Thursday, January 11, 2007

Things I Should Be Writing About

There's a lot of things I should be writing about, but will more likely just link to. I should be writing more often to make my anonymous commenter happy, so I guess I'll start with that one:

* My whereabouts these days.
I am BUSY. I did a lot in NJ and NYC while I was on break, came back to MA for a few days of NYE entertainment, a wicked cold and end-of-year cleaning, and am now back at work. I got out of a trip next week to Buffalo, but I'll be in DC for two days the week of the 22nd, and then on the 30th, I leave for TWO WEEKS in California. There's a lot of moving parts, and I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed by this monster work conference. It's my first year doing this Conference so there's also that whole I don't have any idea what I'm doing thing. I remember the first year I did SUPERComm at my old job -- same feeling, same stress, lots of tears in the bathroom pretending not to be a big pussy. But every year after that, it got better because it was known stress as opposed to I'm-going-to-get-out-of-this-with-job-and-sanity-in-check? stress.
So I'll either be gone from blogging for a long while, or I'll be posting all the time because nights during business travel can be a bit boring. We'll see, anonymous commenter.

* Nancy Pelosi. One of The Nation's blogs does a better job of articulating the conflicting feelings I had about her wife/mother/grandmother photo op on her first day. I loved it, I didn't like it -- I dunno! In my reading, though, I did stumble across a blog that questioned Pelosi's feminist credibility because of the way she looked, and it just made my blood boil. Because feminism is all about making sure we all look the same. Look, bitches, I wear lipstick! Get over it!

* This book I'm reading. I absolutely love it. If you had told me a while ago that I'd be all gung ho for a book written by an Evangelical preacher, I would have assumed you were insane. If you Google Jim Wallis, you'll finds all sorts of shit-stirring stuff about him by right-wing nuts that is fun to read. I've had this book on my bookshelf for two years. I gave this book to people as Christmas gifts last year. But I never read it. I picked it up right around the time that YG and I started going to this great new church, and it's just helped me get my shit together in that compartment of my brain marked "spiritual."

* Bush, Bush, Bush, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. I was going to just link to this story on Slate because I think it offers an excellent critique of the "new strategy" on Iraq and I basically agree with everything Fred Kaplan is saying. Link, and then call it a night. But....arghh. I'm thinking about this A LOT. And here's some of my thoughts:
-- I really did TRY to listen to his argument. Put aside my usual disgust with Bush, and listen, because this is important.
-- I agree that failure will send the region into total chaos, about the only thing I agree with the President on.
-- I believe that we have no good options in Iraq. ZERO. We have to figure out how to choose the least bad option.
-- He's seriously lost his grip on reality. He's lost the support of the people. He lost the support of his commanders on the ground so....he replaced them, with people that agree with him. Wha???
-- We can't rehash the past, and I believe that we need to find some political solutions without pointing fingers. That's logical. But I'm not logical all the time. There's a part of me (especially when I hear the president attempting to apologize for mistakes he's made) that still would love an apology for sending us into Iraq in the first place. Apologize for that mistake. You never found the WMDs and we're not safer now -- most people think we're less safe. So what was this all for?
-- People are dying. SO MANY PEOPLE are dying. THOUSANDS of people have died. 3000 soldiers, so many more Iraqis. For what?
-- What is that least bad option?
-- What can I do? How do I stop feeling so helpless about this?
I'm torn.

And now I've kind of forgotten the other mundane stuff I wanted to write about, or it seems rather silly to talk about how important my budget is right after talking about thousands of people dying, so I'll call it a night.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Where in California are you off to? Maybe I can meet you or you can come see our house.

m