. Even if the greater context of the statement was to take on the usual anti-choice meme that women in their 36th week get an abortion to counteract that nasty case of the Mondays, especially if they break a nail or something, he's not doing us any favors by phrasing it this way. I completely agree that feeling blue is not a valid reason for a late-term abortion. Good for you. Now maybe you can point out that feeling blue is really very probably and most likely never a proximate cause of late-term D&Xs anyway, and that suggesting it is in the first place completely trivializes an agonizing decision process and ascribes to women the agency of a five-year-old.

And the fact that you even made the statement that the only health exception you'd consider for a woman who, by the way, is not now and never will be you, would have to be physical? Not that I don't appreciate the clueless clarification, but that crap never should have fallen out of your mouth in the first place. Who are you preaching to? It sure as hell ain't the pro-choice choir. Oh, and you think I should be able to make the choice with my pastor? How wonderful. Because my pastor's always been a key player in my healthcare decisions. Especially since I don't have one. Quit sucking up to the goddamn religious conservatives who aren't going to vote for you anyway and remember the rational, intelligent bloc whose votes won you the nomination.

I'm still voting for you in the fall, but I'm less enthused about it by the day. If you come back from Iraq sounding more like McCain than McCain already does, we are going to have some serious issues.

Far more eloquent postings from Jeff Fecke here and Bitch PhD here.

4th of July Frippery

Because you can just never have enough Peeps. I'm off to the big city, although the Adler isn't on my list for the day. In the immortal words of the late Mayor Washington: Chicago, 150 years old! America, older'n that! Happy 4th. 

Ridiculously Predictable? Or Predictably Ridiculous? We Cannot Decide.

Not content to let the states be the only players in the tired yet true no-gay-marriage-amendment game, Senate Republicans this week trotted out the federal marriage amendment again.

`Section 1. This article may be cited as the `Marriage Protection Amendment'.

`Section 2. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.'

Yes, that one. That's not the ah shite moment, though, not yet. That moment comes when you read the list of co-sponsors. Who's lurking there alongside usual suspects Sam Brownback and James Inhofe? Is it possibly David "Whore Diapers" Vitter and Larry "Tappity Tap" Craig? Why, yes. Yes, it is.

I can sincerely think of no two better pure and holy warriors for the cause of marital sanctity than those two. I mean, at least Vitter chose a hooker who not only looked like his wife but had the same first name too! If that doesn't scream devotion I don't know what does.

Keep it classy, GOP!

Really, Barack? Really?

Obama's suddenly on the faith-based initiative bandwagon. Because it worked so well under Bush.

Courting evangelicals and other religious voters, Barack Obama today called for an expansion of President Bush's initiative distributing federal aid to church-based groups that provide community services.

"The challenges we face today - from saving our planet to ending poverty - are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need an all hands on deck approach," Obama said a few moments ago at a press conference outside a community ministry in Zanesville, Ohio.

Obama promised the faith-based initiative would be "central" to his administration if he is elected.

Oh, awesome. Just awesome.

Seriously, what the hell is this? How does Obama propose to conduct the oversight that will be necessary to insure that no proselytizing goes along with whatever government-funded service the individual faith-based programs are providing? And does he do it with a straight face?

Barack. Change-meister. Buddy. You can do better than this. I get it, really, I do--you're trying everything you can to pick up the Christians who are disillusioned with the Republican party--but can't you come up with a different, a better, a, a... a more Constitutional, perhaps, way of doing it?

Surfacing for Breath

After a mind-boggling ten days without Intarwebz access, I am safely ensconced in my uncle's house in far west suburban Chicago. The last week was spent in the haven of McCormick's Creek State Park in southwestern Indiana, a place my family has been retreating to in one form or another for the better part of eighty years.

I have pictures out the ass, but my laptop isn't cooperating at the moment, so I'm borrowing my aunt's computer.

Anyway.

Following the road from the park gatehouse as it curves past the tennis courts and runs through the woods, you don't notice at first that the cabins are perched somewhat precariously on a thin thumb of level ground surrounded on three sides by massive sinkholes. The sinkholes are a quirky byproduct of the limestone foundation underlying much of Owen, Monroe, and Lawrence counties south of Indianapolis. As water courses between the underground layers of stone, caves are hollowed out. When the ceilings collapse, voila. Sinkholes the size of Assembly Hall.

The trail to the creek starts at the rear circle of cabins and follows a narrow ridge as it slopes steeply down, a merely large sinkhole on the right, a huge one on the left. They don't photograph well. Beech, tulip, and maple trees march resolutely down the sides of the holes, the giants growing up from the bottoms matching the crowns of their higher cousins despite being rooted some fifty feet lower. One hundred, one hundred and fifty feet they tower, the canopy blocking all but a few thin beams of sun. Maple branches break the middle layer into horizontal planes; young hickories and muscle elms elbow each other for the dregs of the sunlight nearest the forest floor.

On the floor itself, a profusion of plants covers the humus formed by fallen leaves. A grove of mayapples here, a riot of wild ginger there, nightshade and dotting everywhere. Occasionally a low moss- and fern-covered hummock of earth stands sentinel over a bleak oval depression, an open grave the sole monument to the giant tree whose falling and uprooting dug it. Eager saplings crowd the sun-soaked forest gap; only the fastest growing will eventually supplant the giant trees to either side.

Closer to the creek, the forest changes, a profusion of ferns and a parade of sycamores signalling greater proximity to the water table. Where the creekbend has washed away the soil beneath the sycamores, limestone cobbles are suspended in air by interwoven roots. Where the trees are long gone, the roots remain, a cephalopod of wood squirming in the mud, clinging to the rocks in futility. Dragonflies flit from weed to weed, water striders skim the surface of still pools, crawdads skulk beneath the rocks, and tiny bass and sunfish flee from your shadow.

The massive floods of early June have scoured the creekbed clean, leaving clear water mostly free of sediment, running cold and gurgling over the newly-dumped cobble bars. In the lower reaches of the creek you can stand on the bank eight feet above the water and look up to see muddy leaves and tree trunks above your eye level, a stark testimony to the volume of water that moved through here. The two-foot-diameter tree trunks piled like Lincoln logs speak to its violence.

On this day, though, the current burbles cheerfully along to the soundtrack provided by wood thrushes and the wood peewee. Notoriously difficult to spot, they are rendered even more invisible by a canopy that is twenty feet higher than the last time you were here. No matter. Simply hearing them is enough.

That's McCormick's Creek. For six blessed days, my heart was home.

Off to the Floody Midwest Edition

The annual escape from Tucson in June commences tomorrow; we hop the train in Flagstaff and head east and hope the railroad bridges in southwestern Iowa are still intact. The family is converging on a small state park in southern Indiana that has been our hearts' home for the past eighty years or so. Unfortunately, it's also located smack dab in the middle of the worst flooding Indiana has seen, ever. The park itself is up on a hill above the White River, but we buy our beer in the little town of Spencer, which is at the bottom of the hill and now under the White River. Hundreds of people have been evacuated so far. The river was expected to crest last night and recede through this week, but more storms are rolling in on Friday, right before we turn up.

McCormick's Creek usually looks like this:

A mellow little waterfall.

This is what it looked like last week:


Less so.

Anyway. Should we come through the floodwaters unscathed, I have an additional week and a half in the Chicago area, most of which is likely to be spent playing cards and drinking wine on my aunt and uncle's back porch. Intermittent nature, culture, and drunken birdwatching posting from Chicago is possible in a couple of weeks, but given the current sorry state of our laptop's modem, it may be a check-back-in-July kind of deal.

Headline of the Day

From the Chicago Tribune: Operation lets Muslim women reclaim virginity and lives.

To the Chicago Tribune (for that headline), the idiot men who view a rupturable hymen as a use-by date that supersedes every other attribute their brides have, and the doctors who perform the surgeries: fuck you.

Gynecologists report that in the past few years, more Muslim women are asking for certificates of virginity to provide proof to others. That in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; medical tourism packages are available to countries like Tunisia where it is less expensive.

Let's clarify a few very simple things. First, the presence or absence of a hymen is roughly as relevant to virginal status as the presence or absence of a hat is relevant to status as a Steelers fan. If you spend much time on a bike, or a horse, or a seesaw when you're little, chances are good your hymen is going to unzip itself without the help of a penis. Men who believe that blood on the sheets is the only guarantee they've married a virgin are ignorant; men who decide to punish their wives for not screaming and bleeding on initial wedding-night penetration are ignorant assholes.

Second, shelling out thousands of dollars to get a flap of skin sliced from your vaginal wall and sewn to the other side solely in order to enable your new husband to rip the surgical scar open and then thrust against the torn tissues repeatedly isn't reclaiming your virginity. It's just elective mutilation undergone to assure that your ignorant asshole of a husband will get enough of an ego boost from his bloody dick that he won't divorce you on your wedding night, beat you, or give you back to your father so he can beat you.

The furor followed the revelation two weeks ago that a court in Lille, in northern France, had annulled the 2006 marriage of two French Muslims because the groom discovered his bride was not the virgin she had claimed to be.

Some feminists, lawyers and doctors warned that the court's acceptance of the centrality of virginity in marriage would encourage more Frenchwomen from Arab and African Muslim backgrounds to have their hymens restored. But there is much debate about whether the procedure is an act of liberation or repression.

Wow, let me think about that for all of two seconds. Liberation or oppression, liberation or oppression... surgical mutilation designed to enable coital mutilation, the reduction of women's lives not to only to their sexual status, but to a small flap of tissue that may be absent even if the sacred virginal status is present, the complete focus on the woman's virginity and complete indifference to the man's, ownership of a woman's sexuality by her father... liberation or oppression? Do they seriously even need to ask?

I'm not even going to waste my time on the American women who apparently think this is the best Valentine's present ever for their husbands, independent of any medieval religious and cultural mores that threaten to destroy them if they don't comply. Because nothing says I love you like giving your guy the chance to rip you open all over again.

Vote McCain. Because He Understands Foreign Relations Like Nobody's Business.

It's so refreshing to learn that it isn't just Iran and al Qaeda that John McCain has ass-backwards.



So apparently the next time George Bush is in the mood for some German neck rubs, he'll be doing it with a guy whose eyes he's already looked into to see his soul. This is going to be AWESOME.

Summer Sporadicity

The combination of ungodly Tucson summer heat (it's been a cool spring by Sonoran standards, but once it gets about 85 I am effectively done until fall), gasoline price angst, and hopefully baseless terror over what my prospects would be should the contract archaeology market go belly-up are conspiring to severely limit my ability to churn out regular posts that are worth reading.

Do stop by regularly anyway; I'm sure I'll get over it in a couple of weeks.

John McCain is a huge douche. I'm just sayin'.

Well, This is Distressing

Not that I'm overly familiar with Bolthouse Farms, but the name is awesome enough. But no. They ponied up 100K for California's anti-marriage-equality amendment, so please eschew their products in favor of the far less awesomely named but more progressive Naked or Odwalla. Even though Odwalla kinda sucks, to be honest.

Other regrettably delicious foods to be avoided include Focus on the Family donors Chik-Fil-A and, if you're in the Chicago area, Oberweis Dairy. Both of these break my heart. Damn these fundamentalists and their delicious chicken and waffle fries! And their amazing chocolate milk sold in funky sub-rectangular glass bottles that clank together before pouring out sublime creamy chocolately goodness!

Who else has waffle fries? Do we know? Buffalo Joe's in Evanston has killer waffle fries, but that's a bit of a drive from Tucson. Mmmm... waffle fries.

After These Lovely Fermented Possum Brain Hors d'Oeuvres, the Main Course is Sure to be Lovely

So it's Obama, apparently and finally, please-Jesus-hopefully bringing the Democratic nominating process to a close, letting us snort awake from a restless series of disturbing images just long enough to roll over and fall into the nice deep nightmare of the next five months. The primaries were soaked in a distressing amount of sexism and racism, exposing America yet again as a place where racism is not Tony Snow's distant memory but an active enough force for one in five Kentucky voters to tell pollsters that they're voting against Obama solely because he's black, a place where young women claim they're not feminists because feminism is no longer either required or useful while another woman stands up in public to ask John McCain how he's going to "beat the bitch" and the only response is raucous laughter.

Now we get to see a bunch of collective head explosions as Clinton supporters who swore they'd either vote for McCain or stay home should Obama get the nomination begin to weigh the relative merits of clinging to principle and choosing political expediency. I understand the frustration at feeling undercut, of having been undercut by the patriarchy one more damn time, but at the same time I would hope that the specter of a John McCain presidency would be enough to outweigh any compulsion to cast a fuck-you vote for the opposition. Just as I would expect Obama supporters to vote for Clinton were the situation reversed. Hey, I was an Edwards girl, so I'm equally disillusioned by certain things that have emanated from both the Obama and Clinton camps, was equally optimistic about others, and have always been firmly committed to keeping McCain out of the White House. There may be a time to take your ball and go home, but this ain't it.

Here we go, then, with the general election. You think the primaries were ugly? The Repubs have been biding their time, sharpening two sets of knives. The dick-handled sexism knives are going back into the box under the bed, for now; you can be certain the hood-handled racism knives are getting an extra kiss from the stone, the dog whistles getting a final tuning. How far have we come as a nation since July 9, 1868? We get to find out this summer. I'm not optimistic.

Product Review Monday

The former part-time housemate bought a Wii over the weekend and decided it should be our current and perpetual housemate. I thought I might be okay with that until I woke up this morning with a sore shoulder from two consecutive nights of 5+ hour Wii sessions. Forthwith, the verdicts on the Wii Sports pack that was bundled with the console:

Bowling: I am just as crappy at Wii bowling as in real life. It's a frighteningly accurate virtual recreation of my annoying hook that is juuuuuuust predictable enough to rely on for a decent first ball and juuuuuust inconsistent enough to bollocks up 4-9-10 splits every time. Major plus: no grimy hands and questionable rental shoe sanitizing. Major minus: no bowling alley fries and draft beer.

Baseball: Pitching is fun, since my real-life curveball doesn't break nearly as hard and my fastball tops out at about 50. Timing the batting is a bit tricky, but you're helped by realistic ball rotation that allows you to pick up on whether it's going to break outside or have the bottom drop out. Major plus: satisfying crack when you make good contact, no sunburn. Major minus: elementary schoolyard kickball baserunning where no one tags up or takes a lead, inexplicable fielding lapses.

Golf: As long as you don't overswing, you're not going to slice the shit out of your drive or skull your approach over the green, making this game the grand champion best escape into fantasyland offered by Wii Sports. Putting is every bit as dodgy as in real life, but since you're making it on in two, who cares? The nine hole course will probably become overly familiar after a few weeks, but changing wind conditions keep it interesting, and the wicked four-island par five is a heartstopper no matter how many times you play. Sure, you can just hit the shit out of it and bypass one of the fairways and just drive the green. It will work this time, honest. Major plus: ease of lining up shots and guaranteed good form means you don't even miss the absent curse like a sailor and wrap wedge around nearest tree functions. Major minus: can't think of one right now. No carts, maybe.

Tennis: Again, a frighteningly accurate recreation of my crappy real world tennis game, despite lessons as a kid and my parents' best efforts, although the game doesn't allow me to sky the ball over the back fence but instead funnels all that failure into simply missing the ball with great frequency and looking bad while doing it. Do be sure to move all the furniture up against the walls and leave yourselves plenty of space, especially when playing doubles. Major plus: working up a sweat while standing in the living room, killer slo-mo replays showing exactly how high you jumped and how many times you flailed your racquet before face-planting back into the court, puffs of dust. Major minus: the tendency to stand to close to your playing partners and maybe inadvertently whack them in the back of the head.

Boxing: Oh Christ. Does a major fucking gasping for air workout tickle your fancy? Then try boxing. Just make sure you're well-hydrated beforehand. I suppose it could be a handy election catharsis tool as well, especially if you just play against the other controller without an actual person holding it. Major plus: no actual blood or concussions. Major minus: you feel run over by a truck anyway.

So yeah, Wii. The games are wicked expensive, so if you're not a traditional console gamer or haven't been since the days of the Atari 2600, don't let Wii Sports fool you into thinking that fifty-dollar FIFA 2008 game will be a piece of cake.