p align=centerstrongChapter Six:  Bloody Lane, Late Spring 1994/strong/p p#160;/p pOscar drove Olivia in what was now his Mercedes to the rental car dealership on a cold, raw Sunday morning.  He'd insisted that she not carry her pistol.  She'd agreed, unwillingly, after almost arguing.  Oscar had dodged the quarrel by pointing out that commercial establishments frowned upon visibly armed customers.  Olivia, who had not intended for her pistol to be visible, had shrugged it off in acknowledgement of their shared desire not to make the final hours and the departure any harder than they had to be.  Her father, she knew, was expert in finalities; he'd been through many and knew how to behave.   That was comforting. And yet, the thought made her ache as she'd never hurt when she left him to live in a college dorm or moved halfway across the country...or when she'd surrendered him and Barney at the Santa Fe airport once she was well enough to survive on her own.  This was forever.  Maybe.  She looked at her father as though they were both now strays, about to abandon each other./p pThe downtown Pittsburgh rental office was thick with customers; the counters were staffed with young women who seemed eager to be discovered, although for what Olivia was not sure.  Pittsburgh was now deep into its second renaissance:  high-tech, bio-tech, endless consulting firms that seemed to specialize in nothing so much as vague verbiage about strategies, corporate culture, and-emsotto voce/em-outsourcing. She handed over her credit card and driver's license to a trim, tanned young blonde whose attitude toward her and the world seemed to be, emI'm everything I'm supposed to look like, so why am I here?/em She got her card and license back, secured the keys to a non-descript light blue Toyota Camry, listened to an explanation of intricacies and additional charges for inter-state one-way trips, drop-off fees and please return it full or we charge $2.00 a gallon.  emCannibals/em, Olivia thought as she signed./p pThey stepped into the waiting area.   A dark, middle-aged man, not American, brought the car up and then she and her father transferred her luggage from her old-now his-car to her rental, lifting together with easy teamwork.  She looked around.  No one paid them any further attention.  So she took her pistol from her carry-on bag and placed it in her handbag. /p pquot;Papa, do you remember how we built my glider from a kit?quot;   /p pquot;Sixteen.  Your high school graduation present.  I was so glad you didn't want a car.quot;/p pquot;I had my legs and a bike.quot;/p pquot;The man at the flying club asked me if I worried about you flying.  I said no, there's not room for a boy in that cockpit with her.quot;/p pThey laughed and then they were in each other's arms.  Like her mother before her, Olivia did not feel much like any other woman Oscar had ever held.  Women were supposed to be soft and yielding.  Lavinia had not been so, and her daughter was even less.  Oscar knew that was why Olivia was alive and emliving/em, not crippled by pain, just as he knew why it was that he himself had lived to avenge some, not all, of his murdered family.  Tolchins might hide or run, but they did not surrender easily.  Still, it was strange to embrace your daughter and see her eyes on a level with yours, feel muscle beneath leather.  Oscar pushed her back a bit, still holding her, and looked in her eyes./p pquot;I know,quot; he said quietly, quot;that you've never been able to talk about your work.  Perhaps you're doing something now you also can't talk about.  I won't ask.  You mustn't volunteer information I don't need to know.  At least for now.  One thing, though.  I wish you'd get out of defense work.  I know how it feels to have to do something, but there are many things to do other than pouring your life out for the Pentagon.quot;/p pShe nodded.  He looked down at the handbag that held her pistol./p pquot;You can take that with you?  Where you're going?quot;/p pquot;It won't cause any problems.quot;  If it did, she would simply sell it before she left the country.  No need to say so, it would only raise questions that he'd already forsworn.  quot;Don't cry, Papa, or I'll start.quot;/p pquot;I can't have my daughter crying.quot;  The truth was, he could not ever remember her crying, not even for those two months he had lived with her in Los Alamos, helping her move to Santa Fe, although he had his suspicions about the night before they drank together. /p pHe held her for a long time, felt himself held by her until she released him.  quot;I'll write, I promise.  I'll call when I can.quot;/p pHe helped her into the car, a vehicle professionally cleaned after each rental, yet still tawdry and in its own way, as pointlessly obscenely shiny as the young woman at the counter.  She put down the window, pressed her cheek against his hand while he stroked her hair.  Then she drove off without a backward glance./p p#160;/p pA miserable drive to Antietam National Battlefield in the rain.  The only good thing to be said for it was that it was Sunday morning, so there was little traffic.  The scenery was still rich with timber and cropland ripening with early growth, grazing land dotted with cattle and sheep:  the hilly agrarian and mountainous timber wealth of Pennsylvania and Maryland dotted here and there by the tumors of housing developments and business parks.  And strip malls and shopping malls.  Olivia struggled with her own growing resentment towards everything that stood for profit in the 1990s.  She was no idiot Luddite or romantic deluded that the past was automatically better.  But she found herself wondering how many other engineers were feeling the same about their fields...and their country.  How many engineers were cringing at what they were bringing forth upon this continent.  And how many were cringing at what other engineers on other continents were bringing forth upon this one./p pEverything goes wrong eventually: an engineer's maxim as true as, perfection is the enemy of good enough.  Something had gone wrong.  She averted her eyes as she sped by one hideous townhouse stretch in the middle of once-farmed acreage, land denuded of everything but townhouses where there was no town.  She knew the racket.  Let the developers start making offers for farmland, then let the bureaucrats appraise the land at the value of potential housing, not farmland.  Then give the farmers a choice-start selling out or face ruin, paying the new and exorbitant taxes./p pEverything goes wrong eventually, she thought.  The only real questions are, how wrong and the cost of making it right. /p p#160;/p pA hour and half drive from DC for General Getmanov.  He guided his old Camry carefully, drinking from a thermos of tea, eating some cakes made by his wife, happy to be out of the city, into the farmland to visit a place he'd always wanted to see, the better to understand America-a task that, for him, began long ago and had never stopped. Three and a half hours for Olivia, nursing flat coffee and maple frosted donuts from Dunkin Donuts.  emWhy can't you ever find a McDonald's when you really want one?/em At least the rain had stopped, although the sky remained sullen and gray.  A Yiddish word from her childhood appeared in her mind.  emUngeblüsen/em.  Olivia, aged seven, had been engaged in what engineers might call a state-of-the-art pout, reason long forgotten.  Her father had told her that she looked emungeblüsen/em and her mother had agreed.  She'd never asked for a precise definition of the term; she only knew it referred to something extremely unattractive in human beings of any age.  She'd never been emungeblüsen/em before them again.   /p pThey both arrived early.  Getmanov, dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a sturdy windbreaker, first scanned the people more than the ground, looking for a tail or a safe route out, should he need one.  Olivia prowled the parking lot and the Visitor Center restlessly.  Getmanov watched her from a distance and from behind for a few minutes.  She too was looking for people.  Perhaps more people than just him.  Always a possibility.  But he sensed, not today./p pHe fell in beside her, unconsciously in step with her as she walked along Richardson Avenue until it became the Sunken Road-Bloody Lane-between fields, with their long sight lines for rifles and artillery.  quot;How are you, my friend?quot;  He was surprised to hear himself use the word to her.  Not because he had never used it with a source, but because, in a limited way, he meant it-which he never had before. /p pShe looked at him, knowing what he was, surmising.  Getmanov had the uncomfortable thought that she was imagining some of the things he had done for his country and because of his country.  Yet the memories, momentary images only, had nothing of the dirty about them, if only because this woman made him feel cleansed.  Before coming to America on his posting, he'd wondered if America might make him feel cleansed, also.  It had not./p pOlivia wasn't small, but Getmanov was massive man, not soft in any sense of the word.  Harsh, imperious, commanding:  his demeanor almost called forth the single word, emGeneral/em.  Even in American clothing, there was nothing of the American about him.  But she trusted him, at least more than so many American generals she'd known, slick, glib military managers, playing their games./p pquot;Shall I ask what you're thinking, Olivia?quot;/p pquot;Just looking for a reason to stay and finding none.quot; /p pHer candor startled Getmanov.  quot;Honest, at least.quot;/p pquot;It is a hard thing to leave one's country, probably for the rest of one's life.quot;/p pquot;Have you discussed your plans with anyone?quot;/p pShe shook her head.  quot;Who would understand why I am giving up a very comfortable life here for...?quot;/p pquot;A devastated economy and a country soon to be at war.  Officially.  We've been at war in Chechnya for over a year now.  Unofficially.quot; /p pShe glanced at him, too polite to say that.  quot;I think that if I knew people who could understand why I'm doing this, I wouldn't have to go.  But I also think if I told anyone, they would be far more likely to tell me I need to be on anti-depressants than call the FBI.quot;/p pquot;Now it is your turn to sound bitter, Doctor Tolchin.quot;  She flashed him a rueful smile.  quot;Did you tell anyone in your government what you are doing?quot;/p pquot;No.  Standard exit poly and debrief.  My polygrapher asked if I'd made unauthorized contact or been approached by agents of a foreign power.  I told him no, and we wrapped it up.  He did not say any of my responses indicated deception.  emNo one/em from my government has been in touch with me since I left, either directly, or through my father.quot;/p pquot;Does he know?quot;/p pShe shook her head again.  quot;I told him I was going to Europe for my first real vacation ever.  Think things over.  I'm sure he thinks I'm off to Europe to do further government work.  Anyway, I would never expose emanyone/em to prosecution, let alone my father.  I want him to be able to pass a poly.quot;/p pquot;Just as well.  The day will come when you'll be able to tell him where you are.  Or we'll communicate for you.  He'll not think forever that you've just vanished.  That is a terrible thing to do to one's family and we would not inflict that upon you or him.  There is also a practical reason.  If he suspected something, he might well contact your government and that could open questions we don't care to answer.  For the present.quot;/p pquot;I see,quot; she said, suddenly realizing that she hadn't thought at all of her father going to the government to question her disappearance./p pquot;Nor,quot; Getmanov went on, quot;would we wish for him to contact your media.  Let us just say, your father may experience some weeks of discomfort.  But he will be reassured.  We owe that to him,quot; he glanced at her, quot;even if he did flee our fraternal occupation of Hungary in 1946.quot;/p pOlivia flared momentarily, then subsided.  quot;My father left because, after the Germans and the way Hungary collaborated with the Germans, he was happy to leave Hungary to whomever wanted it.quot;  Getmanov grew silent, his silence acknowledging her rebuke, neither disputing it nor surrendering to it.  And he had an odd sensation of emrefusing/em to justify his country's past brutalities.  Not here on this small piece of earth, not with this woman./p pThey were walking slowly down the Sunken Road, past the Observation Tower, in the cold spring day when Olivia stopped, her hands jammed into the pocket of her leather jacket.  Her hair, loose to her shoulders, was a pale fire in the wind, laden with a heavy fog off the mountains, the Appalachians on one side, the Catoctins on the other, raw and biting.  Getmanov could see the fine scars where the surgeons had dug splinters of safety glass out of her face.  A few more years, and the scars would be invisible.  Safety glass wasn't supposed to cut like that.  People weren't supposed to survive the injuries she had, let alone be so mobile again.  At least, not so soon.  He knew that she was not thinking of that now.  She was thinking of the battle that had happened here.  She was wondering if she would have been able to walk into that fire, over the bodies of the dead and the dying, comrades and enemies alike, until she, too, was amongst them and screaming, or not yet dead but beyond making sounds.  He knew because he'd once been innocent of combat, and had felt that way when he walked the battlefields of his own land.  He knew because he still saw such pensive looks on Russian battlefields on the faces of his countrymen who had never faced fire...and on the faces of those who had and now could only wonder how they'd ever done so. /p pBloody Lane is a place where it is almost impossible to speak above a whisper; Getmanov's voice was a low murmur.  quot;Antietam was the bloodiest single day in your country's history:  17 September 1862, 23,000 casualties, and between those huge, slow minié balls and contemporary medicine, a wound of any significance almost guaranteed either death or amputation.  Lee had brought his Army of Northern Virginia and invaded Maryland.  The Confederacy's only hope was to quickly capture Washington, and even that might have gained them only a respite, no more than Britain's ability to burn the White House during the War of 1812 meant that they could win that war.  Had the Union been able to force the Confederate center here, on the Sunken Road, they would have split Lee's forces and destroyed his army, for Lee had the Potomac to his back, and only a single practical crossing point.  Then, this road was actually a much stronger defensive position than it seems now.  Alexander Gardner's old photographs show it as almost a trench and the fencing was much heavier, almost a breastworks, but 130 years have filled it in a bit.  Three and a half hours, and 5600 men were dead or wounded along these 700 meters of road, which ran with blood.  But the Federals did break the Confederate line and could have exploited their work if McClellan had committed his reserve.  Lee brought 45,000 men to this fight and he was all in.  McClellan had 87,000 and committed only two-thirds of them.  The next day, Lee was so weak, he had only emskirmishers/em to cover his retreat, and McClellan still didn't pursue him.  Lincoln should have shot him.quot;/p pquot;We don't do that.quot;/p pquot;There is no army in the world that will not shoot soldiers for misbehavior before the enemy. What else is it but that, and of the highest order, to throw away a great victory that thousands of your soldiers have bought with their lives?  In its own way, Lincoln's refusal to execute McClellan for cowardice was as callous as our execution of over 13,000 emSoviet/em soldiers at Stalingrad alone-most of whom only needed hot food and sleep, to be able to fight on.quot;/p pquot;How do you know all this?quot;/p pquot;Military history is a passion of mine.  American military history, especially.quot; /p pquot;Comrade General, if you expect Americans to understand what you just said-maybe one in a hundred might.  If they thought about it long enough.quot;/p pquot;I know it.  When you Americans think of the Civil War, this is what you think of, or Gettysburg.  With coffee pots on campfires at night, and truces to recover the dead and exchange your wounded.  Jeb Stuart with his black plumed hat, and Lee on gray Traveller.  When you Americans think about atrocities, it is something along the order of Sherman's March from Atlanta to Savannah, and all the beautiful plantation houses he burned.quot;/p pGetmanov laughed softly, looking to Olivia, who was watching him attentively.  She nodded her permission to continue.  He quoted from memory.  She listened, astonished and rueful.  quot;In Special Field Order 120, Sherman commands his soldiers not to 'enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass' but to discriminate 'between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly,' 'refrain from abusive or threatening language', and 'to endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance.'  To army corps commanders alone was 'entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, etc. ...where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march...then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation...according to the measure of such hostility.'quot;  Again his soft laugh, neither scornful nor sardonic, only bemused.  quot;Would the Germans have so scourged the Soviet Union.  Would Lenin and Stalin have so scourged their own people.quot;/p pOlivia said nothing.  She knew her silence before him was almost that of a disciple before a master.  Whatever else this man might have done or submitted to, he was a master.  Not an expert, with all that connotes of someone who knows more and more about less and less until he cripples himself with his own knowledge.  A master.    /p pquot;When you Americans think of insurgencies, you don't even let yourselves think of how much of your Revolution was fought that way.   For your Civil War, you think of Bleeding Kansas.  Fifty-six people killed between 1854 and 1859, in an attempt to influence whether or not Kansas was admitted as a slave or free state.  And then you Americans think it was over.  That somehow violence in the West didn't go on and on and on during the war, and after.  People went from isolated farmstead to isolated farmstead to burn out and kill their own neighbors, whole towns burnt, every male of military age killed, the stores and banks looted, the women raped, which if they became pregnant, especially in the primitive frontier towns of your Kansas, was often a death sentence from abortion or childbirth.  Which is why it was done.  Military and civilian prisoners summarily executed, often after torture.  When Quantrill's raiders did such things in Lawrence, Kansas, systematically killing all the men and boys, burning at least one building out of four, Jayhawker-Union-retaliation laid waste to five counties in western Missouri.  They were put to the torch so completely that only the chimneys of the two-storey houses were left standing.  To this day, some have been left as monuments./p pquot;Then there are the Indian Wars, beginning-should you wish an official starting date-with King Philip in 1675 and not ending until the last battle at Nogales, Arizona, in 1918, nearly a century and a half after you ratified your Constitution.  The slaughter of Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1890-300 men, women and children machine-gunned in a few minutes, and perhaps half that dying of wounds and hypothermia, which is at least less cruel than starvation and which they faced on that reservation and others.   Such is far closer to the norm than the Sioux victory over General Custer.  Yet the Little Big Horn is what you Americans think of, when you think of the Indian Wars.  Not the forced relocation of the tribes, the destruction of their language and culture, which included hideous cruelty to their prisoners.  emDances with Wolves/em was a fairy tale.  Not your Indian fighters, who like so many of your outlaws had been coarsened by seeing too much death and suffering in the Civil War, and were embittered and frustrated by being busted back from generals and colonels to majors and even captains.quot;/p pScalding words, delivered calmly and with dignity, in a thoughtful, quiet voice, mild and gentle as milk, utterly devoid of judgment, utterly ruthless in knowledge. /p pquot;I am ashamed of how much better you know my nation's history than I do.quot;/p pquot;Don't be.  I know far more than most of your own Army officers how their nation and their service have waged war.  Perhaps, had I not been so hot-blooded a young man, I would have become a historian.  As it is, knowing your nation's history as well as I do, helps me explain my own country to you, and to the Americans I deal with as an intelligence officer who is also a diplomat.  The problems any nation faces when dealing with an insurgency or a guerrilla war are very similar from culture to culture.  About 90% of reasonable, educated, humane people-by which I mean serious professionals, not the overwrought or disturbed, the stupid or callous or sadistic-will pursue the same solutions, most of which are brutal even by the standards of conventional war.  The questions are, what do you do with that brutality and how far do let it go?quot;/p pShe looked at him, opened her mouth, started to say something, and seemed to think better of it.  She stood looking at him very intently, waiting, feeling both his presence and herself in his presence.  It was profoundly physical, but a physicality of the spirit and the mind. /p pquot;Yes, you're correct.  I'm trying to prepare you for what you're going to see, so far as I can.  What you are volunteering to be part of and help with.  We're not going to do what we would have during the 20s or the 30s or the 40s-I hope to God we never do such things again.  But we will not be nearly so restrained and correct as Sherman was.quot;  There was a genuine wistfulness in his tone, a deep weariness.  quot;I wish your nation could be more honest with itself about what it has done, and needed to do in the past, and what it will do again.  It would help a great deal.  But the only people who know such things are either specialists in the field, men who spend their lives talking to each other, or the Blame America First lunatics, people who spend their lives talking about the purity of their morality in a corrupt world.  None of them speaks to anyone about anything serious.  You're lucky you can afford to tolerate such people politically.  Still, there is a price. They have cut your nation off from a serious popular understanding of your own past, and so you blunder about in the larger world, ignorant of just how much you have in common with the rest of that world.  Which helps no one.quot; /p pquot;I wish you would write for us, as a historian.quot;/p pHe smiled grimly.  quot;If I did, I would not be the first officer to get into trouble for so doing.  Colonel-General-three stars-Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov went from being a hard-line Stalinist to a pariah amongst his military colleagues less for his biography of Stalin than for his plans to write a collective history of World War Two.  Back in 1991, his committee called him in, demanded he leave the Army, swore at him, screamed at him, and above their din, he shouted back the truths they couldn't bear. That we sent our soldiers to slaughter and capture-with the Germans, it was the same-by the hundreds of thousands.  And that millions of men let themselves be taken prisoner, they had so little faith in their government.  If I wrote the deep truth about your wars, I would be fêted by your academics and journalists and self-proclaimed progressives and activists, all of them seeking unearned moral authority by publicly praising me for telling the world how awful their country and yours is.  Thank you, no.quot;/p pThey walked in silence for a while, crossing a tributary that fed in to Antietam Creek on their left.  They walked across the sodden fields to the National Cemetery, a Union infantryman standing in place rest, carved from granite at the center.  Walking amongst the gravestones was an elderly couple.  As if by mutual consent, the couple and Olivia and Getmanov drifted naturally together.  The man wore a Harris Tweed sport coat over a turtleneck and pressed khakis, his loafers neatly polished, the woman a trim gray wool trouser suit and hat, her grosgrain hatband and leather gloves a fine, clear scarlet.  Both of them were handsome still, with the dignity of old people who have lived their lives well and find themselves at peace together./p pquot;And what are you young people doing out in weather like this?quot; the man asked Getmanov in a cracked voice that betrayed his age./p pquot;We came to see the black day of the Confederate Army,quot; Getmanov said quietly. /p pquot;You're not American,quot; the man answered.  quot;I haven't heard a voice like yours in nearly half a century.  Of course, they weren't speaking English then.quot;/p pquot;No, I would think emSoldatendeutch/em on both sides.quot;/p pquot;And you are also Russian, dear?quot; the woman interjected./p pOlivia shook her head.  quot;My mother was Pennsylvanian.  This war reaped a rich harvest from the men of her family.quot;/p pquot;And your father?quot;/p pquot;My father's family was Hungarian Jews.  That war reaped a richer harvest.quot; /p pquot;You two are married?quot;/p pGetmanov and Olivia shared a wry look./p pquot;Professional acquaintances, ma'am,quot; Olivia said, quot;I felt a need to see this place with someone who knew more than I, who would not subject me to our conventional pieties.quot;/p pquot;Such as, the war could have been won by maneuver and Grant and Sherman were butchers who cared nothing for their men,quot; the old man said.  quot;But all modern war, maybe all real war, is about bringing the entire weight of society to bear against one's enemy.quot;/p pquot;You look at a place like this,quot; the old woman said, quot;and it's a lot like looking at those old cemeteries in your Pennsylvania, or my North Carolina, or my husband Aaron's New England.  Here the cemetery filled with young men.   There, they're full of men surrounded by two or three wives.  The women died in childbirth, the men had to remarry quickly because they already had children, or needed more, or both. You wonder that mortal flesh and bone can do such things.  Can bear so much.quot;/p pquot;You do it for the guy on your left and the guy on your right, Martha,quot; the old man said./p pquot;Or for your husband,quot; she replied sweetly./p pquot;Or for the wife on your left and the wife on your right, sometimes.  We didn't talk much more about Roosevelt than these guys did about Stalin.quot;/p pquot;No, but I remember your letter telling me how you and your buddies felt about Roosevelt dying, as if you'd lost a friend and a father.  The girls and I didn't think much about Roosevelt when we built tanks.  We thought about giving you guys what you needed so you finish it up and come home.quot;/p pGetmanov nodded.  quot;Truly, soldiers do fight for their comrades.  But they don't fight very well if they think their nation is led by thieves and cowards and liars.  The cause they fight for must mean something to soldiers, even if they never talk about...Jeff Davis or Abe Lincoln,quot;/p pquot;You got that right,quot; the old man agreed./p pquot;So what brings you out on this day?quot; Olivia asked./p pquot;We're both Marylanders now, even if we were on different sides six generations ago.  We sometimes come out here after church.  That war, and then the others, as you say, reaped a harvest from both our families.  If you consider the time lines-six generations means that when my wife and I were children, we could talk to old men who'd fought here.quot;/p pquot;Did you?quot;/p pquot;Yes.  They're not buried here, Martha's grandfather, my great uncle.  But it often feels like they are.quot; /p pquot;Young Americans...quot; Olivia began./p pquot;My dear,quot; the old woman said, quot;you're American, even if in jeans you manage to be twice as elegant as most young women in skirts and dresses.  You know what we're becoming.  Fat, medicated, vulgar, ignorant and lazy.quot;  The woman cocked an elegantly arched white brow at Getmanov, who withdrew discretely, and crooked her finger at Olivia, lowering her voice as Olivia bent her head to her.  quot;With apologies for airing our laundry in front of a Russian.  As the Yiddish proverb has it, emein shande für die Goyim/em.  A scandal in front of the Gentiles.quot;/p pquot;Ma'am, he's a cultural historian.  He knows us better than we know ourselves.quot;/p pquot;Can't hide it from him, then, can we?quot;/p pquot;No, ma'am.  You speak Yiddish?quot;/p pquot;She had some need of it, once.  Her mother was old-line American, her father a German Jew.  We were friends with Germany when he came over,quot; her husband said.  quot;We were friends with Russia once, too.  Do you think our countries might be so again?quot;/p pquot;I hope so, sir,quot; Getmanov replied.  quot;But if not...at least not enemies.quot;/p pquot;We hope so, too.quot;/p pOlivia and Getmanov were walking back to the car, when he looked at her sharply and answered the question he had seen her pondering.  quot;You'd have been brave enough here.  Or the Vosges Campaign, for that matter, when your Army took on the emWehrmacht/em pretty much man to man, without your accustomed advantages in airpower and logistics.  Or anywhere else.quot;/p pquot;I don't know.  You look at that field, or down into Devil's Den from Little Round Top at Gettysburg, and as our lady said, you wonder that mortal flesh and bone can do so much.  Male or female.quot;/p pGetmanov said quietly.  quot;Both your hips and your pelvis were broken in that crash, and several vertebrae fractured.  Yet you extracted not only yourself but also the man who caused it, seriously compounding the damage to your body.quot; /p pquot;You are very kind, sir.quot; /p pquot;So tell me, why did you do what you did?  Because your flight student, who just happened to be a rich lawyer, thought he was so smart and so rich and so important that he didn't have to mention to you or your government when he got his student permit, that he was epileptic?  Did you save him because he was a fellow American?quot;  A hard, fine edge to his voice that snapped her head around as if he'd slapped her.  It had not been a compliment, but her just due./p pquot;I knew I was going to be in the hospital for a long time and I did not want to remember his screams-or to be responsible for his death by fire.quot; /p pquot;Would you have let him bleed to death?quot;/p pquot;I ashamed to say, very likely.  Fire is one thing, shock and blood loss another, and I am not a martyr.quot;/p pquot;No more than these men were.  They built this nation and their heirs helped create a Republic that, not so long ago, did more good than harm in the world.  They left this country to people like that couple-and you.  These, here in this ground, are your people.  Do you wish to leave them?quot;/p pShe turned away from him for a long moment, closed her eyes, forced herself to breath slowly and deeply.  When she turned back to him, her vivid blue eyes were very bright but her voice was level and calm.  quot;They left me a Republic I cherished and wished to serve.  But just as they are dead and gone, their Republic exists no longer.  What remains has no use for me.  That old couple lived in a different world.  Maybe our old Republic will some day be brought forth again.  But not tomorrow, or any of the tomorrows likely to remain to me.quot;/p pShe turned her eyes from him and started to reach into her handbag.  As she wondered why she'd chosen this moment and this place, she noticed Getmanov had become extremely tense.  quot;Don't worry.  I did not meet you here to kill you before I killed myself.quot;/p pquot;I have emnever/em had a contact emremotely/em like this one before.quot;/p pquot;No, probably not.quot;  She handed him her pistol.  He put it into his pocket quickly, expertly, and she knew that this was not the first time this man had disarmed someone.  But she also realized that her surrender of this weapon, on this ground, was no surrender.  It was a pledge to serve a country that was not hers, because the country that was hers, refused and ignored her.  The men in the cemetery, that old couple, she thought, might hate her decision, and hate her for it.  But they would not dare call it treason./p pquot;Please return it to me in Russia.quot; /p pHe knew, then, that he would see her again.  He still had doubts about the ease of his recruitment of her, but you did not do such a thing as this in such a place as this, and not fundamentally emmean/em it./p pquot;I will.  It's not Russian issue but it fires standard ammunition.  You'll need it where you're going.quot;  He looked around.  No one had noticed.  Or if they had, they averted their eyes from the older Russian man and his young American companion.  Perhaps they did not want to know.  They would not want to understand./p pquot;There is one thing we have not discussed, and that is compensation.quot;/p pShe flinched.  quot;This is about being of use.quot;/p pquot;You are neither a volunteer or a slave,quot; Getmanov told her calmly.  quot;We paid Aldrich Ames, who has just been arrested, 4.5 million dollars, principally for the names of our own traitors.  We considered the price cheap.  Yes, many of the men he betrayed were not doing this for the money.  They were idealists, perhaps in the same way you are.  But they placed their own people at risk.  Especially Dmitri Fyodorovich Polyakov, like myself also a Major General of the GRU, whom we shot and would shoot again with equal justice.  It was even worse that he gave anti-tank missile data to your government out of principle, rather than for mercenary reasons.  Had our nations gone to war, that data would have been used to kill Soviet soldiers.  Most of them draftees.  You might say we bought justice, far more than revenge, for that money.  You're different.  You're offering us creative work that your own country has refused time and again, in order to fight a common enemy that your country does not really take seriously.  At least not yet, and maybe not until too late.  Americans no longer think they can be defeated, so they have forgotten what it takes to actually win.quot;  He paused.  quot;I've been unclean before and I will be again.  But you are clean, and so I would be as clean with you as my craft permits me.  You make, what, $90,000 a year as an exempt civil servant?quot;/p pquot;Eighty-five.quot;/p pquot;We will pay you $100,000 a year-in dollars, not rubles, although once the ruble becomes a hard currency, you will be paid the equivalent in rubles.  You will also be given, in time and as circumstances permit, access to our better shops.  Unlike yours, our upscale malls are not open to all.  You could make easily twice that here in the commercial sector.  A raise, given that you are leaving your country forever to run some very real risks.  Retirement pension will be pegged accordingly.  Your savings you will take out in the following manner.  Go shopping, as you leave this country and in Europe, perhaps at Tiffany or Cartier, and keep the receipts.  These items you may sell at your discretion when you arrive.  Russia is awash in money from organized crime, so you are going to make very happy the mistresses of some Russian Mafiosi while reducing their liquidity.  The state will provide for you, after what you call 'in-processing,' a flat in Moscow and, in time and as circumstances permit, a dacha or land upon which to build one.  Within very generous limits, these will be of your choosing.  Importantly, from your point of view, you will hold clear title and there will be fair compensation to the previous owners, if any.quot;/p pquot;Thank you,quot; Olivia answered in the calm, deliberate voice of a woman who knows what she wants and will not be distracted.  quot;However, I am not risking my freedom-which I am at this point, simply by speaking to you-to become in Russia what I have refused to be here.quot;/p pquot;And what is that?quot;/p pquot;A drone.  A well-paid drone. I will have complete creative freedom?quot;/p pquot;Yes, insofar as I can promise it.  By this I mean, you will not be told your work costs too little or too much or proceeds too quickly, or that you should buy parts from here or there.  You will be judged by what you produce and as long as you produce, you will have the freedom to do so.  We will see each other in Vienna at the conference.  If you need to contact me between now and then, even from Europe, you will be able to reach my cell phone.quot;/p pquot;We will see each other in Vienna,quot; she answered.  quot;Thank you for sharing a bit of your knowledge of my country with me. Drive safely...my friend.quot;/p pShe turned and walked away./p

pIsn't that a great question to think about at the beginning of the Brave New Year? What's your answer? /p pIt's what a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Aguilar target=_blank title=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_AguilarRose Aguilar,/a author of emRed Highways: A Liberal's Journey into the Heartland /emand host of NPR stationa href=http://www.kalw.org/ target=_blank title=http://www.kalw.org/ KALW /atalkbr / show quot;Your Callquot;, asked a diverse (except for shared relief that Georgebr / W. Bush's disastrous presidency is almost over) panel of guests, withbr / global to local expertise ranging from bugs to books, health to wealth,br / the arts to politics, war, peace, and everything in between. I wasbr / privileged to be among the large lineup that includeda href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Wright_Edelman target=_blank title=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Wright_Edelman Marian Wright Edelman/a, Founder amp; President of the Children's Defense Fund,a href=http://www.thebushagenda.net/ target=_blank title=http://www.thebushagenda.net/ Antonia Juhasz/a, Author of quot;The Tyranny of Oilquot; amp; quot;The Bush Agendaquot;,a href=http://www.nea.gov/bigreadblog/?page_id=7 target=_blank title=http://www.nea.gov/bigreadblog/?page_id=7 David Kipen/a, Director, National Reading Initiatives, National Endowment of the Art, and a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cay_Johnston target=_blank title=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cay_JohnstonDavid Cay Johnston/a, former NY Times tax reporter and author of emFree Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)./em/p blockquote pYou can listen to thea href=http://yourcallradio.blogspot.com/2009/01/your-call-010509-what-are-you-looking.html target=_blank title=http://yourcallradio.blogspot.com/2009/01/your-call-010509-what-are-you-looking.html program in full/a./p pThen tell how you'd answer the question, quot;What Are You Looking Forward to in 2009?quot; by posting your comments here./p /blockquote pHere's what I'm looking forward to--admittedly a fantasy, but anbr / eminently doable one: I want to be present when Barack Obama signs the a href=http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c110tzOpbU:: target=_blank title=http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c110tzOpbU::Prevention First act/abr / into law. In one swoop, we would increase needed funding for preventivebr / family planning services, make sure sex education is medically accuratebr / and comprehensive as opposed to the current ineffective abstinence-onlybr / variety, make emergency contraception more accessible, and otherwisebr / prevent unintended pregnancies and ensure healthy, wanted ones./p pIt's the centerpiece of what RHREalityCheck's Kay Steiger called a href=http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/01/04/true-common-ground-111th-congress target=_blank title=http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/01/04/true-common-ground-111th-congressquot;The True Common Groundquot;/abr / agenda for the 111th Congress. I confess to having a mother'sbr / attachment to Prevention First, originally drafted and filed when I wasbr / president of Planned Parenthood (props to my brilliant staff). Butbr / despite broad bipartisan support including cosponsorship by Barackbr / Obama, the Republican leadership wouldn't let it come up for a votebr / when they were in control and the Democrats have been no morebr / courageous about pushing it during the last two years than they havebr / been about standing up to Bush on judicial nominees, the war in Iraq,br / scientific integrity, the bailouts, or just about anything else./p pStlll, this is a hopeful moment. Despite huge challenges like thebr / economic meltdown, it feels like America has nowhere to go but up.br / Despite the fact that I know full well the Beltway is the Beltway andbr / there will be disappointments, I sense that most if not all things arebr / possible. And despite the pro-choice movement's historic pattern ofbr / retrenching into defensive posture after a victory instead of using thebr / moment to go full steam ahead with proactive measures, I'm lookingbr / forward to 2009 being different./p pTo being the year that a woman's right to her own life becomesbr / change we believe it, because it is clearly change we need.  I can'tbr / wait to see your answers to Rose's excellent question. /p pa href=http://www.GloriaFeldt.com title=http://www.GloriaFeldt.comhttp://www.GloriaFeldt.com/a/p phttp://www.GloriaFeldt.com/heartfeldt-politics-blog/p

pimg src=///C:/DOCUME%7E1/W.TEC/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.jpg alt= / /ppOn Christmas eve, I wasbr / visiting someone that brought a message from London for me, despite notbr / liking visiting the Island especially on Christmas eve. Well, Thebr / Activist had to do what she had to do. I mad my trip, I was runningbr / late so I had to take a commercial motorcycle popularly called Okada inbr / the Western part of Nigeria./p pWebr / proceeded in our journey. I noticed the rider was trying to tell mebr / something but if I tried to inquire, he would just look on. He, at abr / point shifted into my laps and I had to move back while wondering if hebr / didn't have enough space to sit to begin with. Before I got to my stop,br / he looked back and asked me if I was crazy! What? I was still trying tobr / digest that unbelievable utterance when he dropped another one. He saidbr / quot; I want to kiss youquot;!/p pNowbr / imagine if I had not known what to do or how to handle a maniac likebr / the rider, things could have got worse. He might be a rapist. Thebr / stereotype would let us believe that women are emotional meaning thatbr / in that situation, I should just give into crying and get confused. No,br / handled it right. I asked him to halt infront of a police officer andbr / the rest was history.../p pAnotherbr / incident that I would like to share happened in December 2007, a yearbr / before this rider's incident (not on Christmas eve though). I was on mybr / way to see a doctor because I had taken ill. I had to get off at a busybr / place called Oshodi in Lagos to take another bus to my destination. Asbr / I was making my way through the crowd, a guy just grabbed my butt!br / Well, when I turned back with reflex action, I had given him 3 dirtybr / slaps before I calmed down. I didn't bother waiting to see who wouldbr / sympathise with me since my voice was too weak to alert the nearbybr / police officers. If I didn't leave the scene on time, the Oshodi boys,br / would give justice to the quot; butt grabistquot; and embarrass me. I know howbr / they operate so, I didn't wait but I defended my self before leavingbr / the scene/p pThebr / Oshodi incident happens to a lot of ladies in our big markets in Lagos.br / There are all sort of harrassment from the male marketers. They pullbr / you and rough handle you while pretending they are marketing theirbr / goods and all. So many other incidents that I can't begin to name havebr / being endured by women and girls.a href=http://www.defendu.com/wsdi/principles.htm /aa href=http://www.defendu.com/wsdi/principles.htmRape/abr / cases that can be avoided, violence against our bodies by those webr / trust with no one to help. So, since we have got ourselves, what do webr / do?/p pThis brings me to what I believe is a must for every woman and girls to learn a href=http://www.safetyforwomen.com/Self defense skills/aa href=http://www.safetyforwomen.com/./a/p p /p pem quot;...If you see or sense problems on your way,br //em/p pem just change your route and - prepare to run orbr //em/p pem defend yourself...quot;/em — Caroline Young/p p/p pWhatbr / does self defense mean to us as women? In my organisation, we had abr / summer camp in Technology for female secondary students last year. Onebr / of the acitivities at the camp was to bring expert in martial arts tobr / teach the girls little but effective self defense they can use to getbr / themselves out of any a href=http://www.safetyforwomen.com/preparing.htmdanger/aa href=http://www.safetyforwomen.com/preparing.htm./a Did they love it? Did we feel happy to have initiated this? Oh yes!/p p/p p “Self-defence is what we do to make our lives a href=http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2002/04/fighting_back_self_defence_for_women_girlssafer/a/p p on a daily basis. ” It’s about taking control of/p p situations in which you’re to be made a victim -/p p this ranges from comments to physical attack./p p It’s realising that if someone does not respect your/p p boundaries, you should stop them. There are/p p many different strategies for this - saying something,/p p yelling, leaving, fighting - the important thing is you/p p a href=http://www.googobits.com/articles/p2-1254-basic-selfdefense-for-women.htmlDO SOMETHING/a!/p p/p pBy learning some basic principles of self- defense, as a woman, you are already in control. There are articles you can a href=http://www.googobits.com/articles/p2-1254-basic-selfdefense-for-women.htmlread up/a if you click on the links I provided or better still look for a self-defense or martial art expert to put you through. Not only you but your daughters, your female friends, your sister, our mothers and your female colleagues/p p/p pInbr / this 2009, I will be happier to see a violence free year. I know thisbr / is possible. Let's us all make it difficult for hoodlums, assailants orbr / whatever logo or names they bear to get to us. It's our responsiblitiesbr / to be safe. Let's self-defense skills be one of our safety cateria forbr / 2009/p

pAfter watching the movie Hostel:br /Andy: The moral of that story is; if they can't spell hotel right, don't stay there./p pAfter Rudy asked what I thought of a certain type of drum sticks for his drum set:br /Jen: Drum sticks? If they aren't covered in chicken flesh, I'm not interested./p pWhile eyeing Missy's fuzzy blue socks:br /Rudy: Your socks look comfy! Can I rock em real quick?/p pWhile staring at my slouchy sweater with the big floppy turtle neck:br /Yuna: Mom, why is your hood on the front? How are you gonna put it over your head like that?/p pWhile listening to Kayla whine for something:br /Yuna: Mom I have an idea! Why don't you put a piece of candy in her mouth? It'll close it all up! She won't be ABLE to whine!/p pAfter having a discussion about China:br /Jen: Do you know where China is?br /Kayla: In my big girl underwear!!br /(Yes, she thought of something that sounds similar to quot;Chinaquot;)/p pDuring breakfast on a weekend Rudy had to work:br /Kayla: Heeello!!! Daddy? What are you doing?br /Surprised to hear her talking to Daddy when he wasn't there I look over to see her holding a piece of bacon to her earbr /Jen: Kayla? What are you doing?!/p p..../p pa href=http://www.jennifersuarez.com/Journal/index.cfm?currentMonth=1amp;currentYear=2009#601uClick here to read the rest of this blog at www.JenniferSuarez.com/u/a/p

pa href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23beauty.html?partner=permalinkamp;exprod=permalinkSome Hidden Choices in Breast Reduction/a by Natasha Singer, which is most insultingly a part of iThe New York Times'/i The Price of Beauty series, explored the different options women are offered - and not offered - after a mastectomy. I'm sure that readers will be shocked - shocked! - to hear that women are not always informed of the different types of breast reconstructions available because some procedures are less profitable for doctors and hospitals than others. Profit above women's health? Who wouldda thunk it? Sigh./p pThe other problem is that many doctors are not proficient in alternate types of surgery, thus limiting women's choices. In this instance, the article points out that doctors don't tell women that there are other options, preventing them from seeking surgeons who do know how to perform them. What? Self-interest above that of the patient? Who wouldda... never mind./p pOf course, the biggest problem of all is that many women aren't told they have any reconstruction options:/p blockquotep Only one third of women undergoing operations for breast cancer said their general surgeons had discussed reconstruction at all, according to a study by Dr. Alderman of 1,844 women in Los Angeles and Detroit that was published in February in the journal Cancer./p p“In the big picture, it would be great if we could just get doctors to tell people they have an option of reconstruction,” Dr. Alderman said. /p/blockquote pYes, that would be nice, wouldn't it? Incidentally, the presentation of options to women with breast cancer also is impacted by the ethnicity of the patient. Cord Jefferson at a href=http://www.stereohyped.com/few-black-mastectomy-patients-opt-for-reconstruction-20081118/Stereohyped/a comments on a study reported in Novermber 2008 in iUS News and World Report/i that:/p blockquotep Black women are 47% less likely than other women to undergo breast reconstruction after having a mastectomy... African-Americans have fewer referrals to plastic surgeons, and if they do have a referral, they have a lower rate of going to those referrals. Strangely, even once they see the plastic surgeon, reconstruction seems to be offered with less frequency. /p/blockquote pFurther, it is important to note that they itype/i of reconstructive surgery performed can impact the effectiveness of subsequent radiation treatment, according to a study cited at a href=http://hypography.com/forums/news-in-brief/17497-type-breast-reconstruction-impacts-radiation-therapy.htmlHypography/a, a science website. In fact, Hypography reports that:/p blockquotep For breast cancer patients who underwent a mastectomy who undergo radiation therapy after immediate breast reconstruction, autologous tissue reconstruction provides fewer long-term complications and better cosmetic results than tissue expander and implant reconstruction, according to a study in the November issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology. /p/blockquote pOne guess which is the most commonly performed reconstructive surgery? (Hint: it involves implants...) Obviously, given the unique circumstances of every brest cancer patient, not everyone will benefit from the exact same procedure, but again, it would be good to hear about the full range of options, wouldn't it?/p pThe iTimes/i notes that approximately:/p blockquotep 66,000 women in the US underwent mastectomies in 2006... and about 57,000 women had reconstructive breast surgery last year, according to estimates from the plastic surgery society. For many of these women, the operations were more about feeling whole again than about restoring their appearance. /p/blockquote pWhich brings me to my beef with categorizing this article as one about beauty. I understand that technically, replacing a breast is not medically necessary. Yet the article acknowledges that most women are not doing this for reasons of beauty. American women live in a culture in which our breasts are a large part of what makes us women. While that is appropriate or not as a standard for being considered female, at this point breasts are a critical part of gender identity for many. With that understanding, it is absurd to call reconstructive breast surgery a mere beauty procedure./p pMMM at a href=http://doublewhammydiary.blogspot.com/2008/12/whos-telling-who.htmlMage's double whammy diary/a is also offended by the title:/p blockquotep The title of the article is The Price of Beauty: Some Hidden Choices in Breast Reconstruction. I find this so irritating. I'm still struggling to articulate exactly what all the issues related to losing a breast are, so it's hard for me to write exactly why this is so galling. It feels misleading, dismissive, and minimizing. It seems to reduce the issues around post-mastectomy breast recontruction down to vanity./p p...if I was reading the New York Times on paper right now, instead of on-line, I would take the biggest fattest sharpie I could find and cross out, The Price of Beauty. In it's place I would write a more truthful, more accurate and more controversial title./p pThe Price of Capitalist Health Care: Hidden Choices In Breast Reconstruction. /p/blockquote pI could not say it better myself./p piSuzanne also blogs at a href=http://cussandotherrants.comCampaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) amp; Other Rants/a. Her first book, a href=offthebeatensubwaytrack.comOff the Beaten (Subway) Track/a, is about unusual things to see and do in New York City./i/p

pCaroline Kennedy (Schlossberg) has been in the media spotlight for most of her 51 years,but for most of those years, the press has maintained a deferential distance. Now that she's declared her interest in becoming the junior Senator from New York when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as Secretary of State, political reporters are struggling to adjust their lenses. And Kennedy, who has spent most of her life trying to stay in the shadows, seems to be stuggling to adjust as well./p pFirst, there's the matter of her name. The Columbia Journalism Review's Megan Garber a href=http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/caroline_or_change.phpnoted /athat Kennedy's emergence as a political figure made many news organizations forget their own rules of atrribution:/p blockquotep Now that Caroline seems to be embracing her Kennedy side—which is to say, her political side—the media a href=http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-caroline18-2008dec18,0,3376981.story target=_blankhave/a a href=http://www.nypost.com/seven/12082008/news/politics/bloomberg_praises_caroline_kennedy_143245.htm target=_blankbeen/a a href=http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/08/26/2008-08-26_hillary_clintons_speech_could_be_a_gamec.html?page=0 target=_blankengaging/a a href=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/22/AR2008122201293.html target=_blankin/abr / a bit of selective amnesia when it comes to that whole, politicallybr / inconvenient Schlossberg thing. (Schlossberg: not too sexy-sounding.br / Not too Christian-sounding. Not too Camelot-sounding.)/p /blockquote p[Camelot -- the nickname for the John F. Kennedy presidency -- was itself a media myth of her mother's making. Shortly after Pres. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, In an interview for Life magazine, Jacqueline Kennedy a href=http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jbk.htmtold/a writer and family friend Theodore White that the fallen leader loved the popular musical about the legend of King Arthur so much that he'd been listening to the cast album every night in the weeks before that fatal trip to Dallas.]/p pAnother CJR writer, Jane Kim, thought the political press was still gripped by the Camelot mystique in their first articles about the prospect of the torch being passed to Caroline:/p blockquotep[Washington Post media critic] Howard Kurtz a href=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html?hpid=topnews target=_blanksays/abr / that the media are secretly glad about the Kennedy news, and that they,br / “quite frankly, want David Paterson to name Caroline because they lovebr / celebrities and are enamored of family dynasties.” Does the lovingbr / accusation stand? Today’s coverage shows some fawning over thebr / reclusive Kennedy, but some strong skepticism as well./p /blockquote p Kim thought the New York Times was doing the best job of maintaining that skepticism.Indeed, the Times pressed Kennedy on her reasons for wanting the office in a Dec. 27 a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/nyregion/28kennedytranscript.html?scp=5amp;sq=Caroline%20Kennedy%20amp;st=cseinterview /athat reads like a verbal tug of war. The Times reporters wanted tried to get Kennedy to say how she'd improve on Sen. Clinton's performance in the Senate -- Kennedy refused. They tried to get her to say why she'd be a better Senator than other potental appointees -- especially New York's Attorney General, a href=http://www.oag.state.ny.us/Andrew Cuomo/a. (And of course, all mentions of Cuomo must be accompanied by the reminder that he is the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo and the ex-husband of Caroline Kennedy's cousin) Her response:/p blockquotepAndrew Cuomo is someone I’ve known for many, many years and we’vebr / talked, you know, throughout this process, so, you know, we have abr / really good relationship and I admire the work he’s doing now and whatbr / he’s done, so I’m not really going to kind of criticize any of thesebr / other candidates    /p /blockquote p It went on, like that, resulting in an a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/nyregion/28kennedy.html?scp=8amp;sq=Caroline%20Kennedy%20amp;st=csearticle/a in which the Times' reporters said Kennedy/p blockquotepquot;seemed less like a candidate than an idea of one: forceful but vague, largely undefined and seemingly determined to remain that way.quot;/p /blockquote pAt one point, Kennedy grew tired of being asked to detail her conversations with her family as wshe decided that she wanted the Senate seat and a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/nyregion/28kennedytranscript.html?pagewanted=6amp;sq=Caroline%20Kennedy%20amp;st=cseamp;scp=5said/a:/p blockquotep  Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter) /p /blockquote p I found myself wondering as I read, quot;Is this really what New York voters want or need to know? Wouldn't they rather have some indication of what Kennedy would do as a Senator? What would have happened, I wondered, if the Times' reporters had been more focused on that? /p pFor example, Kennedy  cited her experience as a fund-raiser for the New York City schools as a qualification for the Senate, but refused to express an opinion about substituing merit pay for tenure as a perk for teachers is a good idea. She said there were a number of good experiments. I wanted a follow-up -- what experiments? What criteria would she use to judge their outcomes?.  /p pAlternatively, reporters might look through the seven books Kennedy co-authored or co-edited for hints. For example, in her a href=http://books.google.com/books?id=hihCJNrGNEACamp;printsec=frontcoveramp;dq=%22Caroline+Kennedy%22#PPA5,M1introduction/a to the 2002 update to her father's acclaimed essay collection, iProfiles in Courage/i, Kennedy commended a jurist who ruled against a colleagues' quot;defiantly unconstitutional display of the Ten Commandments in the courtroom.quot; Another book, a href=http://books.google.com/books?id=dunVAAAACAAJamp;dq=%22Caroline+Kennedy%22The Right to Privacy,/a which she co-authored with Ellen Alderman, might be the starting point for interview questions about FISA, abortion, and other contentious issues.  /p pOne other item from that interview -- Kennedy's refusal to answer questions about her finances -- seems poised to turn into a larger political issue. This weekend, the New York Times a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/nyregion/04disclose.html?ref=nyregionreported /athat  because of an apparent loophole, Kennedy failed to fill out disclosure forms that would normally be required of someone holding her positions within the state Department of Education. The Times is right to demand answers on this one. /p pMeanwhile, Kennedy's been criticized for her performance in the Times'br / interview. Mark Tran, who writes for the UK Guardian, compared Kennedybr / to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin:/p blockquotepShe may belong to one of America's fabled political dynasties, butbr / Caroline Kennedy has crashed on take-off in a series of interviews tobr / prepare for a possible political career./p /blockquote pFausta a href=http://faustasblog.com/?p=8547argues/a the comparison is an insult to Palin:/p blockquotepLet’s take a look at that: /p ul liFirst woman lected governor of Alaska,br / who beat one of his own party: Palin: check, check. Caroline… no./li liPalin oversees $2.9 billion state budget. Caroline raised $65 million for the city’s public schools./li liChaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: Palin.br / Caroline was director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships for thebr / the New York City Department of Education./li liElected mayor for two terms: Palin: check. Caroline… no elected office./li /ul /blockquote p Jennifer's a href=http://injennifershead.com/?p=384similarly unimpressed/a by Kennedy's media performance -- including her fondness for, um, like, fillers, you know? /p p /ppSo Caroline Kennedy thinks she is the a href=http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/29/kennedy.senate/most qualified/a person to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat.  She puts it so eloquently/p blockquotepI’m really coming into this as somebody who isn’t, youbr / know, part of the system, who obviously, you know, stands for thebr / values of, you know, the Democratic Party.  I know how important it isbr / to, you know, to be my own person. And, you know, and that would bebr / obviously true with my relationship with the mayor./p /blockquote p /pp The headmistress at The Common Room a href=http://heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com/2008/12/caroline-kennedy.htmlthinks/a the New York Times was nicer to Kennedy than Charlie Gibson was to Palin. /p pGloria Feldt a href=http://www.gloriafeldt.com/heartfeldt-politics-blog/2008/12/26/an-inconvenient-debate-caroline-kennedy-and-the-american-dre.htmlponders /awhat the competing narratives about Kennedy tell us about the American Dream, especially for women:/p pI'd rather tell the American dream narrative that any girl can grow upbr / to be a senator--you don't have to be quot;royaltyquot; to have a chance. /p pHere are more opinions on Kennedy's suitability for the Senate:/p pJulie form Momocrats a href=http://momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats/2008/12/why-i-back-caro.htmlthinks/a Kennedy would be a great Senator because, /p pShe's bright, well-educated, connected, involved, inspired by Obama,br / strong on education (she has worked for the last five years for Newbr / York public schools), knowledgeable and dedicated to charitable works,br / and is, I believe, at the exact point in life where experience andbr / wisdom meet to make her an excellent candidate. /p pAnali's a href=http://analisfirstamendment.blogspot.com/2008/12/caroline-kennedys-qualifications-poll.htmlalso a fan./a/p p Anne Doyle a href=http://www.annedoylestrategies.com/OnAnnesMind/Entry.aspx?ContentItemID=1110amp;EmailID=04129532326thinks/a that Kennedy's credentials are being cast in a lesser light because they are in areas traditionally seen as women's work -- raising money for charities, for example./p pDo you think the news media is giving Caroline Kennedy a fair hearing? What questions would you like to ask her, or any of the other rumored candidates for Hillary Clinton's seat? /p

pDon't throw your pearls before swine./p pI remember my late Irish grandmother saying that to me when I was an awkward tomboy, brimming with energy and a palpable yearning to be accepted and liked by other children. And I used to giggle at her and feel just a little embarrassed, even though I didn't know exactly what the expression meant./p pBut I know what it means now./p pAnd I realized just what a great piece of advice it was last week while watching Graham in the play area of a href=http://donmillsdiva.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and.htmluthe restaurant-which-shall-not-be-named-but-which-I-have-nonetheless-learned-to-love-without-shame./u/a/p pYes, my son is only three years old. And no, there were no actual swine involved. There was only a perfectly normal and wonderfully boisterous group of eight or nine-year-old boys who were charging up and down the play structure, shouting and hooting and electrifying the air with their rambunctious energy./p pAnd then there was Graham./p pGraham spent the better part of an hour trailing the lot of them like a puppy dog in search of scraps. He stood at their edges, clapping his hands in excitement when they shouted and made vain attempt after vain attempt to join in their games of tag, only to be left in their figurative dust time and time again./p pMy heart ached to intervene, to distract him or implore the older boys to include him, but I didn't. I merely sipped my coffee and observed. Not only did the boys' rejection do nothing to dissuade him, Graham was so intent on trying to join the crowd that he actually failed to notice the overtures of a smaller, quieter boy who approached him and tried to interest him in a slide designed for children closer to their age./p pAs I watched I couldn't help but remember my grandmother's advice and I soon realized that the aching feeling in my heart was as much regret as it was sadness for Graham./p pCheck out the rest at:/p pa href=http://www.donmillsdiva.blogspot.com/www.donmillsdiva.blogspot.com/a/p p#160;/p

pFrom Sarah Palin to Tina Fey -The Betty Editors, a href=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/BettyConfidential.com/a /ppimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03830.jpg alt=Sarah Palin width=300 height=300 //p pstrong1. Sarah Palin/strongbr /Pit bull with lipstick, governor grandma, love her or hate her, you have to admit - Sarah Palin captured everyone's attention this year. Her acceptance speech and her debate performance was watched by millions and millions. Even those who didn't want her a heartbeat from the President conceded she was a babe with great political skills. And, you betcha, we have not heard the last of her./p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03823.jpg alt=Michelle Obama width=300 height=300 //p pstrong2. Michelle Obama/strongbr /An American Dream girl. She's been labeled everything from emover-bearing/em to ema throw-back /em(putting her career on hold to support her husband on the campaign trail and care for her daughters). She'll of course be our first ever African American first lady, and she certainly seems to have the strength and grace to withstand the scrutiny that will be trained on her and her family for at least the next four years. For now - we can't wait to see what she wears to the Inauguration!/p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03821.jpg alt=Hillary Clinton width=300 height=300 //p pstrong3. Hillary Clinton/strongbr /She may never be Madame President (... but Madame Secretary of State is nothing to sneeze at). Even her detractors have to admit - the brilliant Hillary Clinton is a study in never-give-up, a lesson in dogged determination. We've known her since her first year as our super-smart yet somehow awkward first lady - she sure broke the mold. She famously stood by her man, yet put those 13 million cracks in the glass ceiling. We've seen her tackle universal health care (and fail), go though more hairstyles and pantsuits than Career Barbie, cry on camera, and now, be appointed to the Cabinet of the man she tried to beat to the Presidency./p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03822.jpg alt=Meredith Whitney width=300 height=300 //p pstrong4. Meredith Whitney/strongbr /First they called her a quot;money honeyquot; (one of the pretty young things trotted out to make financial news watchable) - now they call her the quot;Dollar Dominatrix.quot; Whatever her nickname, this financial super-star is best known as the woman who called the economic crash in October of 2007. Too bad no one seemed to listen - at the time. A managing director at Wall Street bank The Oppenheimer (OPY), the beautiful, ballsy blond is - incongruously - married to professional wrestler John Layfield. Layfield's WWF cred came in handy when she needed him to escort her to and from her office - telling the cold hard truth on Wall Street doesn't exactly make you Miss Popularity. Whitney has become such a sought-after speaker that she now has an agent, and it's said that a word from her can wipe out millions of dollars in share values. Who says girls aren't good at math?/p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03829.jpg alt=Stephanie Meyer width=300 height=300 //p pstrong5. Stephenie Meyer/strongbr /From observant Mormon housewife to Vampire-literary sensation ... does it get any more interesting that that? She doesn't drink or smoke or watch R-rated movies. She wrote the first book (the idea of which came to her in a dream) in three months while caring for three kids under age 5. People of all ages dress up as her characters, her book-signings are mobbed, and the fansite Twilight Moms has hundreds of thousdands of members. We can't wait to see what she dreams up next./p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03828.jpg alt=Tyra Banks width=300 height=300 //p pstrong6. Tyra Banks/strongbr /Surely the most beautiful entertainment mogul ever. Another teetotaler, Tyra somehow has her perfectly manicured fingers firmly on the pop-culture pulse of the nation. The model-actress-singer-businesswoman shows no sighs of stopping and we can't take out eyes off her whether she wears size 2 or size 12./p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03824.jpg alt= width=300 height=300 //p pstrong7. Nastia Liukin/strongbr /You know who she is! That adorable gymnast who looks more like a ballerina - tall, graceful and sweet as apple pie. Liukin, who brought five Olympic medals home from Beijing, was just named Sportswoman of the Year by the Women's Sports Foundation. Of course - gymnastics runs in the family. Born in Russia to two professional gymnasts, Liukin's family immigrated to the US when she was 2 - making her yet another American dream success story. She plans to perform in the world championships in London. After that - who knows? She's expressed interest in becoming an actress ... and she has a Visa commercial and plenty of TV appearances under her belt already./p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03825.jpg alt=Rachel Maddow width=300 height=300 //p pstrong8. Rachel Maddow/strongbr /There's something about Rachel Maddow that makes her so watchable. Sure she's brilliant and well-spoken - not to mention the first openly gay anchor to host a prime time news show - but there's more to it. Perhaps it's the unique combination of those beautiful Judy Garland eyes, her rapier wit, and the fact that she dresses like a 10-year-old boy off the set. She defies categorization./p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03820.jpg alt=Britney Spears width=300 height=300 //p pstrong9. Britney Spears/strongbr /emTrain wreck, pop princess, has-been, next big thing ... again/em. Britney called 2008 her quot;crazy yearquot; in a recent interview ... ain't that the truth. No matter what she does, we can't help rooting for her. And no matter how crazy she gets, we'll never get tired of watching her./p pimg src=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/images/a1/artimg03827.jpg alt=Tina Fey width=300 height=300 //p pstrong10. Tina Fey/strongbr /Does Tina Fey owe much of her recent superstardom to her doppleganger Sarah Palin? Perhaps. No matter what the cause, 2008 was the year that took Tina Fey into the comedic stratosphere. With her sexy librarian glasses and come-hither cleavage, Fey makes funny as well as all - and better than most - of the funny boys. Brains, beauty, and a keen eye for political satire. Now that's something to laugh about./p pa href=http://www.bettyconfidential.com/ar/h/a/a03567.htmlhttp://www.bettyconfidential.com/ar/h/a/a03567.html/a/p

pWhen I decided I wanted to start writing about my passions, sports and video games, I knew that there are going to be people out there who obviously know more about the categories than I do. But something that troubles me is when I post a video game article on quot;video game sitesquot;, I get completely torn apart by all the males that seem to know everything there is to know about the industry. Insults about my gender quickly follow any post which always seem to include the line quot;go make me a sandwichquot;. These statements no doubt anger me to the point I want to shove that sandwich they speak of somewhere that is not appropriate to state. A sense of anger would overwhelm me when I would read comments about my posts./p pAfter numerous hateful comments, I started googling the behavior towards women in the video game industry and found out I was not alone. Though not everyone is an ignorant chauvinist, cruel comments and quot;ganging upquot; on females during online video game play is quite rampant. I have recently become a strong supporter of women's future in the gaming industry when I ran across a video about the original women in gaming. To be honest, I had no idea that women have played key roles in many classic games since the 80's. Women like Donna Bailey (programmer of Centipede) and Carol Shaw (first video game designer) that are talked about in the video seemed to comfort me. I thought about how much these women have been influences and broke into a completely male dominated industry and paved the way for women to have a future. Though the gaming industry is very slow to adapt, more and more of Corporate America is opening their doors to women./p pThankfully Web 2.0 has come along and open the door to social communities where girls can gather and not feel so hated and alone in the video game world. Sites like GrrlGamer.com, GamerVixens.com (still in beta) and WomenGamers.com are all sites that create a welcoming atmosphere. I look forward to the day of posting a blog article to a quot;hardcore gamerquot; site and having a legitimate debate with someone about the topic without being terrified to check the comments./p pWhen I feel frustrated about the way other women are treated, I watch this video and it makes me hold my head up and be proud for writing about what I love and what women have done for the industry that I love so much./p pa href=http://onnetworks.com/videos/play-value/women-in-gaming target=_blank title=Women in Gaming Videohttp://onnetworks.com/videos/play-value/women-in-gaming/a /p

pI have no problems with homosexuality or lesbianism. I would not treat a homosexual/lesbian any differently. They should be treated equally in terms of work opportunities etc./p pWhether one becomes homosexual through nurturing or if it's in their genes... I really can't say. It's debatable - Is there a gay gene? (is it rainbow coloured?) /p pWhat I despise though are Faux Fags! I say faux fags because I mean those people who aren't really homosexuals or lesbians but pretend to be that way because they think it makes them look good... or special.. or more interesting than they could ever be if they were just straight. Some call if pseudo-homosexuality or faux lesbianism./p pstrongIs it just a trend? Is it hip to be gay?/strong/p pOf course it is! Being gay is a huge trend now! Especially amongst teens and young adults./p pIn Singapore... why is it we see so many teenage same sex couples, but not as many mature same sex couples? (by mature I mean about 30 years and older)/p pPerhaps because teens are more susceptible to following a trend????? Or do you really believe we quot;out-growquot; gayness as we get older? I call bullshit on that. I think a lot of gay teens aren't really gay in the first place./p pThe media keeps on hyping up gayness. Do you remember the Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. ? Their song quot;All the Things She Saidquot; became a hit because the girls claimed that they were a lesbian couple. Later, it came out that the ladies were in fact, NOT GAY. That was just part of their marketing gimmick, but the mere suggestion was enough to make the song a hit./p pEven more recently, we have Madonna and Christina and Britney kissing each other on stage to up the sizzle factor./p pFollowing very closely, Lindsey Lohan and Samantha Ronson relations have filled the pages of many celebrity gossip magazines. My... my... what a strange coincidence eh? (maybe it's airborne this gay gene *I am rolling my eyes*)br /---------/p pWhen I was younger, when my straight girlfriend and I were at a club, we realised that men will come pouring over us when we started dirty dancing with each other as if we were sexually intimate/interested in each other. Ok.. I may be totally wrong, but we thought we looked hot together. (haha.. if the joke's on me)/p pAll that lesbian show-off type dancing was a good fun while I was a teenager, but was I really innately or subconsciously lesbian???strongNo./strong It was all pretend. In reality, the sheer thought of going down on another woman makes my stomach turn. /ppNow then... Is it a far cry for me to say that a lot of strongstraight girls/strong out there have also realised the appeal of lesbianism to men? And are for a fact not really lesbains???/p pstrongWhat are your views? Do leave them in the comment section or on my blog a href=http://www.holly--jean.blogspot.com/www.holly--jean.blogspot.com/a. (There's also a poll there on this topic)/strong/p

pShe had her coat on with the furry hood and her oldest worn boots. She stepped out and realized she forgot to put her leggings on under her jeans as the cold attacked her legs. She ran down the street to the store to get exactly what she needed: butternut squash, onions, peppers and crackers. She already had the cheese and chocolate. At the checkout she looked at the girl behind the counter and saw how sad she looked. Miserable, in fact, with tears in her eyes. And she immiediately went back to the time when she was waiting tables, aching to get out- to move into a better home, better career, better life. She wondered what this girl was crying about. She imagined it had something to do with being tired, having too many compromises run her life, not enough money to pay her bills. Or worst of all, the paralysis of credit card debt that puts a stronger lock on the prison she's in. She felt herself well up with tears just thinking about her own life a few years before. As she walked back out into the cold she let the tears freeze on her face until she got to her front door, and then stood inside and let them melt knowing that she had been that girl and now was more the woman she had always intended to become. She stepped out of her boots, placed them next to the trash and went inside./p

pIt's fun fact friday and since I can't think of a fun fact to share about myself today I'm going to tell you a fun fact about the human body:/p pBabies are born with 300 bones. However, by adulthood we only have 206 bones in our body./p pReason? As babies grow some of their bones fuse together forming one bone out of many./p pNow... speaking of babies. Some of you noticed Mistletoe's quot;9 more monthsquot; comment on my last blog and have been wondering if I'm pregnant......................................./p pa href=http://www.jennifersuarez.com/Journal/index.cfm?currentMonth=1amp;currentYear=2009#599uRead the rest of this entry on www.JenniferSuarez.com/u/a/p

pnbsp;/p p    Happy New year to All !/p p                 I have a sincere question about gender equality that hopefully ladies of all ages will answer .  First of all , I would like to state that I believe men and women are completely equal yet utterly different . To me equalty does not mean sameness  . Everything about us is different however we are completely equal . /p p                The last 20 years have seen significant advancement and prominence in once exclusively male domains : politics , finance , executive business positions , chefs , even poker !  I am aware that although there is greater access to opportunity for women in all formerly male dominated positions , equal pay is still not on the table . The question I have is : do women who work in once male dominated postions feel that they are free to do their work as women or is there is subtle or not so subtle expectation that you will do it the same as a man would ? /p p               Can we engage in a dialogue on this ? /p pnbsp;/p

pMy dear sweet sister Mary died on December 10th. After our mother died in 2001, Mary was the closest thing I had to a mother. I am the youngest of nine children, and, although I still have several living siblings, this loss - especially so close to the holidays - has been very hard to bear. I remember Mary as a fiercely independent woman who loved to live, travel, have adventures, and had a marvelously demented sense of humor. Her decline and death has left a hole in my heart, and it will take a long time for that to heal. I would like to share with you the words of remembrance that I wrote the night Mary passed away. May you all have someone like Mary in your life: /p pMy eyes are bone-dry. I've cried out all the tears I can today. My eyesbr / actually ache and burn. And there's this tumor of discontent - uneasy,br / nausea-inducing discontent - roiling in my gut./p pDid I spend enough time talking to her? Telling her I loved her?/p pWas there more I could have done to make her last years more enjoyable?/p pShould I have stopped being a coward about back pain and made sure I drove up to New Jersey more often to see her?/p pThe first year I lived in Maryland, I drove up to New Jersey as often as I could. I had a 1989 Ford Escort station wagon with no air conditioning, and I drove up and down I-95 with my left arm dangling out the window the whole way. I did this enough times that year to actually permanently cook my left arm into a darker pigment than the right arm. It's very attractive. But, honestly, it was worth it. I had a community of family there. And then, when she was still vibrant and able, Mary was at the center of it./p pMary was fun. She took me on my first motorcycle ride (right before she had a horrific accident - that was when I was a little kid.) She had a Triumph Spitfire sports car, and I believe she left the transmission (or the engine itself) somewhere on a New Jersey highway shortly after purchasing it. At one point, she headed west and lived in a valley outside of L.A. for a while. She drank Tab obsessively and smoked (much to everyone's dismay) Benson amp; Hedges menthols by the carton./p pMary came to visit me when I lived in Russia. She came over with our sister Barb, and we had a blast. Of course, that was in 1990, and some Central Asian guys on Red Square thought my sisters - with their Jersey uniforms of floral leggings and bright t-shirts - were hookers. I laughed my ass off. Looking for souvenirs in Izmailovsky Park, Mary chose the most bizarre and unlikely thing possible - a real dead squirrel, stuffed, posed, and glued onto a tree branch. Some sort of snap binder clip had been inserted into its paws, and it clutched a pack of cigarettes and stared with wild glass eyes. She carried it home in this awful Pepto pink box. I have no idea how the hell she got it through U.S. Customs./p pSeveral years ago, while vacuuming, Mary bumped the shelf where she displayed her Muscovite squirrel. All the fur fell off in one fell swoop./p pNaked dead varmint? Not so cute. Citizen Squirrel was finally given the Hefty bag salute and removed from the premises./p pAfter Mom died, Mary had the unenviable task of handling the estate. There wasn't much to the estate. Mom had nine kids. We were like a constant plague of locusts. But it was a mess nonetheless. That was back in 2001. Springtime./p pIn the wake of 9/11, when the airlines were desperate to get passengers back in the air, United had a frequent flyer mileage reward sale. From my old days of flying back and forth between DC and Uzbekistan/Kazakhstan/YouNameAStan, I had a pile of miles. With the sale, I had enough to buy tickets for myself and Mary to Thailand./p pI have great affection for Thailand, and I thought my sister would really dig it. She did. I booked a fabulous hotel in Phuket (a hotel that later would be swept away in the devastating 2004 tsunami) for $28 a night. We ate and slept like royalty and shopped like there was no tomorrow. I have incredibly fond memories of that trip, despite my sister permanently burning the tops of her feet because of her refusal to apply sunscreen to them on a very sunny beach, and despite my mugging at knifepoint in a Bangkok market. I remember coming back to the hotel from the market, after dealing with the police, $800 lighter in my pocket (I was buying textiles.) I'd made my sister see the hotel doctor about her feet while I was strikeshopping/strike being mugged./p pI staggered back into the room, wallet empty, shopping bags unused, and my sister asked, quot;What the hell happened?!?quot;/p pI shrugged. quot;I got mugged. Lost everything I had.quot;/p pMy sister responded. quot;Jesus Christ, what should we do?quot;/p pMy answer, quot;Fuck it. Let's order room service.quot;/p pAnd we did. And we laughed. And I have this awesome photo of my sister, hepped up on pain killers for her feet, holding the vented lid to her room service plate over her face like some twisted carnival mask. It's in my office at work. I put it on the shelf across from my desk so I can see her goofy, plated face every day when I sit down./p pMary would travel with me to the Yucatan Peninsula, too, back in 2003 or 2004. I can't quite remember the year tonight. Forgive me for my lapses - I'm not firing on all cylinders. That year, I was going to travel alone to the Mexican coastal town of Tulum (a relatively short drive from Chichen Itza) for my birthday. However, I suffered a little mishap two days before I was supposed to fly.../p pI was scheduled for a colonoscopy. My mom had colon cancer, so I thought it was wise to start early with preventative checks./p pI did the miserable two days of prep for the procedure, finishing up with that wretched morning-of-the-camera-up-the-rump fiesta that leaves you running for the bathroom and wishing for sweet death. As I waited for the tummy rumblings, I laced my hiking boots in preparation of packing them up for the Mexico trip. When nature not only called, but screamed my name, I bolted from the sofa, knocking one boot off onto the floor./p pAnd I tripped over that frigging boot./p pAnd broke cleanly in half the big joint that holds the big left toe to the angry left foot./p pI spent my birthday that year hopping around in a big fuzzy black bootie./p pBut through the wonders of travel insurance, I was able to reschedule for Christmas, and Mary wanted to come along. We met up in Newark, ready for a Christmas week of sun, surf, and Mayan ruins./p pWell, we got the Mayan ruins./p pBut we also got a freak weather front that brought temperatures in the 60s, rather than the 80s and 90s, and with it, a plague of small black flies. I still went snorkeling (for five or six minutes at a time before I would come out of the water shivering and blue) and my sister still enjoyed the beach. It's just that I started to appreciate my sister as a smoker; her menthols kept the damn flies away./p pFlies or no flies, we had a blast./p pBut it was on that trip that I noticed my sister was faltering. She took spills, including one spectacular fall on a tile floor that made my stomach lurch and fear that our trip was over./p pIt turned out, my sister had MS./p pAmazingly, she self-diagnosed her MS, watching some home shopping channel charity event. Every symptom they described, she had. She went to her doctor, they scheduled some brain scans and discovered fast-moving lesions. Not a good sign. And Mary's health was already compromised: diabetes, smoking, and constant pain from injuries she sustained in a horrific car accident wherein she was struck from behind at stop light by a moron reading architectural plans as he sped down the street on a military facility. Mary had been a volunteer EMT, and some of the guys who responded to her accident knew her. They thought she was dead. But Mary was tenacious. She survived. But she had to have knee replacement surgery, and things were never the same for her./p pWe thought we were going to lose her a couple of years ago, when she became horribly sick and spent weeks and weeks in the hospital. I kept trying to mentally prepare myself, but that's almost a joke. No matter how well prepared you think you are, you never really are. She struggled back from that illness, but she was fading./p pThis year, she spent months in the hospital, and every single time I spoke to her, all she wanted was to go back home. I think she knew her time was very limited./p pAnd now she is gone. Like my mother. Like my brother Ed. I was going to a doctor's appointment en route to work today when I got the call. And I cried. And I cried. And I cried. Between meetings today, I would stop and cry. When people were nice to me, I had to then go shut my door and cry. I've had a mule-kick headache since noon./p pNothing seems quite right today. Music on the radio. Laughter in the hallway. Stopping at the pharmacy to pick something up. It feels wrong to be doing anything quot;normalquot; - whatever that really means. I feel like I should have just curled up on the sofa and slept. But that's not right, either./p pLife does continue, whether we feel it's rhythm acutely or muffled through grief. Life continues. And those of us still here have to tell the stories of those who are not./p pMy sister is no longer here. But I am./p pWhat is that line from quot;Shawshank Redemptionquot;?/p pquot;Get busy living, or get busy dying.quot;/p pI guess I better get busy living. For you, Mary, I will get busy living./p pBe at peace, Mary. No more pain. No more limitations./p pBe at peace./p pemMary Colleen LaMannabr /July 21, 1946 - December 10, 2008/em/p pnbsp;/p

pAre you feeling a bit blue ladies because you don't have a man for New Year's Eve?  Well Don't!  It's all good, cuz Sexxy hates England and ain't havin it no more!!!  How bout them apples!  /p pIt doesn't matter ladies...move on cuz we are higher beings on this planet than that....BELIEVE IT....I have seen where we can go and as long as you know who you are underneath it all....you're becoming a better woman!!!   /p pI mean...it may take a few more lessons but you will get to the promised land ladies.  I'm positive about it and I know it's coming soon.  /p pCheers to the most ultimate reason to start 2009 shining brightly...come on ladies let's step out into this vast universe and change things in our favor!  /p pHappy New Years Ladies...embrace your challenges and get stronger!  This lifetime has no expiration date; so make the most of it and get there!!! We all know life throws us curve balls from time to time.  But if we hang on; uwe see we don't die....we get stronger/u! /p pOh, and don't think cuz u know me, that this same thing ain't happenin elsewhere....it exists here in the midwest, but it's like wide spread like a damn epidemic.  It's here, in fuckin big/small town USA St. Louis, Missouri...where the question asked of you when you meet someone is quot;What high school you went to?quot; Yes it is..but Ummm, YEA, it exists EVERYWHERE.  /p pSo this is my salute to women all over our planet.  We're not in it alone ladies...look to your left and to your right, it runs rampid in ALL society today.  /p pSo any ladies that are strongnewly single/strong or strongchoosingly single/strong or strongunexpectedly single/strong or strongneed to be single/strong but strongcan't be single/strong in France, Italy, Sweden, Columbia, the Phillipeans, all you georgeous, incredibly talented, absolute fabulousity strongfrom top to bottom/strong, gleaming strongfrom fingertip to fingertip/strong, stronger than you realize sistas of mine on this planet....strongrejoice in this day/strong!!!!/p pAnd be honest with yourself....he wudn't EVEN it, was he????  Come on and admit it...your better off...to the left with that shit...I'm not having it....we ain't buyin it...sell that shit around the corner!!!  I'm sooooo good!  /p pThank You Lord!!!  Don't forget ladies...forgive but don't forget!  These lessons trully define our character and the mark we leave on this time in history!  It's ours to define!/p

pstrongI am really bothered by something that has continued to be a running theme in a lot of churches headed by Black Pastors. There appears to be this envy, jealousy, hatred...whatever you want to call it...against President-Elect Obama. Once again, I had to go to church and listen to President-elect Obama be wrongly criticized. Basically, I feel that a lot of Black male preachers are simply jealous of President-elect Obama's place in the hearts and minds of Black women./strongstrongStay with me for a second and I will explain.../strongstrongSince the twilight years of the Civil Rights movement (which followed the years after Dr. King's death), Black preachers have had Black women under their control. Without question, we blindly followed these dastardly preachers as they presided over the social, political, spiritual, and educational demise of the Black race (to name a few)./strongstrongRead the rest at:/strongstronga href=http://agapeloveempowermentministry.blogspot.com/http://agapeloveempowermentministry.blogspot.com/a/strong/p

pimg src=http://www.thecocktailcafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/wedding-rings.jpg alt= What kind of wife are you? width=385 height=185 align=left //p pnbsp;/p pIs it just me or was 2008 the year of the wife? The heat is off the desperatebr / housewives and all eyes are on that thing that you thought had gone west withbr / our mothers’ generation: the art of being a good wife. /p pIn the space of a few months, the spotlight has shifted from women asbr / mothers, women juggling careers and families, and women who drink too much, tobr / women in their role as wives. This is about a new interest in how females keepbr / their men happy./p pFor those of us who are using the credit crunch as an excuse not to have ourbr / legs waxed and cook only pasta and bottled pesto, there is something called thebr / “strongaverage and we’re fine, thanks/strong” wife./p pnbsp;/p pThe categories of wife that emerged thisbr / year:/p h31.) THE GODDESS WIFE/h3 pLast year’s frumpy mummy has morphed into this year’s Goddess wife. Shebr / indulges her man with luxurious puddings and sugary cocktails (strongHellobr / Mama!… so you already know which one I am right/strong?), and she doesn’t wearbr / mom jeans either. strongHomemaking is her forte, but always packaged asbr / foreplay/strong. Her priority is strongmaking her husband feel verybr / special/strong and, just on the side, as it were, she happens to be strongabr / fabulously successful businesswoman with a razor-sharp mind/strong./p h32.) THE POSH/h3 pThis wife recognizes her responsibility to look good, spendbr / money and generally showcase her man’s wealth and virility, but also knows thatbr / she is now required to bring something extra to the party. In the past, a careerbr / might have clashed with the job of ego maintenance, but first strongVictoriabr / Beckham/strong and now strongJada-Pinkett Smith /stronghave all provedbr / that the strongsporting trophy wife with projects of her own is a superiorbr / asset/strong. Now the Posh Mom with wit and commercial savvy gets morebr / attention and makes her man look modern. /p h33.) THE PROJECT MANAGER (PM) WIFE/h3 pstrongHillary Clinton/strong is a PM wife. These wives are at least asbr / ambitious as their husbands, but they are pragmatic and focused on the package —br / in other words, if they know they can get where they want to be faster as abr / team, stronga PM wife will sideline her career to get behind her man/strong.br / PM wives look as if they have given up a lot, but never forget, strongtheirbr / husbands are their No 1 investment/strong and, as often as not, the wives arebr / forcing the pace. The new generation of politicians, bankers and big businessmenbr / often have PM wives (as opposed to Vocational wives, see below), becausebr / strongthey are extremely capable and happy to be left running their ownbr / empires/strong. They are the least surrendered behind the scenes, though theybr / give the outward appearance of always putting themselves second./p h34.) THE VOCATIONAL WIFE/h3 pShe is blissfully content pottering around in her own fragrant, pastel-tintedbr / world, leaving her man to do all the hunter-gatherer stuff, and she freelybr / admits that if she didn’t assume this traditional role, strongtheir marriagebr / would never survive/strong. The vocational wife strongoozes maternalbr / instinct and tends not to differentiate much between her kids and herbr / husband/strong, but note, strongthis is her choice/strong, and, like thebr / PM wife, she has her own power and sphere of influence./p h35.) THE INSPIRATIONAL WIFE/h3 pstronga href=http://www.thecocktailcafe.com/mom-knows-style/michelle-obama-fashion-we-can-afford/ target=_blank title=Michelle Obama shops at Hamp;M, JCrew, and Gap storesMichelle Obama/a/strong is the no-contest Inspirational wifebr / of the moment, having reinvented the role of supportive political spouse. Nobr / more smiling in the background, wearing navy and a hairspray helmet.br / strongMrs. O’s MO is “keeping it real”,/strong keeping it equal and keepingbr / it modern. She is the first first-lady (elect) to dress in a href=http://www.gap.com/ target=_blank title=The Gap Store Official Website where Michelle Obama shopsGapimg id=snap_com_shot_link_icon class=snap_preview_icon src=http://i.ixnp.com/images/v3.61.1/t.gif alt= //a, a href=http://www.hm.com/ target=_blank title=Hamp;M Official Website where Michelle Obama ShopsHamp;Mimg id=snap_com_shot_link_icon class=snap_preview_icon src=http://i.ixnp.com/images/v3.61.1/t.gif alt= //a, and a href=http://www.jcrew.com/ target=_blank title=J Crew official website where Michelle Obama shopsJ.Crewimg id=snap_com_shot_link_icon class=snap_preview_icon src=http://i.ixnp.com/images/v3.61.1/t.gif alt= //a, the first who wasbr / strongpreviously the primary breadwinner/strong, the first to talk about herbr / husband’s “stinky” presence in bed. The first to strongbehave, in short, likebr / a regular wife/strong (though with the appropriate extra injection of smarts,br / glamour and a little bit of style). She is inspirational, not because she isbr / married to the next president of the United States, but because strongshe isbr / determined to make the most visible wifely role in the world a reflection of thebr / lives most of us live/strong./p blockquote pstrongNo1 Inspirational wife: Michelle Obama/strongbr /strongTopbr / quote:/strong “People have notions of what a wife’s role should be in thisbr / process, and it has been a traditional one of blind adoration. My model isbr / different: I think most real marriages are.”/p /blockquote h36.) THE WORKING-AT-IT WIFE/h3 pIn the past, this woman might have had a walker, or maybe a toy-boy (or girlbr / if your into that) companion, but that was before wifeliness became abr / competitive sport. The WAI wife is an strongalpha woman who knows thatbr / marriage plus kids is necessary to make up the full life package/strong, andbr / she wants to get this one sorted and filed the way she has done every otherbr / lifestyle choice. Inevitably, strongher husband is a lesser noise than she isbr / and this can make life difficult/strong: the compromise issue, not to mentionbr / which continent to settle on, is a problem, hence the “working at it”.br / strongMadonna/strong was the classic WAI wife. She hated to compromise, butbr / she knew that you have to do a bit of it, along with some handholding andbr / whispered ego-boosting./p blockquote pstrongNo1 WAI wife: Madonna/strongbr /strongTop quote:/strong “A goodbr / marriage is a contest of generosity.”/p /blockquote h37.) THE AVERAGE AND “WE’RE FINE, THANKS” WIFE/h3 pstrongThis wife is anyone who identifies with the followingbr / statements:/strong/p liMy husband cooks as often as I do and probably better; /li liI have cancelled all waxing, plus the gym, as a credit-crunch precaution; /li liI have never given a speech on behalf of my husband, though I might havebr / heckled during one; /li liI always wear knickers and hardly ever ones you would be happy to be runbr / over in; /li liI would hang on his every word, but not if there isbr / something distracting on television; /li liI do not ask if he likes what I am wearing because of course he is not goingbr / to “get” harem pants; /li pnbsp;/p pSobr / Which Wife R U? Leave me a Comment on my Website at a href=http://www.thecocktailcafe.com title=http://www.thecocktailcafe.comhttp://www.thecocktailcafe.com/a/p pnbsp;/p

pShe woke up with a urinary tract infection. Burning pain as she peed, the feeling that her bladder was dropping out of her body, blood on the toilet paper. Yeast infection well in effect, with an itch that was dull yet perpetual. The two go hand in hand, she found out. Blurred senstion behind her eyes, feeling utterly exhausted. She still didn't want those pills. So she took out her books and began to read. Bladder infection signifies being angry, usually at someone close to you, quot;pissed-offquot; literally. Flush it out of the body with water, lemon juice and take a concentrated does of cranberry several times a day. Vitamins C and E to help curb the infection. Echinacea and oregano oil, alternating, several times throughout the day with a few doses of garlic as well. She bought all of it, sat on the couch with her soup- butternut squash with turmeric- and water and chamomile tea, and rewrote her life plan in one afternoon. The infection took a week to clear, and three weeks total to ensure it was gone. Her body felt alive and new within three days. At the end of three weeks she thought she was in the clear so she had a hot fudge sundae. A small one, but it caused an almost instant relapse. She conquered it the next day, wondering why it is so much easier to go the route of being lazy than to work to feel good./p

pOver the past 2-3 months my pants have slowly grown tighter. I step on the scale and I see my numbers go up. I am helpless when it comes to the holidays. It's the food. My god the delicious, wonderful, butter filled, sugar coated, fat saturated, food. I love it all. From the turkey on Thanksgiving to the shrimp on New Years Eve I am someone who always partakes in ALL of the holiday feasts. It's not only the food that gets me, it's also the drinks. I enjoy the dark stouts, egg nogs, and wonderful wines with little regard to the sea of calories packed in every glass. The rest of the year I have restraint. I can behave. I can eat good and work out. But during the holidays I am lost in a sea of food without care./p pWhen the holidays come I sit on my butt, bundled in a mountain of blankets on the couch, and I eat and I drink. It's always the same rationale too. quot;It's winter. I could use the extra weight to keep me warm. My bulky sweaters will help disguise the extra pounds and it's so cold that I'll never wear anything more revealing than a pair of jeans anyway. Besides my boobs look bigger when I put on some weight! Trust me I can use as much help as possible in THAT department. I'll be fine. No worries. quot;/p pOf course that works great when I'm mindlessly shoving a plate of christmas cookies in my face and following them with a large glass of spiked egg nog. But when I step on the scale .../p pa href=http://www.jennifersuarez.com/Journal/index.cfm?currentMonth=12amp;currentYear=2008#596uRead the rest of this blog on www.JenniferSuarez.com/u/a/p

pAt the end of December, iThe New York Times/i ran two articles two days in a row about flight attendants. In the first, Katherine Zoepf profiled young women from Arab countries who left home to become flight attendants for Etihad, an airline based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The next day, Ann Hood (who will be my writing workshop instructor next semester - very exciting!) penned an op-ed looking back fondly on her days as a TWA flight attendant and the pride that airlines had in serving customers well./p pThe Dec. 22 article a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/world/middleeast/22abudhabi.html?partner=permalinkamp;exprod=permalinkIn Booming Gulf, Some Arab Women Find Freedom in the Skies/a, 9th in a series about life in the Muslim world, generated debate in the a href=http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/12/22/world/middleeast/22abudhabi.html?s=1amp;pg=1comments section/a not only about cultural bias and what constitutes freedom, but also what the role of stewardess means historically. In the comments, people slammed the author for her American view of freedom, the lack of information about other job opportunities that are available to women in the Middle East, and other comments that supported the stewardesses as pioneers for freedom. /p pFor a great summary of bloggers' criticism of the article, check out Fatemeh's round up at a href=http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2008/12/23/fly-girls-the-nyts-essentialist-profile-of-emirati-flight-attendants/Muslimah Media Watch./a She notes that the article is, often eye-rollingly essentializing when discussing Arab women and society./p pa href=http://grapeshisha.blogspot.com/2008/12/jobs-for-arab-women-what-does-freedom.htmlGrapeshisha/a, a site about life in the UAE, diplomatically summed up the discussion:/p blockquotep ...while the article appears to be factually correct, there is no discussion of other professions that Arab women have used to further themselves in society. And to an outsider,or someone not in the know the assumption is that a the furthest that a woman can go from being a housewife is to become a stewardess! I'm sure that is not what is intended. Nevertheless, the premise still holds that some women have changed their life through using the skies and the freedom associated with being a stewardess - that versus an option of not traveling or seeing the world./p pAn interesting article that could have been furthered by providing some exact data as well as looking at the wider impact of girl power in the Middle East. /p/blockquote pDanielle at a href=Sticky Candy/a had mixed feelings about the message:/p blockquotep The article is about young, unmarried Arab women have now found a career that lets them see the world. Yes, good, but it seems as if these women fit the archaic {albeit American} view of what a being a flight attendant means./p pI get it. Being a flight attendant allows these Arab women to face new freedoms, but how much exactly? I can't claim that I understand any of this. I certainly don't. My view is very much an Americanized view of Women's Rights, but I can only imagine that these women who have decided to follow their ambitions and beliefs, have also alienated their families and their home countries. Is this a cost that Arab women are willing to take?/p pBeing flight attendants, these women seem to become pigeonholed in two different ways... /p/blockquote pThe Dec. 23rd article on flight attendants, a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/opinion/23hood.html?partner=permalinkamp;exprod=permalinkUp, Up and Go Away/a struck me as particularly interesting because of the pride Hood describes that went along with her job as a flight attendant at TWA, back when we passed out magazines, offered playing cards to bored passengers, refilled coffee cups and we had dignity — passengers and crews alike. We were together up there at 35,000 feet, and for those hours in the clouds and stars, all of our worries stayed on the ground below. Hood saw the job in the same way as the women who work on Etihad planes do today: a chance to interact with people and travel. /p pSome of the harshest criticism directed at the article about careers as flight attendants for Arab women is that the jobs are serivle, and thus sexist. In addition, the old Fly Me ad was cited to show that flight attendants are all hired because they are young and pretty. While there is no doubt that some of this is true, a lot of it is as out of date as the ad is. a href=http://www.wyndhamworldwide.com/women_on_their_way/jane-air/archives/jane-ponders-sky-girls.htmlMusings from Jane Air/a has an interesting history of the field of cabin attendants, and reports that men make up about 20% of the flight attendant workforce today. Dress codes, weight restrictions, and other requirements that led to job offers only for the young and beautiful in the early days are in many cases in violation of anti-discrimination laws today, and thus no longer have as much impact on who gets hired. (Not that the industry is without problems regarding age discrimination, it's just not as bad today as it was years ago.) Etihad seems to be caught somewhere between the 1950s and current times in their policies./p pBlogs by flight attendants, like a href=http://www.theflyingpinto.com/The Flying Pinto/a and a href=http://www.shouldbewriting.blogspot.com/Another Flight Attendant Writing About Flying (and Other Stuff)/a, capture the occupational hazards and rewards of working in the airline industry. It's a hard job, and like many jobs that predominately are performed by women, the wages are low. Today's working conditions are more stressful than ever. Still, whether a woman is American or Egyptian or Brazilian, working a flight crew may provide opportunities to see the world that few other people have, and that chance is something to be prized./p piSuzanne also blogs at a href=http://cussandotherrants.comCampaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) amp; Other Rants/a. Her first book, a href=http://offthebeatensubwaytrack.comOff the Beaten (Subway) Track/a, is about unusual things to see and do in New York City./i/p