is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe I Won't Need Snow Tires.
Maybe I Won't Need Snow Tires.
Tonight is one of those nights when a Corona with lime tastes really really good! I'm also hoping it will solve The Problem Of The Two Day Headache. In any case, it can't make things worse.
I'm hoping that The Problem Of The Two Day Headache isn't related to the Lead Paint Removal Debacle about which I wrote a polite yet firm letter yesterday. I actually don't think it is.
I just got back from watching Jonathan Kozol speak. He's the one who wrote Savage Inequalities, the book about how northern cities have economic and social segregation in education that is the same or worse than southern cities' legal segregation of years past. He's a great speaker, and it made me cry a lot. Which was a little embarrassing. And he also made me laugh, because he's a really good speaker. For instance he said this, after describing how he had not been political at all when he was in college, "I mean, I was an English major at Harvard. That's like the cognitive equivalent of an eggplant!"
Then he said he was going to talk to us about young children "whose only sin is to be born to extremely poor people in a particularly cold moment in our nation's history." And he did. For a long time. And it was moving and sad. And it was odd hearing it in the setting of Amherst College, surrounded by all that wealth and privilege. Our educational system is broken, and has been for some time. There simply is no excuse for the disparities to be found in where the money goes ($8000 per child in the South Bronx, $18,000 per child in a wealthy Long Island suburb) and the background of other, deeper and equally systematic inequalities against which those educational scenes play out. He wrote his first book in 1964 and things have not gotten better. This country gives us so much to be ashamed about. It's hard for me to stomach speeches about bringing freedom to the world.
I guess this should put my own money woes in a more pleasant light, no? However, recently when I was talk to wine-and-ice-cream, I was bemoaning the fact that, if it turns out I need snow tires, I can't really afford them given my bi-coastal life$tyle, and what, was I going to have to call my dad, at age 38, to borrow money for SNOW TIRES?! Etc. He said, "Of course not. You'll borrow from me." And I said, "Great. Now I'm a real grown-up, because instead of borrowing money from my parents, I borrow it from my friends!"
Maybe I won't need snow tires.
Here's something that has nothing to do with money: Lately I've been listening to Brian Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets, and it is amusing how confused Blix is by the Quasi-Experimental Guitar Noises that emerge from the speakers. He stands still. His ears turn around. He tries to figure out what is happening and where it is happening. He was much happier when I was listening to Squeeze last week. (I tend to listen to the same album over and over again until it is TOO MUCH. Then I move on.) I guess the lesson is that even though Hans Blix is a rocker and not a new waver, he isn't down with Brian Eno.
Speaking of Brian Eno, I still really really love that cover that Caroleen and Doug did of the whole Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy album. It is SO GOOD. I tend to listen to it when I walk to school. In fact I hope they perform it again some time while I'm back in SF either in November, or in December/January. I hope this even though it would mean I'd have to watch Steve on stage. However, when the stage also contains Caroleen, Sunny, Seth and Doug, there's plenty of other stuff worth watching. So I'm not worried.
Speaking of walking to school, people don't walk here. Everyone thinks it's CRAZY that I walk to school because it is SO FAR AWAY. It is exactly one mile!
It is getting really really cold here. There have been snow flurries but no sticking to the ground. I got the car winterized. The mechanic was all "WHOA, you REALLY NEEDED that winterize process." I was all, to myself, "dude, what part of 'my car has never been outside of california' did you not understand?'"
David-from-LA, upon hearing about my cocktail party in SF, immediately wrote to request that I come to LA instead. So I said to him, "Dude. Where's my car?" Answer: my car is in Massachusetts. I will be in San Francisco. Maybe I won't need snow tires.
10:45 p.m. - November 11, 2004
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
