Not to be missed - The Nation's food issue:
Many heavy hitters in progressive food are represented. Great stuff.
What an awesome, inspiring kid. I wonder about my ability to be this responsible and selfless at 28, let alone 19. It is wonderful to hear that he has so much support in this from his teammates and coaches, too. I really hope the NCAA does the right thing and excepts him from the ordinary financial restrictions.
Clemson's McElrathbey raises younger brother
CNN
McElrathbey, 19, has temporary custody of his brother because of his mother's continuing drug problems and his father's gambling addiction. The two brothers have shared experiences in foster homes and now share an apartment by the campus.
They live solely off McElrathbey's scholarship while Clemson's athletic department tries to get a waiver from the NCAA that might let them accept donations without jeopardizing McElrathbey's football eligibility.
McElrathbey sought custody because he was tired of worrying what might happen to Fahmarr living with their mother in Atlanta, Georgia.
"I wasn't going to let him go back to a foster home, back to the system," McElrathbey says.
The transition from football player to caregiver is one McElrathbey has cherished since Fahmarr's arrival in June.
"As a brother, it was still me first. As a parent, it's him first," McElrathbey says. "Before I do anything for me, got to do stuff for him."
The elder McElrathbey sounds like a father discussing the struggles of managing a sixth-grader. It often takes two or three shouts before Fahmarr rises and puts on his clothes. McElrathbey signs off on his brother's homework, meets with guidance counselors and tries to keep more fruit around the house.
It's about time, Senator Roberts.
Senate Panel Releases Iraq Intel Report
A Senate intelligence committee report says there's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his al-Qaida associates before the Iraq war.
A report by the Senate panel analyzing intelligence-gathering activities leading up to the invasion of Iraq released today is certain to rekindle an election-year debate on the justification of going to war.
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said the report will confirm that "the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq was fundamentally misleading."
I finished reading Encyclopedia of An Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal last night. I thought it was a very cool book. She has a way of being funny, endearing, snarky, and bit wacky without seeming like she's trying too hard. She's unpretentious, and I really like that.
I'm still working on Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. And I *will* finish that damned book, come hell or high water!
Next up, The Known World by Edward P. Jones.
I was just reading this interview with Gloria Steinem from The New York Times Magazine. I hadn't heard about the radio station discussed in it before, and it seems like a worthwhile concept. But I was also suprised to read the bit about her living alone. As far as I knew, she was still married, and I wondered what happened. Turns out that her husband died in 2003. It is sad to me that they only had those three years of marriage together. I was never someone who was put off by her decision to marry. To the contrary, I appreciate any feminist who can provide another example of how to have a relationship built on equality. My husband and I strive for that in our marriage, but sometimes it is hard when there are so few role models for this kind of relationship. Still, we're making it work.
The New York Times Magazine
You never had children and seem to prefer living by yourself.
That has less to do with isolation than that I was a parent to my mother, who wasn’t able to function as one.
And where was your dad in all this?
He was a kind, loving gypsy. Until I was 10 or 11, half the year, at least, was spent in a house trailer, going to Florida or California and buying or selling antiques along the way. I always had a fantasy of a house with a white picket fence.
I've just finished reading The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. I enjoyed this book immensely. I think it was brilliant of Pearl to craft a Poe-esque tale about a Poe devotee who becomes consumed with uncovering the mystery surrounding the final days of Poe's life and the circumstances of his death. I've been enjoying historical fiction a great deal this year, and this is by far the most satisfying, engrossing novel I've read in this genre recently. I highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy historical fiction and/or Edgar Allen Poe. I've not yet read his first novel, The Dante Club, but it is on my to-be-read list now.
I just caught this piece on NPR. Fascinating! It is a shame that segregation and racism has kept black Americans from cultivating an interest in outdoor pursuits. I'd like to think this is changing, but maybe very slowly.
National Parks Should Be A Refuge for All Americans
NPR
News & Notes with Ed Gordon, September 1, 2006 · National Parks are not typically thought of as a big draw for blacks. But the great outdoors are just as refreshing for African-Americans as they are for everybody else.
Robin Washington is the editorial page editor of The Duluth News Tribune in Duluth, Minn.
This documentary seems like it might be really good. The NY Times Magazine interview definitely draws you in, anyway.
Q: Your grandfather, Barry Goldwater, was both adored and vilified during his lifetime as the rightest of the right-wing senators. Yet your new documentary, which will be shown on HBO starting Sept. 18, rehabilitates him as a kind of liberal compared with today’s conservatives.
That was part of the reason I thought a film could be done about him.
He emerges as a complex figure — a half-Jewish cowboy from Phoenix who believed the government should stay out of our hair. He thought gays should be allowed in the military and was also pro-choice.
My mom had an abortion in the mid-50’s, before she had me. She was in college, and she wanted to finish and get a degree and not have a child then. Barry felt it was a woman’s right to make that choice.
On the other hand, what does it say about the current state of American politics if Barry Goldwater is held up as a model of social enlightenment? Many people considered him a bigot because he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
That was a wart on his career, and he knew it. He was the furthest thing from a bigot there was.
Perhaps.
I finished reading Magical Thinking: True Stories by Augusten Burroughs Sunday afternoon. That puts me 60% of the way toward my 50 book goal for 2006. Whee!
This is the first book of his that I've read, and I adore his sarcastic, mean, ego-centric way of looking at the world. I can only hope to achieve this in my own head, let alone in my writing.
Now I'm reading The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. It's good so far. I've been on a big historical fiction kick this year, and I adore Poe, so it seemed like a natural choice. I'm also reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. It is taking me a while to get through it, as I find it rather dense, but it is fascinating.
I spent the evening watching Spike Lee's Katrina documentary When the Levees Broke: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS. It was hard to hear what these people went through, but I just felt a responsibility to them as a fellow American to know what they'd experienced and what they continue to go through today. It makes me so damned angry to know that when the tsunami hit, we (the US) were able to have aid in Bande Ache in two days. And I believe we were right to respond as we did. Yet, when the levees broke after Katrina, it took much longer for the federal government to respond in any meaningful way. I'm convinced this is because FEMA, DHS, and the White House were more worried about who would pick up the tab for this aid than about saving the lives of these Americans in need.
