The Iron Jaw

Please don't hurt me, Cindy McCain...

2008-10-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

A Vote For My Husband Is A Vote For Me Not Breaking Your Fucking Neck
By Cindy McCain October 29, 2008 Issue 44•44
"Normally, I don't get out front and center like this in the media, preferring instead to support my husband from the sidelines and let the pundits do the talking. But as Election Day draws ever nearer, I'd like to take this time to urge all of you to put "Country First" and cast your vote for my husband, John McCain! Because a vote for John McCain is not just a vote for experience, fortitude, and American values, it's also a vote for me, Cindy McCain, not tearing your ribcage open and spilling your steaming viscera into the street...Continue reading....

Related ArticlesTop Story On John McCain Run Out Of Obligation September 3, 2008
34 Congressmen Arrested In D.C. Cockfighting Crackdown May 12, 2004
MediaOnion News Network: Cindy McCain Claims She’s ‘Just Like Any Other Female Human’

Papers sail the treacherous seas

2008-10-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy with my jaw-dropped open reading Daniel Ellsberg's memoirs of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers that I haven't really been putting much time here. Almost every page of "Secrets" is like peering deeper and deeper into the mechanisms of government. What strikes me most is the mendacity that goes beyond what I even imagined possible -- and I'm already well acquainted with the terrain. For now, I can say, take every statement about Iraq for a lie. Just flip them backwards, pretending as though we were in Alice in Wonderland.
What I wanted to put up here, though, was Editor & Publisher's Top 25 newspapers in terms of circulation. Notice the drop compared to last year. I guess all those layoffs really helped. I'd like to chart the drop in readership with the drop in editorial staff. Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor will cease printing daily. Instead, the paper will switch to online for its daily news and publish a weekly news magazine. The Web site boasts that the CSM is the first national daily to go totally online. Finally. Newspapers in recent years have had some of the very worst managers of any industry. They mishandled the Internet "revolution" like the three stooges and they just keep bumbling around making the same mistakes, thinking that THIS fix is the ONE. But managers keep reaching for the same old tools -- first and foremost editorial layoffs and maniacal drives to push up ad revenue instead of focusing on news quality. Maybe it's not too late to do what they should have in the first place, which is to shift to an online format that they charge readers for. Hey, the bloggers are getting their news content for free just by picking it out of online news sites. We could start there. Oh, but then they might not have anything left to blog about...unless they got off their butts to get their own content.

Wall Street tanks, competitive eating lives on

2008-10-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

It's good to know that even in a recession (which some ostrich-burrowing editor in charge of one of my stories changed to a verb and called it "skid") gluttony lives. Joey Chestnut packed away 45 slices of pizza last week in 10 minutes. The Japanese have us licked when it comes to competitive eating, however. Are we supreme in nothing?

Terrorists a-Twitter

2008-10-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Twitter: A Tool for Terrorists, Army Warns (from Wired) -- Twitter doesn't have an effective business model, but the hit microblogging service could become a killer app for terrorists, according to a draft report by U.S. Army intelligence. Terrorists could use Twitter as a tool to coordinate attacks by "tweeting" each other in "near real time."
I thought "killer abs" was an abuse of the English language. Now we are talking about "killer apps." Be careful who you're tweeting.

Do you know the way to San Jose Mercury News?

2008-10-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

More news from the Bay Area News Group: After more than 40 years in North San Jose, the Mercury News is considering a move to new offices. Read on...
And the company is eliminating the Tuesday edition of Alameda Journal, cutting what had been a twice-weekly community newspaper to a Friday-only publication. For more....

Jimmy Olsen is working at the Express?

2008-10-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

When I came across this photo caption in the East Bay Express' 30-year anniversary edition last week, I could smell the bad blood from cyberspace:
"For years, Yusuf Bey was treated with undeserved deference by this newspaper and the Oakland Tribune." The Bey context is explained below but what I found sad is that the Express had to make sure to share the blame of fluffy reporting about Your Black Muslim Bakery with the Trib. It's like a kid hollering "He did it too, mom!" Come on, reporters don't run to their mommy and tell. It reminds me too of when the Express published a several part story slamming the Alemeda News Group papers (now Bay Area News Group) written in part by "Jimmy Olsen." You know, the boy-photographer in Superman. (I checked: There was no one by that name employed at the Express.) Don't get me wrong: The stories were good and it is the only print outlet writing critically but honestly about the company and about BANG's effort to unionize.)
Anyway, here is the excerpt from the Express series, which I otherwise liked.
"2002
After years of ignoring dark accusations and rumors, the Express published a 17,000-word series on the shameful legacy of Your Black Muslim Bakery, the bizarre cult of personality run by Yusuf Bey. "Members and associates of the Bey 'family' have terrorized countless Oakland residents, fomented racial hatred, and even allegedly threatened to kill apostate women who break with the organization or go public with their stories," wrote Chris Thompson, who received credible death threats as a result of his reporting. The stories not only documented numerous real and alleged crimes, they also criticized the politicians and newspapers that allowed this situation to fester. "In May 1994, mayoral candidate Yusuf Bey organized a massive hate rally that featured disgraced Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Muhammad ranting about the 'no-good, hook-nosed Jews sucking our blood.' Yusuf Bey heaped praise upon his guest speaker and scolded Jews who objected to Muhammad's appearance. How did the East Bay Express respond? By running a profile of Bey later that summer that treated him as a thoughtful statesman." Five years later, after the tragic assassination of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, the Oakland Tribune and other news outlets regurgitated much of our coverage without ever reconsidering their own shameful track records."

Save credibility, not a buck

2008-10-21T14:18:00.000-07:00

Once again, a powerful name in journalism is floating the idea of consolidating and outsourcing copy editing. This time it's MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton, speaking at the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association's annual convention.
"In today's world, whether your desk is down the hall or around the world, from a computer standpoint, it doesn't matter," The Associated Press reported Singleton as saying after his speech. To read on...http://copydesk.org.

Huff or Die

2008-10-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

A menage-a-trois of awesome: http://www.funnyordie.com/huffordie

War criminals for McCain

2008-10-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

John McCain brushed off the significance of former Republican Secretary of State and war chief Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. McCain announced that he had the backing of four, count them F-O-U-R, former secretaries of state, including his old buddy Kissinger, Eagleburger, Haig and Baker. Each one of these men helped pull the curtain strings on acts in Vietnam all the way to Latin America and the Middle East that could be -- and in other countries are considered -- war crimes. At the least they turned the other way when gross human rights violations were happening with their knowledge. I would not be bragging about that kind of team on my side.

Edwards the dreamboat

2008-08-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Now that John Edwards has joined the "can't keep your dick in your pants" camp and ruined his political career, I guess his endorsement isn't such a hot commodity. As it happens, I was flipping through an April copy of the New York Magazine last night and found a story about Edwards backed Hillary Clinton (whose husband was the leader of the aforementioned camp) over Obama -- a suprise, according to the author, John Heilemann. But, Heilemann, wrote, Obama was too bitchy so Edwards cozied up to Hillary. Obama even got into it with Elizabeth Edwards over health care plans. Oh heavens! Since the coverage still is no more substantive now than it was then here are some links that provide Obama's voting record, as well as McCain's -- the Republican contender, who is ahead of Obama in some polls (can you believe it?!!!).
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/o000167/

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/m000303/

There are plenty others but the Washington Post has the easiest one to use, I think.

The Shadow Agenda

2008-08-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

Joel Brinkley's column on Durban II -- "Racism Conference: The shadow agenda."
Agree or not, the UCB prof makes some good points such as:
"The United Nations' much-maligned Human Rights Council is organizing Durban II, so it's small wonder that the planning is proceeding as it has. In a recent council session, a speaker asked to bring up a particularly egregious human rights problem: genital mutilation of women. Egypt objected mightily, demanding: 'We will not discuss issues related to Shariah law; this will not happen.' Shariah, of course, is canonical law based on the teachings of the Quran and the traditions of Muhammad. I wasn't aware that it advocated genital mutilation."

The many Oaklands

2007-03-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

Fruitvale district: by day a sunny, colorful neighborhood where you are more likely to hear Spanish spoken than English. But at night the beasts come out. Friday afternoon my older daughter and I were hanging out in Fruitvale, devouring tamales and empenadas at World Cup Tamale near the BART station.
Friday night a 19-year-old man was shot dead while walking with friends to a party. Even if the murder was gang-related, the district seems to suffer from a split personality. That's the way many parts of Oakland are.
I was thinking Friday how much the neighborhood had changed since I lived on High Street and 58th before the girls were born. When I returned after nearly a decade, High had become International Boulevard, perhaps a little grand but so hopeful.
I was stunned by the spark that seemed to have fueled a renaissance there, at least the strip along International between Fruitvale Avenue and 55th.
Everytime I go back I see more signs of life and pride and hope. Some folks are afraid of Oakland east of Lake Merritt and nearly anywhere in the city at night. But people live their lives - love, hate, cry, have babies, die - in those quarters of the city.
That's why the killing of Philip M. Williams Friday night cuts so sharply.

A plea for journalism

2006-11-11T22:19:00.000-08:00

The company I work for, one of the largest on the west coast, is in the midst of gutting its newsrooms and operations after a hefty takeover of a respected south bay paper in the name of cost-cutting. Profits from advertising are down for the $1 billion company, which means it is incapable of sustaining profits only matched by oil companies. Shareholders and private owners have been seeking like drug addicts the 20-25 percent profits that should be seen as an aberration rather than a bottom-line.
The atmosphere is terrible in the newsrooms, with rumors flying faster than breaking news. My newsroom is anemic, with reporters barely holding on to what little passion they have.
That the country is in such a sorry state is partly because reporters, editors, publishers and owners didn't do their job. But the FEWER REPORTERS THERE ARE THE LESS LIKELY DEMOCRACY IS TO BE SERVED.
It takes time and people to keep track of politicians and other public servants. That is what companies like mine are taking away.
They are laying off reporters, thereby stretching thin the reporters that remain. Newspapers need a staff that looks more like an army than a public relations office.
There are the lone bloggers who track down or publicize stories not reported by the big papers (TV news is a whole different story that I cannot defend), but are they covering five other stories that their editors want but that are less important? No. They are sitting at a computer with one thread, insulated for whatever reason from the pressure that reporters are bogged down by. Imagine what would happen if all the talented people were pooled together - dozens or even hundreds - on the trail of malfeasance. Instead, newspapers are cutting staff across the board.
Every person fired is a story less that can be reported. It's not an exaggeration. That is my life right now. I have colleagues wanting to abandon journalism because of the profits pressure. I don't care about the profits. I care about serving the public with news that helps people make decisions and keeps the official decision-makers honest and responsible. I've gone out on a ledge to write stories that officials hate me for. One tried to get me fired recently. My editor stood up for me but it shows you what a game it can be. What if there was no one there to tell residents how their tax money was, or wasn't, being spent? What if there were a lot more of us who could really dig into how it is being spent?
If you want reporters to be tougher then tell the publishers and owners not only what reporters are doing wrong, but that when they fire us YOU are going to get less news - real news.
It's easy to find out who they are. Every paper carries a page listing them. Or just call or e-mail the reporter and ask. My paper prints the reporters' contact info at the bottom of each story.
Reporters are not popular right now, sometimes for good reason. But it is the public that loses when there are less of them and owners answer to their bank accounts instead of their readers. Don't be afraid of negative news. The bad news is more likely true than false as we've seen with Iraq, the presidency, Congress, and other issues. In fact, reporters are able to print far less than the whole truth, or what would make it all seem to make sense because of obstacles editors and publishers throw up, as well as their own weaknesses - whether it is laziness, lack of training or imagination, bias or other reasons.
The first steps, however, are to make the bosses open up the pages to facts, make them look at their responsibility to YOU instead of to the bottom line and spend the money to make it possible.

Suffering from a desire for denial

2006-10-15T18:15:00.000-07:00

Some may choose to continue believing in the Bush Administration and the Republican party.
But it would be hard to defend the war in Iraq, or the war on terrorism as it is being carried out.
It takes a willingness to deny the evidence that has begun stacking up that the United States has trampled on the most basic of human rights.

It takes a desire not to know, a wish not to believe that U.S. authorities and the government have overstepped the bright line between aggressive policies and knowing condemnation of people based on nothing more than their country of origin or religion.

Which is why the new law governing military commissions of detainees suspected of terrorism is so troubling. The most egregious and dangerous of parts of the new law is the suspension of prisoners’ claim to contest their detention, or have their detentions reviewed - known as the claim (or writ in formal terms) of habeus corpus.

This is all the more alarming because of the stories of men who were caught up in the tornado of U.S. agents, officials and policy that swept through their countries, carrying them into the hands of U.S.-run detention facilities like Guantanamo Bay.

A military official told me a couple of years ago that the sweep of Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries after 9/11 was chaotic and so sudden that he and his colleagues had just days to filter hundreds and hundreds of men dumped on the Cuban island. The men were caught in a net indiscriminately spread across lands by officials who neither spoke the language nor were able to assess false from credible accusations.

Some villagers made claims against neighbors for personal reasons, a lawyer for several detainees told me. Some men were picked up for wearing Casio wristwatches – supposedly an indicator that he was a terrorist, the lawyer said. The stories of arbitrary justice are chilling in their lack of justice, in their number and in their similarity.

The men never had a chance.

At Guantanamo Bay, soldiers were informed the moment they landed on that barren island that the men in their keep were responsible for 9/11 and would stop at nothing to destroy America.

James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was accused of aiding Islamic terrorists, writes, “After September 11, I grew accustomed to seeing images of that day used to motivate service men and women, but reminders of the attacks were especially prevalent at Guantanamo. From the moment we stepped on base, the connection between the hijacked planes and our mission was spelled out. At the newcomer’s briefing, Captain Polet presented a slide show that included images of the September 11 attacks as well as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It also included bloody images of the aftermath of the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1996 attack on the U.S. military complex…in Saudi Arabia, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole…The message was clear: this could happen here, and that could be you.”

Yee was ultimately locked up in solitary confinement in the same military prison that housed some of the most infamous suspected terrorists, including Hamdi and Padilla. He was later exonerated for claims that he has aided the detainees and, ultimately that he had used government-owned computers to view pornography (The claim was also false, but it was strange given that I'd bet many soldiers stranded in Iraq look at their share of online porn).

Yee also writes that soldiers were briefed that, “Members of Al Qaeda had already infiltrated the Caribbean, and they were willing to do anything possible to ‘free their Muslim brothers’” That included at least several boys who would not be old enough to drive in the United States.
They are, as far as I know, still in detention.

A similar situation evolved in Iraq, most infamously at Abu Ghraib. The lawyer for Charles Graner, the former corporal convicted for his part in the sexual exploitation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, defended his client’s acts by characterizing every detainee as a potential enemy or terrorist. “When you make an omelette, you break some eggs,” he said during the closing statement on behalf of Graner, who was the man giving the thumbs up as he sat atop the human pryramid of naked Iraqis. Grainer was sentenced to 10 years in Ft. Leavenworth, the longest sentence so far for detainee abuse.

The capricious attitude that reduces humans to eggs is not confined to the military.
There is a pernicious fear lurking among Americans today. Muslims have become the enemy within and there’s no way to tell a “good” Muslim for a “bad” one – as if that was a reasonable distinction.

When I wrote a story about the anger of young U.S. Muslim man at the suspicion and scrutiny he encounters especially at airports, a reader wrote that if he didn't like being checked out all the time he should move to Iran. Huh?

In that light, the rule of law and due process become paramount.
Latin for "you have the body," habeus corpus is considered the most fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action. [Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). See http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm]

It can be - and has been - revoked temporarily in times of national crisis, such as by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. But this administration has suspended the prisoners' sole path to justice and has said that there is no end in sight to this so-called war on terror.

How can the detainees contest evidence that they and their lawyers are denied access to? How to prove their innocence when they are denied the right to challenge their detention?
How to escape the Kafkaesque nightmare in which they are ensnared?

Hiatus

2006-10-09T22:43:00.000-07:00

Silence is golden...but all good things must come to an end.
I've been trying to keep up with daily reporting and its inherent deadlines. Writing for a daily and getting a grip on a too-wide beat required a rather high learning curve.
I spent night after night for a few months exhausted. Then I took on several projects that are keeping me busy.
But as the government spirals out of control - here and elsewhere - I've had enough.
First of all, what mendacity is the warrantless wiretapping bill wrapped in? Secondly, what insanity rolling back the writ of habeus corpus in the foreign detainee bill?
As if those two moves were not enough (on top of everything else in the five years since 9/11), there are the presidential signing statements circumventing the foundation of the government. Then, as the usually banal 60-Minutes revealed, the nation's 40,000 name no-fly list is riddled with errors, including 14 of the 19 hijackers responsible for 9/11.
If the FBI cannot keep a proper list then how is warrentless wiretapping going to help?
Just looking back at the errors and lies during the J. Edgar Hoover reign over the FBI should be example enough of what should never happen but that is happening before our eyes and with tacit or explicit cooperation.

The Enemy Within

2006-03-25T14:52:00.000-08:00

Two Muslim were recently kicked off a SkyWest flight because a flight attendant onboard wasn't comfortable with them on the plane, according to a complaint filed by the two men. A photo of the father and son, Mohammed and Fazal Khan, in Thursday's SF Chronicle shows two men with long, bushy beards, white skull caps and dark skin. In other words, characteristics commonly associated with Muslims in popular media and imagination. They are Hayward residents originally from Fiji.

The airlines and Department of Transportation are still investigating the incident according to the Chron reporter, who quoted the younger Khan as saying, "If it can happen to us, it can happen to anyone."

The same day I saw this story, I pulled on my favorite t-shirt, the one with the caption: "I'm a Muslim. Don't Panic."
I had worn it a few times. White folks usually asked, Are you really Muslim? Or are you just messing with people?
I was wondering what that mattered. They obviously didn't get the joke, or just didn't think it was funny. I had, however, managed to get a row of seats to myself on a packed Southwest flight from DC to SF by wearing it.

This day, though, I was having coffee with my friend Lisa at Brewed Awakening on Euclid. Sam, the owner was ecstatic when he saw the t-shirt and asked me if I had heard about the Khans being kicked off the airplane. He was a lot nicer about it than me. He said, Don't you think that goes too far?

Yes. I do. The truth is they were kicked off for being Muslims, or as the joke goes, FLYING WHILE BROWN (like African Americans guilty of Driving While Black). Lisa told me a story about a flight she took on which two white guys sat down opposite of two Muslim men and proceeded to stare at them hostily for the entire trip.

The whole thing made me wonder: Could someone have asked them to stop? At least alerted the flight attendant that two men were harassing them? Would no one stand up for the Khans?There’s a 1000-pound gorilla in the room and no one wants to talk about it: fear and racism. Muslims and Arabs are the Enemy Within for many Americans. It's all wrapped up in terrorism, victimization, fear-mongering, war, and zenophobia. Fear of the foreign.

So, I am going to try to unwarp that sad package here. Stay tuned.

President Bush Doesn't Know How Interest Rates Are Set

2006-03-24T17:14:00.000-08:00

I really feel sorry for Americans sometimes because they have to put up with an incompetent president and a sorry bunch of reporters. Two events this week blew my mind.
One, President Bush does not know how interest rates are set. He told a group of reporters that "an independent group" is responsible for determining interest rates.
He is evidently not acquainted with Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke, the former and new head of the Federal Reserve Bank. Or the years of news: Greenspan is lowering/raising interest rates.
And he got cranky bc someone interrupted him as he was answering. So he said it twice.

Doesn't surprise me, given that he has said many times that he doesn't read newspapers. He gets all the news he needs from his staff, he says proudly. That fact alone explains why he seems to be living in an alternative reality regarding many issues, including the war in Iraq. Increasingly it reminds me of stories from journalists during the Vietnam War, who took to calling the 5 o'clock briefing the 5 o'clock follies. A seasoned Washington reporter warned me that reporting in DC was like having a bad case of cognitive dissonance: they'll tell you the sky is green and the grass is blue, she said.
Okay, news value is a hard thing to pin down for me sometimes, such as in this case. I think it is certainly news that the head of the most powerful country in the world (ugh!) does not know how interest rates work. But if it weren't for Marketplace, a radio show on KQED radio, I wouldn't have known. Didn't see it, read it or hear it from any other news outlet. Don't you think that's news, though? Honestly.

The other issue is the response that Bush got by taking a question from Helen Thomas, the 85-year-old salty reporter who covered Washington politics and the White House for ages. I've heard she still commandeers UPI's seat at WH press briefings. (Thomas spent years at UPI until the Moonies bought it. She quit and they began running the news service into the ground. Rev. Moon owns The Washington Times also.)

The news was not that he took her question (that's called doing your job) or was unscripted. The news should have been that he answered her question about why war by saying that "they attacked us, Helen." She had to remind him that had to do with Afghanistan. Not Iraq. What should have been newsworthy was the credibility, accuracy and substance – or lack of those qualities – of his answers. The bar has been set really low with that guy.

I promise to do better, always. Whether it is my lowly reporting job at The Argus or, one day, with higher profile positions.

Freelance Hell

2006-01-25T13:59:00.000-08:00

The only thing worse than being a freelance reporter is looking for a job as a reporter. There are many frustrations inherent in freelance work, but the worst is sinking time into finding publications to pitch stories to. You have to read them front to cover to find out if the story is appropriate for the publication. Then you have to tailor the pitch letter, which might get read next month if you're lucky, to the publication and hope for the best. I have some great stories that are important but damned if I can get anyone's attention. Or, more accurately, there are few outfits that pay in the United States that are looking for hard hitting political or investigative pieces. It's really sad. I'm searching for foreign outlets - another time suck. Meanwhile, I'm not making a dime.
That's why I decided to find a job. At least I can work my way up to a magazine or newspaper that will pay me to do the stories I want to do. Another time vacuum. I found a place in Washington, D.C., that might work out, which means I have to live apart from my family. Then, all of a sudden, a local paper calls me that I wrote freelance for in the past. So I scurry into action writing cover letters and putting clips together and driving 60 miles RT to drop off. The likelihood of the job coming through is slim but it means staying local. So, I do what I have to so that I'll have some chance. Now I have two distinct beats to study and more acronyms in the alphabet soup game to dicipher.
I became a journalist because I really believe that reporters are one of democracy's institutions. I want to do the kind of reporting that justifies that position, in fact I AM doing that kind of work. So, folks, don't blame the reporters. There are many on fire with passion and integrity - probably most of them in fact.

Moving Target: Female Reporter

2006-01-23T10:55:00.000-08:00

It happened again. A man it on me yesterday. Unremarkable except that he is a good friend's husband. For personal reasons beyond its total inappropriateness, when men I trust and believe are my friends make a pass at me it sends me into a tailspin. It's more upsetting than it should be. Or is it?
The incident reminded me of the last time I was so upset when a man - a mentor, a friend and my editor - did the same thing. It was a going away dinnner and I was still at one of my internships. I was suspicious when he suggested what sounded like a bit too romantic of a picnic. So I opted for a restaurant. We had a good conversation about politics and events. I suggested that we get a bottle of wine and go down to the river after all. I thought my original suspicion was misplaced (and felt bad for even thinking it) and I was enjoying the company. It turned out to be a far less public setting that I had expected. Of course, he did try to kiss me after I had made some lame attempts to dissaude his advances. I should have been clear and blunt from the start. I should never have been at that river in the first place. I spent the next two days curled up on a sofa going over every detail of the evening in my mind.
The thing is, I didn't feel like I could be clear or blunt because diplomacy was the only way to confront someone who had power over my career. I would ask this person to publish my work and as a freelancer I knew how easy it would be for him to say no. I had to lie and say that I would not have an affair with him because I loved my husband. That's true, but I wanted to say how hurt and angry I was by his assumption that I would have a romantic relationship with him in the first place. Meanwhile, another reporter had been calling me a name reflecting my physical features that was also not appropriate. Not rude, just inappropriate among colleagues. I finally told him not to. His response was that he was just admiring and he kept at it. Strangely, another well respected reporter told me once how good a pair of my favorite sunglasses looked on me. What the hell? It's not like I was walking around acting like a tart - or even flirtatious, but I didn't act tough either.
And that's the problem. I learned how important it is for women in the newsroom to create a tough, detached, impervious demeanor. Make the guys in the newsroom a little fearful of making passes or comments and earn their respect with top-notch reporting. She'll be called a bitch by the assholes but she can't let her guard down.
So when the guy made his move yesterday I was in the same position, but I didn't think I had to keep my guard up around people I thought were friends. Or that I'd have to tread lightly because this person is actually significant because he can help me get access to some reporting I want to do. It feels like shit to wonder if others are leering at me. That they could care less about what I think and how hard I work to do good reporting. It feels like shit to not be taken seriously. I just wonder how many other women, especially interns, find themselves in the same position. I've heard enough to know it's more common than is talked about openly. But I don't know yet how much more.

Sarajevo: Miss European Region of the Year

2006-01-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

The EU crowned Sarajevo the 2006 European Region of the Year, effective January 1. It's supposed to introduce countries aspiring to EU membership into the Brussels club.

That's funny (in a sick way) because Miss European Region couldn't get a visa to visit most of Europe. Lines of hopeful Bosnians seeking visas stretch around Sarajevo’s various embassies every day. "How can they know about the EU if they can’t travel to its member states?" wondered Emir Hadzikadunic, spokesman for the Directorate of European Integration, which is responsible for channeling EU funds into projects.

It also creates absurb situations for officials, who have trouble traveling to Brussels for EU meetings. For one recent round, the European Commission’s office in Sarajevo had to send a messenger three hours away to Banja Luka to pick up Bosnian officials’ passports. The Dutch embassy had to issue the visas because Brussels does not have an embassy in Bosnia. The messenger then took the visas back to Banja Luka. That's the story a EC spokesman told me, but I've heard other, even more idiotic tales.

So, as pretty as she is, she'll be stuck at home with the rest of the Bosnians until EU member states lift their visa blocks. Maybe Belgium should go first, since it is the seat of the EU.

Bosnia - EU story

2006-01-04T07:59:00.000-08:00

One of my pieces about Bosnia is online at http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5027

An Afternoon with Kosovo Gypsies

2005-12-23T08:34:00.000-08:00

On the third day in Kosovo I spent the afternoon with two Roma (aka gypsy) activists. In Kosovo, the Roma have been attacked by ethnic Serbs and Albanians during and since the war. They were accused by Albanians of collaborating with Serbs during the war. In fact, their interests are probably closer to the Serbs because they too are a minority. But the Serbs have attacked them too because they are Muslims and the Ashkali (Albanian-speaking Roma) speak Albanian. On the other hand, Roma have it tough in a way different from other minorities there. For one, they are generally despised throughout Europe as thieves and beggars. They are also romanticized everywhere even though the truth is a far cry from the idealized version of the fortune-telling, passionate, nomadic, mysterious gypsy.

Fact is they have families to support, bills to pay, goals to pursue. The discrimination and stereotypes make it difficult. An American tourist in Sarajevo and I were talking over coffee when he started with one of the common legends in Eastern Europe about the Mercedes-driving gypsy father who sends his children out to beg. It's the European version of America's Welfare Queen. I also recalled an anthropology student who studied the Roma in America. She said they purposely lived poor, destroyed their possessions and lived precariously because it supported their nomadic lifestyle, is part of the culture. So this is the way it works: discrimination keeps them from getting a good education, thus a good job and an equal share. The stereotypes, whether the romantic or the outlaw version, make it easier to blame the lack of opportunities on the Roma themselves.

Can we PLEASE cut the absurdities?

What a vicious cycle. “These stereotypes are killing the Roma,” said Isak, one of the Voice of Roma activists.
I met Izak and Atlan at a cafe in Gracinica (pronounced Grachinitza), about 7 miles from Pristina. We had arranged a meeting by e-mail while I was still in America through their branch in Northern California. Judging from the mature, formal tone of the e-mails, I expected much older men to meet me. Instead, Izak was 23 and Atlan was 32. Izak became interested in jouralism after a foreign reporter enlisted him to produce a radio reportage. For now he works as an interpreter for the NGOs and other foreigners working in Kosovo. Atlan was the quieter, more intense of the two. He told me how he had been sent to fight in Croatia as a Yugoslav Army soldier in 1991. “I was 18. What did I know about war?” he said. “But one day I was shoved in an airplane for Croatia. That was that. But, why should I shoot Croats?” Then he was shot in the leg. Still unable to walk, he was kicked out of the hospital and put on a bus to Belgrade. It was a stranger who took pity on the stranded soldier and helped him get out of the bus and back to Pristina. Later, his uncle and cousin were killed during the fighting in Kosovo. He said they were missing for several years before he identified them by their clothes and personal belongings. Now his family lives on his pension and the paycheck his wife brings home. They live in a small village near Pristina, about 10 miles away. But when it came time to take me back to Pristina that evening, he wouldn’t drive alone. His brother-in-law told me he tries to come home before dark so he doesn’t get stuck alone on the roads at night.

By the time we met, I wasn't sure why I was still doing the interview. It was supposed to be one of my main stories because Human Rights Watch had recently released a report about minorities in Serbia and Kosovo highlighting the precarious situation they faced. According to the report, “Ethnic Albanians and Roma, as well as religious Muslims and minority non-Orthodox Christians, are the most vulnerable groups in Serbia today. The attacks on those communities in March 2004 and afterward were among the worst incidents of violence in Serbia in recent years.”

My focus had shifted, however, since arriving in the Balkans. We were all a bit stiff and uncomfortable, even impatient it seemed. We were about to wrap up it up when they mentioned a nearby refugee camp in Blementina where Roma, Egyptian, Ashkali, aw well as Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia were living. They agreed to take me there. It was not the worst of Kosovo's refugee camps, and not the worst as far as refugee camps go in the world. But, it was bad enough. It was sooty, impoverished, and government run.
The day was icy and gray. Thick smoke spewing from surrounding factories made it even more dismal. The camp used to be a Norwegian KFOR base base, so the houses are built in the concrete bunker style. Some of the buildings are literally crumbling. They all just looked like they were sagging, ready to cave in should a strong wind blow. Outside, rungs hung from laundry lines strung up between the buildings. There were rugs everywhere. And laundry. But nothing looked clean. There is no running water, toilets or electricity. Chicken wire is strung here and there. Weeds are the only form of vegetation. The hills behind the camp were long since gouged out in the hunt for whatever mineral once lay beneath the scarred earth. The garbage strewn among the sickly weeds resembled blossoms on some sort of mutant plant. A mother and child crossed a field of concrete where weeds poked through cracks.
All I could say was "What a fucking mess." That's where they've been living since 1999. Almost seven years in a pit. The Kosovo government is building an apartment complex right next to the camp for36 families, but that doesn’t take care of all the families – or the other camps scattered on the outskirts of Pristina. No one is forcing the families to stay in the wretched camps that were supposed to be temporary. They want to go back to their homes, but it’s too dangerous. They fear attacks by Albanians or Serbs if they do. And no one really cares one way or another what happens to them. If the attacks are reported, they are treated as misdemeanors by the authorities – if the authorities do anything at all. Unlike other minorities - Hungarians, Serbs, etc. - there is no mother country to speak up for the Roma. They're on their own.

From Sarajevo to Serbia to Kosovo

2005-12-21T18:52:00.000-08:00

I'm getting caught up on some writing from the trip. It was a real bitch to type on some of the foreign keyboards and sometimes there just wasn't enough time. Here is a bit about the trip to Serbia and Kosovo in mid-November.

Before I left for Serbia, Bosnian friends advised me to be low-key about being an American. There are some hard feelings toward America because U.S.-led NATO strikes hit the Serbs three times during the Balkan wars. I took a shuttle to Belgrade instead of the bus. After the ride to Srebrenica, I wasn’t up to another bus ride so soon. I had few worries about traveling to Belgrade, despite well-meant warnings. It surprised me that such misgivings still lingered among the Bosnians. I got it from the Serbs and Kosovars too, only the fear goes much deeper.

The shuttle was a white van driven by Olga, an attractive, tough, middle-age blonde who chain-smoked the whole way. It was like being locked up in one of those ashtrays that trap the smoke for six hours. One of the first things I noticed getting off the train in Belgrade were buttons and trading cards of Slobodan Milosevic, Ratko Mladic and Karadzic, like the war memorabilia sold near the Vietnam and Lincoln memorials. Only these three have been indicted for war crimes for their part in Bosnia’s war. Later I noticed a large photograph of Milosevic mounted on an apartment façade near Republic Square. But I never figured out why it was there. He’s not tremendously popular. I don’t read Cyrillic either, so who knows. I found a cheap place to stay, Hotel Royal, with zebra stripe blanket and satellite TV. After roaming the city until dark, I had a beer which drank half of then smuggled the rest up to my room to watch CNN international. It was just nice to be on my own in a sizeable city for a while.

Before I left for Kosovo, a woman I was chatting with at a Belgrade cafe was visibly upset when I told her I was going there. "Be sure to wear your U.S. passport on your forehead because you look like you could be a Serb girl," she warned. My taxi driver refused to believe me that buses were running to Pristina. The Serbs are surrounded by anxiety-provoking stories stemming from the 1998-1999 Kosovo war and previous attacks against ethnic Serbs in the breakaway province. The Serbs attacked Kosovar Albanians in 1998. That’s when the international community intervened via NATO. They didn’t want another Bosnia on their hands. Then the Albanians turned around and attacked the ethnic Serbs. The intervention wasn’t so swift then. It was all pretty brutal and the land bears witness to the rage. Burned out houses dot the landscape and even the smallest village is split in two between the ethnic communities. I am currently writing a few pieces about how the Balkan wars stemmed, in part, from independence movements, that were made worse by the international community’s intervention. It was too much, too soon. Today, the push by Brussels and Washington to anchor the former Yugoslavian countries to the European Union is setting off tensions because the anxiety of ethnic Serbs are not being considered. Whether their anxiety is founded in reality or not, ignoring their fears won’t solve the problems that led to the wars in the 1990s. Of course, they didn’t have to start ethnically cleansing broad swaths of land where their ethnic brethren lived. The pillaging and killing and burning were definitely not necessary. So, they’re paying the price now because sympathy for them is pretty low.

Actually, the bus ride to Kosovo was a bit strange because the riders were trying to figure out where I came from. I wasn't offering any definitive information, so when they finally found out I was an American at the border checkpoint, they wondered why the hell an American was going to Pristina, the capital city. When I explained my profession they just nodded as if to say, "Ah, of course. A journalist…another journalist..." They weren’t friendly and I got a strange feeling from them. One guy was staring at me the entire trip. When he lay on his back and kept staring at me (oh man! A wanker, I thought) I gave him a look that said, “Do you have a problem?” When he learned I was American he started staring at me AND his UNMIK passport. I couldn’t figure out what he wanted to communicate to me, but I did realize that the Kosovars are neither here nor there. They don’t have their own state, but neither do they belong to Serbia. Not since the war. The province is run as a U.N. protectorate.

Pristina turned out to be a great town in its own way. Residents were kind and warm and friendly. The city smelled like a blend of goat cheese, diesel and the aroma that comes from wood burning in fireplaces. It had that culturally mixed, chaotic feel that Sarajevo and Brussels have. However, the Lonely Planet tour book let me down for the first time there. I don’t really follow the advice closely but the book said Euros and Dinar are accepted. Not so. I landed at 4 a.m. at the deserted Pristina bus station only to be told by the taxi driver that he only took Euros. “No Dinar. Euro only,” he said adamantly. Well, I had two Euros left and the ride cost five. So I cajoled him into taking 450 Dinar and my last Euros. I figured he would do it because there was no one else there to rip off at 4 a.m. But, in Gracinica, a muddy village about 7 miles away where one of the famous Orthodox monasteries is, the Dinar is the currency. Euros are accepted only reluctantly and I had to make a fuss to get my change in Euros instead of Dinar. (I was heading back to Pristina and did not want anymore of the inflated currency that NO one will exchange – not even the Hungarians. When I tried in Bosnia they practically snarled at me.)

I would like to go back to Serbia. I went there dismissive of Serbs and learned that even if I don't want to hear or agree with what I hear it's important to listen. It’s hard to understand their perspective sometimes because sometimes it’s founded on national myths, fear and isolation. But I could say that about a lot of other nations, as well. After all, there are few cities in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. Villagers there can be just as backward as Americans in small U.S. towns.

Culture Shock

2005-12-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

As the days pass, the figs are ripening and the Magnolia trees readying themselves for their wintertime bloom. It is always such a miracle when the burgundy and white petals burst open while all else in the garden lies dormant.

I am slowly readjusting to the time zone and to Berkeley - domestic culture shock.

Just as I was cursing the town for its lack of humor or charm, I saw the following: a bicycle driving in the street along a line of parked cars with a wheelchair chugging along to the left - almost directly in the center of the street. They paid me and my multi-ton automobile absolutely no attention, didn't bother to move out of the way. How Berkeley can you get? The dingy cafes that serve coffee in paper cups bother me more, as does the self-righteousness that permeates residents' attitudes. But then it doesn't really matter as long as the Magnolias bloom and the figs are sweet.

London to San Francisco: HOME

2005-12-06T15:29:00.000-08:00

December 6, 2005
I am home! Bliss: being with my babies and my sweet, sweet John; fast Internet on my own laptop; a good cup of tea sipped in my big warm bed piled with pillows while listening to Bob Dylan; watching Luna the black cat pounce on imaginary mice from the old chair in the back yard. Traveling is a lonely enterprise sometimes. The one thing I missed most was the warmth of another body against mine. Not just hugs and handshakes, but embraces that hold love in them. One day, when I scooped up a tiny farm kitten a feeling of absolute longing for a human touch gripped my heart. It helps explain why I have so many photos of an otherwise unremarkable kitten. To paraphrase one song (a favorite pasttime of mine): I missed my darlings while I was out finding myself.

My feet are a total wreck and I have barely slept in two days. But it feels so good to land and put down my pack. I left Brussels a little reluctantly yesterday morning. The last night there Marie-Rose, Angela and Rene took me to a cozy little place in the student quarter, Le Campus. It hit me suddently as we were sitting there chatting how much I would miss them and miss being in Europe. Life really is more civilized there. Hard to describe right now though.

I met up with Nishan in London in the afternoon. She has a rented flat in East London. The first time for me out that far from the center of the city. We had a good lunch, some beer and then hit the town - Covent Garden - at night. How fancy to go out with friends from SF in London. We drank a bit too much wine and unfortunately I got started late on the tube, which closes down around midnight. To top it off I forgot to get off at the stop to connect to the train out to Nishan's place - she got off to go meet up with her Kosovar cutie but I forgot I was supposed to change trains there. I couldn't get a train back to the right station either because they had stopped running. So I got the last (pfew!) bus going in that direction.

At 1 am I found myself driving through London on a red double-decker bus that dropped me about 8 blocks from my destination. Pretty much everything outside of the center of the city shuts down around 11 pm so it was a bit eery.

Then, as I rounded the street to the flat, there was a pack of FOXES prowling the street.

That is about the last thing I expected to see on a London street. We just have racoons around here. They were scary too because, I figured, if one attacked me it would be a really bad situation. I stomped thinking that would scare them off a bit. Instead they growled at me then started barking. Bad move. So I moved to the other side of the street and walked fast.

What more can I say? I am dirty, tired and happy to be back despite the mountain of mail waiting to be sorted. Berkeley is always a letdown upon arrival, though. What a putrid little town. I could not be happier to have made the trip, though I am scared to look at my bank balance. I stopped keeping track exactly because in Serbia and Hungary the withdrawls were for thousands of whichever currency. $1 = 210 Forint, for example. I got so sick of paying hundreds of Forint for things like a cup of coffee or tens of thousands for the flat. But it was worth every penny whatever the case.

Now I am headed for a shower to wash off the accumulated grime. I think my big sweater will have to be burned. In fact, I threw away the big woolen scarf in London. I no longer needed it there and it was really getting a little funky. I can still smell the odour left from the fire we had out at Samir's father's house in Visegrad. I wonder if the walnut he let me plant there will ever grow.

Life Comes One to a Customer

2005-12-02T16:15:00.000-08:00

As the cross-European trip winds down I can feel the changes it has had on me. There are many small ones - for one, I now have some recipes that will relieve John of his kitchen drudgery and I can navigate just about any computer keyboard thrown my way (the characters are always in a different, annoying place) . But the biggest two are deeper.

For one, I lost that acute self-consciousness plaguing me for years. Sitting unwashed on a bus right next to someone will do that for a person. Second, my tolerance for absurdities has been wiped clean. Voltaire once wrote, "Atrocities will continue to happen as long as people believe in absurdities." I tend to agree, especially after a day in Srebrenica, the living memorial to the darkest moment in Bosnian and U.N. history. The graveyard where just some of the 8,000 civilians slaughtered during the war are buried stretched as far as the eye can see. I read a letter later written by the then-mayor published by The NY Times or some other paper asking the U.S. to simply obliterate the town. He wrote that anything would be better than the hell everyone was living in. I recalled the protests in America that took place when NATO used force in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. There were better ways to end the war but anti-war protests was not one of them. How naive. People really don't want to believe that people are capable of genocide; of dispicable crimes that reduce humans to outlets for pent up anger and fear.

Sadly it is true that such things happen. I used to hold diplomats in high regard. But I understand now that they are middlemen for lies when national interests are more important than people. War is the breakdown of international law and diplomacy. But breakdown is inevitable when the scaffolding is constructed of lies, of political expediency and interests.

If you read this you will surely say, Ah, a diatribe. I could write something subtler and ironic. But what is the use? More attractive packaging - something that attracts the eye? The truth is the truth no matter how it is wrapped.

Budapest to Brussels

2005-12-02T02:38:00.000-08:00

Bliss in Brussels...From Zagreb to Budapest felt like being in a straight-jacket for 5 days. I feel like I did in Sarajevo: alive among the living. To some extent that means smoking is allowed inside. More civilized.
I left Budapest on the 30th - whatever day that was. My travel companion Mats the Swede parted ways after a day of sightseeing in Buda. First, we trapsed out to the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold to a park full of retired Soviet statues. The Hungarians put them as far out of sight as possible. Tells you a little about their transition from communism: moderation and relief. Just get rid of the bastards and move on by sticking their vertical likenesses in an appropriately desolate spot. Anyone willing to travel the hour or so by tram and bus can get to know the despised Soviets who sat on the Hungarians for 50 some years. Hungary has been an EU member since last year...they weren't taking any chances after what happened in 1956.

Of course, I speak not of experience but from reading and listening to people there. I felt sorry for the old lady running the concession stand (red Lenin candles, Trabi models and tins with labels reading "The last breath of communism") bc she has to listen to Soviet propoganda songs all day. No wonder she was so surly the second time I asked for the bathroom key. She snarled something in Hungarian that I interpreted to mean, "What do you need the bathroom for again. You already went once since you got here." She seemed to think I was on a personal mission to inconvenience her.

After freezing at the remnant sale of the iron curtain we headed over to the famous Gellert thermal baths. What a contrast. Not as hot as expected but who can knock bathing in the equivalent of the Taj Mahal with an open air view of the rain above. I thought people were staring at my new tattoo, but after looking at a photo I begged an Australian to take (oh how tourist!) I think it might have been the fact that my rented swimsuit (500 florint = $2.50) was practically transparent when wet. That is, the 3 hours we were there. So they were getting a peep show instead of a taste of American feminism. All I can say is that couples alone should visit such a romantic place.

We ended up at Katapult cafe around the corner from the flat for a bottle of Ergi Bekaver, Hungary's famous Bull's Blood wine. It is red, hearty and ubiquitous. After Mats had to leave for the airport a young jazz musician escorted me to hear some of the cities best jazz musicians. He said the jazz scene is ruled by gypsies - the first time they are on top of anything but people's shit lists.

The next day I wandered all over the city. Hopefully one day my feet will recover. I really don't know why, but for some reason orange hair is the rage in Budapest. So is smooching in the parks. Dogs are also quite popular, as are the homeless and completely destitute. Amazing what 15 years of capitalism can do for a place. I guess those folks camped out around all the ridiculously chic restaurants did not see any of the $20 billion that the US, Europeans and Asians pumped in since 1995.

Finally on the 30th I jumped on the Metro to the bus station to catch my coach to Brussels. It was hard to leave bc Budapest was the final station for me in East Europe. I considered hopping on a bus to Sarajevo. I didn't and could feel the strings being cut as the bus pulled out of the station with a doddering old woman talking at the top of her lungs, a crazy, smelly man who kept playing air trumpet and two extraordinarily loud Hungarians chatting - all in the immediately surrounding seats. The voyage only got worse the next morning. But I have mastered the Balkan art of coffee drinking, at last. I am proud to report that I drank a cappucino and promptly fell asleep.

Zagreb to Budapest

2005-11-27T03:02:00.000-08:00

Here I am in Budapest. The city shares Zagreb's grand Austro-Hungarian architecture but is grittier, livelier and more chaotic. The train ride was blissful after so many bus trips. I met up with a Swede who was heading to Budapest from Croatia where he had been working. We ended up sharing a flat in the center of town for 30 Euro. The woman who rented it pounced on us as we got off the train, common in a lot in cities like this.

She was a bit of a scam artist. Her booze-breath and how she ushered us into a bus through the back door without paying made me think twice. But everyone does it in these countries anyway. Turns out, she supports her daughter who attends college in the U.K. by renting out her places to bewildered tourists who haven't a clue as to where to go :) It's a real disadvantage to land in a place like this at night. I arrived at 10 p.m. when the tourist and money exchange bureaus had closed. The ATMs in the station were all broken, too. Taxi drivers circled like vultures just waiting to overcharge someone like me carrying a 500 pound backpack going across the river to Pest. So I caught up with her and Swede and muscled my way in. He was very nice about it.

The city is divided by the river into Buda and Pest. Buda is where all the churches, museums, stores, etc. are. Pest to the west is where the old fortresses, castles, Roman ruins, etc. are. It's quieter and things are spread out. Today is a working day. I have no real interest in running around to a bunch of museums. I would rather write and drink coffee and meet people. Tomorrow we will head over to Castle Hill in Pest for some sightseeing and wine drinking.

It feels so good to be back in a city with character. When I am in cities like Zagreb or Belgrade I shrivel up and can't function. They feel bewildering, not because they are big cities but because they are so grand and manicured. I like grit. I need noise and people around me. I need the kind of atmosphere where people are coming and going, talking and laughing, where there is loud music, coffee and too much smoke. Where there are nooks with cafes so small they seems to close in on you. San Francisco, New York, Brussels, Sarajevo, Pristina and Budapest are like that. Another thing they share, that I think makes me feel more at home, is that they are home to more than one culture.

Sarajevo to Zagreb

2005-11-26T00:33:00.000-08:00

I here in Zagreb getting soaked. It's raining like mad. My luck with the weather finally ran out and damned if I can find an umbrella for sale. Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, is like Belgrade: grand with monuments to itself strewn across the city. But the atmosphere is warmer except in this Internet cafe, Cafe Charlie. Dull and lifeless place. But it is early and it is one of the few around here that is open.

I drove with the bus from Sarajevo to Zagreb last night. Arrived at 6 a.m. Compared to the trip from Priština to Belgrade it was 1st class luxury. The heater was cranked up and no nasty drafts blew through the back. On the other hand, I ran into the first total asshole of the trip. A completely drunken young guy sitting across the aisle from me is trying to recline his seat. I help him - it was tricky and he was finally getting on my nerves with all his heaving and sighing - only to have him sit down next to me. I told him to get back in his own seat, twice, loud. He does and starts panting something like ˝yeah, yeah.˝ I look over and he has his dick pulled out of his pants masturbating. So I yelled at him, got the second bus driver and then yelled at him some more to put his fucking dick back in his fucking pants. Then I moved to a seat up front. A nice guy said not to worry, that they would make sure I was okay until we got to Zagreb and not to be scared. I wasn't scared. I was pissed off. It was if my annoyance at all the times gross things like that have happened just welled up inside me and then poured out.

A friend in Sarajevo told me a story about a Bosnian woman who was being hassled during the war by a Chetnik soldier, who was doing strip searches. He took the beautiful woman aside and told her to strip, clearly indicating that he was about to enjoy a thorough search. My friend said she responded by 1. asking him if that was the only way he could get some, and then 2. promply pulling down her skirt and underwear, and 3. saying, okay. then go ahead. The soldier was embarassed and promply told her to pull her clothes back up. When she walked away she told him not to dare touch a single one of the young girls in line behind her. Now that takes balls.

I tried to explain how in the United States, the media is full of images of women being raped, murdered, kidnapped, beaten. I can't count how many weekly crime shows center around solving crimes against women. It sinks in, at least with me. I realized how much when I watched an American crime show last week on the sat TV. I read a book once about a war photographer who described how months after he had been in all sorts of danger he suddenly became scared during on particular incident. He said people always wonder if they would be cowardly if put in dangerous situations and then spend the rest of their lives trying to avoid finding out. What our imagination conjures up is far worse than reality.

At any rate, I miss my little, chaotic Sarajevo. Yesterday, I walked to the top of the city where an old Austro-Hungarian barracks is disintegrating. The stone sentry platform in front overlooks the city. It was the most beautiful moment. The sun was beaming on the snow around, the mist floating about the mountains. It was silent except for the call to prayer echoing through the city as a flock of ravens cawed while flying overhead. I tried to remember each and every detail as I walked home. I wanted to trace my finger along the city like lovers do each others' face, imprinting in the fingertips the feel of the eyes, the lips, the cheeks, the hair. Too many times I have left people or cities without a proper goodbye, with an empty space where memory belongs.

P.S.
There are a few places worth a visit if you are ever in the Balkans - places that are seldom in the tourbooks. In Sarajevo, visit Cafe Tito. Cafe Tito stands out from all the other umpteen cafes in Sarajevo. Helmets from World War II are used as lampshades, and donated memorabilia cover the walls - Tito's photos and metals, a LIFE magazine cover when Tito was its "Man of the Year," posters of Bosnians thronging to the streets to see him pass by. You have to take the tram or a taxi out there. Just ask any Sarajevo Taxi driver (don't bother with the generic taxis drivers who don't know the city half as well and are likely to overcharge) where Cafe Tito is. If you take the tram, head out going past Skenderija, pass the Tito Barracks on the right (the future U.S. embassy site) until you see a Bingo parlor on the left. Cafe Tito is across the street, tucked down behind the fast food place, along the river. Then if you suddenly get the urge for a tattoo, pay a visit to Paja Tattoo and Piercing Studio. It's hard to find, but worth the effort. Go to the main taxi stand in the Skenderija section of town, next to the iron bridge. Across the street is a shopping center entered by passing the statue of a woman with outstreched arms. Decend the main stairs, go left and it is a hole in the wall place a few meters on. I got a beautiful tattoo there on Wednesday. It is my only souvenir besides the t-shirt that reads: I'm a Muslim. Don't Panic. I got John a Tito baseball cap, which is kind of like a Che baseball cap. If you should find yourself in Priština, Kosovo - a city that defies the senses by being a charming pit - make sure you go to a little music store on Nene Teresa street, between the Parliament, whose white gates are lined with laminated photographs of Albanians who were killed during the 1998-1999 war, and the Grand Hotel. That is the main thoroughfare through the city. A character who looks like he came straight out of some wise guy movie runs the shop. When cranks up the Kosovo-Albanian hip hop it floods out of his store so narrow it fits only two people at a time. He can be found on the sidewalk with a buddy playing some kind of shell game. All I can say about Zagreb is avoid Internet Cafe Charlie unless you want a sterile atmosphere and unfriendly help. That reminds me, in Sarajevo you get friendly help but blah atmosphere at the Internet Cafe Click, in the heart of the old Turkish Quarter. On the other hand, the keyboards can change to the English format, making it easier to type. The Euronet Y Internet cafe in Skenderija isn't so international, but it is cheaper by 1 KM. The savings add up after a few hours. The cafe is always busy and the music loud and good. There are many other Internet cafes. Ultimately I liked the Euronet one the best.

A Good Heart

2005-11-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

Nov. 22, 2005
Sarajevo
I have been wondering how people here live with the past. How do people grapple with a time when so much hate was directed at them that a war became a genocide. How do they look at their neighbors, ethnic Serb or Croats, and find peace? Someone who had lived through the terror in Argentina during the 1970s told me once that the quest for healing was an American issue. They don't need to heal, they can't heal. Maybe that is true but when I ask people here they say the same thing, more or less. They make a distinction between their Serb neighbors and the Chetnik fanatics who brutalized so many (of all ethnicities) during the war. Why, they ask, would they want to hurt or hate someone just because they are of the same ethnicity (or religion as it works here - Serbs are Orthodox, Croats Catholics, Bosniaks Muslim) as the Chetniks? There were plenty of victims on all sides and it would be pointless. Many Bosniak soldiers I talked to said the same thing: I could have killed, raped, burned, pillaged during the war, but I did not want to. What reason could I have for doing that? they ask. So it occurred to me today that when you have a clear conscience it is easier to have a good heart. Then you can see people as humans and as individuals.

Sarajevo in the Snow

2005-11-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

Nov. 20, 2005
It snowed all day today. I walked up and down the city streets as the snowflakes drifted from the sky, even though my feet were wet and half-frozen. It was beautiful and peaceful and melancholy. Sarajevo is a city that gets under your skin. I didn't notice it at first. Actually, Belgrade was a breath of fresh air. I could think clearly for the first time since landing in the Balkans. But the flat, majestic city is frozen compared to chaotic, little Sarajevo. I craved the mountains and the crazy cobblestone streets that wind up into the hills. I missed the fog that covered the valley. I missed the rickety trolleys that loop around the city.

I checked myself into a little pension in the old town today. I need to force myself to write before too much time goes by. It is lovely to have a place of my own, even if it is a little room. But it overlooks the entrance to the stately mosque. I can't remember which mosque, but it is the one with a spigot from which crystal clear water runs.

I am supposed to be writing a short piece about a bar called Cafe Tito, named after the iron-fisted leader of former Yugoslavia. There is an intense nostalgia for Tito. Young Sarajevans, born after his death, will tell you that Tito represents a time when their country was strong, peaceful, affluent. They have good reason to long for those days. The war was bad enough, but 10 years later unemployment, corruption and the government are catastrophic. Part of the problem is the intransigence of the Bosnian presidency. The Bosnian Serbs and Muslims blame each side for holding things up, for holding the country hostage to ethnic priorities.

The Bosnian Serbs fear a powerful central government, saying that it will be a Muslim state. The B. Muslims say the B. Serbs are holding progress up, hanging onto the Serb mainland and a mythology of greatness. I spent a couple hours with a B. Serb who fled from Sarajevo because he wanted nothing to do with the war. Eventually he ended up in California. Strangely enough, we met on the shuttle from Belgrade to Sarajevo. Reality is so random at times.

From his perspective, a centralized government as it is developing now will mean the country's Serbian heritage will be supressed. For example, why should the language be called Bosnian and not Serbian-Croatian, as it was before the war. It might be okay for the Muslims but what about the Serbs? he asked.

The people say over and over that they want peace. But it is the politicians and religious leaders who are making peace so hard for the people. There are two different versions of the war, from why it began to what happened. One version is Serb and the other is Muslim. They'll have to get the story straight pretty soon.

I will eventually leave Sarajevo but I want to soak everything in for a few more days before going to Croatia. In the meantime, I am watching the snow.

The Old Man From Visegrad

2005-11-18T04:15:00.000-08:00

Here is another story.
A man: he is a grandfather, father, husband, brother. He lives on a hill overlooking a little village called Visegrad (pronounced Vishegrad). The sparkling green Drina River flows through the village. It's beautiful, peaceful. The man, his father and his grandfather lived there all their lives, with Bosnian Serb and Muslim neighbors.

He is old now, but when he was a boy during World War II his parents and all but one brother were killed when that war touched Yugoslavia. He grew up and had a family of his own. Then came the next war in 1992. One July night or day, I don't remember now, the Bosnian Serbs militia, calling themselves Chetniks (after their cutthroat predecessors in World War II), came to his home and torched it. They shot 17 people there. He saw them shoot his wife in the back as she ran for her life. Watching snowflakes drift lazily, wetly toward the foundation of a new house on the land, I wonder how fast could an old woman run down a hillside? The camp fire is beginning to die down when I try to picture what happened. All I can think of is whether the mothers held their children as they were shot, or were they all fleeing frantically? I won't try to imagine the terror. I don't want to get too close to that darkness.

After the men left, the old man came out from hiding and tried to drag his wife up the hill to a small cemetary. She was too heavy for him, so a young man helped him. All told, he has lost two generations of his family to the two wars.

There was nothing the man could do, so he left and did not return for years. Seeking safety, the old man walked for miles and miles, ferried over a river, trudged up Mt. Igman in the snow. The women, the children and the toddler lying dead around his little house rejoined the earth. Later, the bones of some were collected and identities recorded. Others were never found or never identified. The problem is that to do DNA tests you need some genetic material from the deceased and from a relative. But there was no one left of some families to donate DNA. Whole families were wiped out during the war.

This story is like so many other Bosnian stories about the war. The details are different but the suffering is the same. What makes me shudder about the old man's story is that it's like someone hit replay and 50 years later the same film was showing. What breeds contempt and anger - evil - deep enough to carry on for so long? How do you heal the poisoned heart? With peace and security?

The man has begun rebuilding his home on the hill in little Visegrad near the green green Drina River. His son and the son's sons help. He loves his home, covered in plum blossoms by spring and snow by winter.

A little old lady - one of his B. Serb neighbors - who looks like she must be 100, strolls quietly by in her headscrarf and long skirt. She keeps an eye on the houses on the hill. The old man's daughter-in-law tells me that her sons almost surely knew what was going to happen to the family. Why didn't they warn us? the man wonders, as does what is left of his family. As the old woman slowly vanishes down the long country path, I wonder, did she stroll by to watch the team collect the bones of the man's family?

Sarajevo - Heartbreaking Forgiveness

2005-11-18T03:12:00.000-08:00

Nov. 4, 2005
Here is a simple story about the war told to me during Bajram, over coffee and baklava.

1992, Sarajevo. Indira, her husband and brother in law sit at the dining room table in their little duplex. A shell lands on the roof of the house right outside the window that they are facing. Shrapnel hits Indira and her brother-in-law, Samir. They survive. But a piece of shrapnel hits Indira's husband in the head. He is killed. It's an ironic death because he is one of the top three neuro-surgeons in the former Yugoslavia. A young man, he leaves behind Indira, 34, and two children: Adi, 5, and Aida, 7. The family thinks the attack was meant to kill the young surgeon so that he could no longer keep people alive. Indira gets nasty calls after his death, which was celebrated among the Bosnian Serb forces, as seen on TV.

The three retreat to the basement level of the house, where Samir and Saida live. Adi begs to ascend the few steps to his home, but it's too dangerous. Shells and bombs pound Sarajevo. Finally he is allowed to go upstairs. He tells his mother: "Father's smell is everywhere."

Shivers shoot up my spine when the family tells me the story. Can you imagine how they felt? Saida said it broke their hearts.

About a year later, Aida is coming up those same stairs when shrapnel hits her in the arm. She would have lost the use of her arm entirely if a surgeon had not recognized the symptoms that remained after the first operation to remove the deadly metal. The nerves in three of her fingers are still damaged, leaving her with little feeling in them, and the arm is slightly shorter than the other. Both children have pursued medicine as adults. Adi wants to become a surgeon. Aida, whether she ever wanted to or not, can't.

Aida is 21 now. She said she doesn't like talking about the war that, in her words, "stole her childhood." But she wants others to know the truth about what happened to Bosnia. That it was not a war. It was an aggression against the non Bosnian Serbs that killed between 100,000-200,000, on all sides. The hardest thing for her to understand, she said, is that the B. Serbs won't admit what happened. They deny the massacres or claim that they were protecting themselves.

Bosnia is so bruised. It seems so unfair that its people continue to suffer. High unemployment, corruption, bad leadership, bias, and simple neglect. Bosnians are restricted from traveling to most countries in the world without a visa - a stamp that is seriously difficult to come by for them. Saida's brother only sees his two children and wife every few months, when the children have holidays. They are living in Vienna (his wife's parents live there so her visa was approved easily), but the Austrians continue to refuse his visa request, even for a short visit. It's a huge issue for the Bosnians, who feel isolated by the international community, like they're the neighborhood pariahas. You'd think they could get a break after everything that happened. The B. Serbs and B. Croats have citizenship in Serbia and Croatia, respectively. The Bosniaks? Bosnia is their mother country and, many say, it feels like they're being shut up in it.

But instead of hating the city where her father was killed and can feel like it is dissolving, Aida said she wants Bosnia to be peaceful, united as it was before the madness: a Sarajevo where everyone is welcome and respected. "I was born here, grew up here," she said. "I want to work in Sarajevo, raise a family in Sarajevo." Meanwhile, the three-headed hydra that comprises the presidency can't come to the smallest understanding. Each of the three presidents, a Bosnian Muslim, a Bosnian Croat (they head the federated territory) and a Bosnian Serb (head of the B. Serb province, Republika Srpska), are to blame. But all agree that the RS side is standing in the way of progress and wants really to be part of Serbia, or at least separate from Bosnia. It makes no sense. For one, it is an artificial boundary created by the Dayton Acccord. And, two, the RS territory is not contiguous. The intransigence is keeping the country from moving forward, direction EU membership. I have talked to dozens of people, many former soldiers during the war, and they all same the same thing: we want peace and respect, not war. One former soldier told me that he has two sons, thus two good reasons for never wanting war again.

I don't they will never understand why Bosnian Muslims were massacred, raped, tortured, and so reviled by the B. Serbs that attacked them. But I can tell that it hurts them, burdens their hearts. Who woulnd't feel hurt with so much hate directed at you and so much resistance to living side-by-side.

Today, the legacy of the war festers like a bloody wound covered by a giant Band-Aid. Maybe if someone could answer Saida's simple question (one that is spraypainted in big letters on a building downtown) people could begin to heal. Saida's question: WHY?

Sarajevo

2005-11-18T02:35:00.000-08:00

Here I am in the object of my decade-long desire. Now that I am in Sarajevo, I am not sure my curiosity can stand up to the city. It's a mess: burned out homes and Soviet-style office buildings. Birds were nesting in the holes left in the side of a house from Serb shelling during the war. It's like walking through ruins of some ancient civilization. The sides of brick houses still reach upward - just one long column of bricks on either side of the house. Rubble of what used to be homes or offices are strewn about one-time front yards and walkways. The metal that still manges to hold those uniformly ugly 1970 Soviet-era architecture together is rusted, the color dried blood. Indeed, there was enough blood shed here to have painted some of the buildings with it. Stringy, sooty apartment blocks line street and after street. Holes from bullets, shells and grenades scar so many buildings that you stop noticing them, just expect to see them. Of course, arriving in any bus station means taking the first steps in the worst part of town.

The old Turkish Quarter is another story. It's lovely. I've arrived the day before Ramadan ends and lucky for me my host and friend, Saida, lives right in the old town. The call to prayers echoes through the narrow, cobble-stone streets. An eery song that I never get tired of. The bridge where the Arch Duke Ferdinand was assassinated, thus setting off World War I, is about 3 blocks away. For three days during Bajram Muslims celebrate by eating, visiting and drinking gallons of coffee. It's baklava time. Consumed all day. We go to a nearby graveyard where Bosnia's post-war president is buried. His grave, covered by a white cupola, is surrounded by hundreds of gleaming white, obelisk shaped tomb stones made from granite. They are the graves of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) who were killed by attacking Bosnian Serbs, led by Slobodan Milosevic. They are all the same: died 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 while the international community continued to block weapons to the Bosnians but refused to intervene. A wave of anger and shame swept over me as I watched the families kissing the cold white stone instead of their sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, lovers, sisters, daughters, mothers. They are buried on top of old graves because the city ran out of room and couldn't move outside the city where most cemetaries were before the fighting penned the people in. They buried the dead at night to avoid being bulls-eye targets for the snipers on the hillsides above them. The guard standing over President Izetbegovic's grave looked so lonely and stark and proud. I might be just projecting. Maybe he is bored, but I doubt it. Bosnians are proud of their former president and for having survived death and destruction with grace.

Below, down the winding streets, the Turkish Quarter is lined cafes, little Cevapcici shops, hole-in-the-wall stores selling the special coffee pots traditional to Bosnia. Turns out, Turkish coffee is really Bosnian coffee, so they say here anyway. The Turks drink tea, Saida pointed out. But because Bosnia was ruled by the Ottomans until the late 19th century, it became known as Turkish coffee. Here it's just called "kafa." Strong, hot and sweet. Sarajevo is also famous for its water. Outside the main mosque water spews from a spigot and people stop to take a drink or just wash their hands. It's clear as crystal. They say that if you drink the water from the fountains you will return to Sarajevo.

Slovenia to Sarajevo

2005-11-18T02:15:00.000-08:00

Nov. 2, 2005
Somewhere in Bosnia (Bosanski Brod I think)
I thought it was bad enough to find a Burger King along the Austrian autobahn. In Slovenia, a bleak strip of land below Austria, there stood the golden arches of McDonald's. Aaah, EU membership has done wonders for little Slovenia. Here in Bosnia, about 50 miles past the Croatian border, in a little village, was a Chinese store along the road. Store might be an exaggeration: it was a house with the same cheap Chinese-made junk you find an any 99 cents store in the U.S.

Aside from Chinese stores, there are houses being built in every direction you look. Next to the new homes are the burned out hulls of their predecessors, destroyed during the 92-95 war, or left to fall apart by those who fled the fighting/genocide. I didn't want to assume anything so I asked a Bosnian girl, Jasma, who has been studying in Germany. The first town over the border belongs to the Republika Srpska. (The Dayton Accord, which ended the fighting 10 years ago, divided Bosnia into two regions. The Bosnian Serbs got the RS and the Bosnians/Bosnian Croats formed a federation.) It's a dreary, muddy town with every other house ruduced to its grey cement foundation. The RS gets less money, Jasma said, than the Bosnia-Croatia federation for reconstruction. What a dismal place. Rats rumage through garbage strewn around. If this is bad 10 years after what was it like during the war?

Brussels to Sarajevo

2005-11-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

Nov. 1, 2005
Achen, Germany
I am sitting here on the bus underway from Brussels to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina with a busted knee and wounded pride. I left Brussels this morning (after a lovely few days with Marie-Rose in that beautiful, so civilized city) on the bus. Here in Achen we stopped for a break and to change buses. When I returned from the bathroom in the rasthaus (think Howard Johnson rest stops) the bus was gone. I had dawdled a little because this was the first time back in Germany since I fled in 1991 after four years living near Dusseldorf. And the bus was serving Nescafe instant so I thought I would get a bag of cookies and ingratiate myself.

I circled the parking lot three times as the German truckers chuckled at my frantic search. My huge backpack and carry bag full of presents and papers put me off balance so when I absentmindedly stepped up on a curb for another look in the rasthaus for a familar bus face I tripped over it instead, tearing my pants wide open, gashing one knee and bruising the other. Truckers were amused - the baaastards. I was almost in tears, thinking, "Oh my god. I am stuck in Germany!"

Finally I noticed another nook where the bus might be. Eureka! I ran up, panting "Ich suche der bus for Sarajevo!" They reassured me, the giant pink bus was in fact going to Sarajevo. All I could think of saying at the point was, "Here are some cookies for everyone." Since everyone had already finished their coffee and moved on a cigarettes they found my offer a bit strange. But the bus driver dutifully offered each rider one. Turns out, it's harder to offer communal gifts to people whose language you don't share.

So here I am in a pink powderpuff bus with 15 strangers and two drivers near Cologne. We have the finest of American media to amuse us: a video of the most violent fistfights on the Jerry Springer show. I can't believe I am driving through Germany watching a bad Jerry Springer video. (By the way, the fistfights are all staged, like professional wrestling. There are three variations on how they begin and unfold.) Funny to be back in Germany even if it is just passing through. To see German signs and hear German as the language of the land. It's appropriate that I am only passing through Germany, a place I once lived in intensely but left behind what seems like a lifetime ago.

SF to London

2005-11-18T01:43:00.000-08:00

28 Oct. 2005
London Heathrow Airport.
Leaving was tearful as expected- at least for John and me. The day I left, I pulled him out of his studio to hold him for as long as we both could stand still. He was so worried for my safety, that I would never come back. Traveling feels hollow now, without John and the girls. I was sitting in a London SOHO cafe straight out of a tour guide book - six wrought iron tables inside, three outside - and I kept thinking how they would enjoy seeing Trafalgar Square, or how John and I would sit in Victoria Park. I was starting to relax over a cup of tea when John called and that sinking feeling whipped me back into reality: that I had left them alone at home. Again. Left them to rid myself of the craving for movement, for being in unfamiliar places, for being in the Balkans - a craving that has gripped me for a decade.

I promised them I would not travel for at least six months, hopefully longer. Leaving is too painful. Like the world is sinking. It's because of the DC arrangement. Each departure feels permanent. The trip to New Orleans was just too much. Too much leaving too soon too often. The months we were separated, the NO trip and this journey have congealed into a big slew of remorse. But I also realize that I don't want to travel as much as I thought. Wanderlust is no match for loneliness. There's not as much to escape, either. I've decided to get a job in January or take the internship at CIR if they accept me. I want to cook and clean and walk the girls to school. I just want to stay put for a while. But my career will take me away again. I am a reporter and want to report about the world. I want to live in London some day ad be able to jump in a plane to any country. Mobility. Without mobility is restlessness, a feeling that keeps me moving, looking for the new and different.

The Hurricane Trail

2005-10-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

On Sept. 20 I headed south from California towards New Orleans, straight into the path of Hurricane Rita and the wreckage of Katrina. Families fleeing Rita as she barreled toward the Gulf Coast of Texas, and those who had escaped Katrina, lined the hurricane trail from Dallas to the tip of Louisiana. They were everywhere, as if strewn carelessly about by the powerful, ungracious ladies.

Hurricane Rita petered out from an anticipated Category 5 monster to a Category 3 or less storm. It was bad enough but not as horrific as expected. But Katrina had taught everyone a lesson. Texans don’t scare easy, but the evacuees I met from South Texas – many who had sheltered or otherwise aided people hit by Katrina – bowed down to Rita and got the hell out of her way.

Katrina had hit New Orleans and the surrounding towns on August 29, unleashing a devastating storm surge and flood that turned the Big Easy into the Big Quagmire.

Katrina also mowed down just about everything in her way along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi (including Sen. Trent Lott’s seaside villa, which has been reduced to a spiral staircase leading to nothing but air). The entire area is broken and coated with dried mud, as though a child rolled a doll house in dust then stomped all over it.

That’s the way everything seared by Katrina looks. Trees that were not snapped in half are the color of ochre and covered in ghostly foliage of white garbage bags. The storm surge that reached up to 20 feet high burnt them with the sea’s salt, which also covered the power lines, knocking out electricity for days. Giant metal signs were scrambled and crumpled like aluminum foil. The French Quarter was mercifully spared total destruction and one night a local hero/Voodoo blues singer, Coco Robicheaux, wailed all night long at Mollie’s bar on Decatur Street, raising money along the way for anyone who couldn’t afford a drink.

The hurricane specter surrounded the enclave, though. Whole houses were simply removed from their cement foundations; others are hollow caves with wood and wires dangling like stalagmites. Shattered boats lie in the strangest places - yards, roadsides, front porches, and along freeways. Abandoned city buses line the streets. And the eeriest of all graffiti ever invented is the orange or black spray paint sprayed on abandoned houses and impromptu shelters to show they had been searched for the living and the dead.

I could go on but it’s almost useless to try to do justice to the destruction. It defies the senses because just when it seems nothing could be worse, another more defiled scene is just around the corner. The most eloquent description came from 10-year-old Angela, who arrived at a renegade relief organization, Common Grounds, looking for baby bottles and water for her little brothers. “Katrina was bein’ MEAN,” she said, with a Louisiana twang.

For those who have been in war zones it may not seem so brutal. Then again, seeing it at home lands the punch straight to the gut. The tangled web of bureaucracy trapping New Orleans and the many people Katrina orphaned is like a right hook.

The Pain of Leaving

2005-09-19T20:25:00.000-07:00

This is so damn hard. My heart and stomach are fluttering with the thought of leaving the girls again. This time it's for New Orleans, and only for 10 days, but it might as well be forever. This time is harder because I spent six months apart from them, living in D.C. and spending a week every month with them in California. I was aching to come back for good. The travel is not so bad. It's the leaving that kills me.

I have to go, that much is certain. Freelancing is tough and I need this trip to pump up my resume, get experience and hopefully make some money. I'm the breadwinner in this family, so it's crucial. Then there is the adventure. I don't know how I'm goint to get to New Orleans from where I'll be dropped off, where I'll sleep, how I'll carry everything, or how I'll get to Houston for my return flight (9/30- early). I'll also be traveling to the Balkans for a month at the end of October and am so excited. Still, the thought of leaving my girls is breaking my heart. Same goes for my husband.

I’m not alone: Mothers who have to go back to work after so little time with their babies that they leak breast milk around 11 a.m. Mothers and fathers who spend more hours at work than with their children, many at jobs that don't pay enough to do much more than survive month to month. Mothers (and fathers) from poor countries who leave their children behind while they seek work in the U.S.

Judy Woodruff, one of the highest paid journalists around, has three children, one of whom has been completely disabled (mind and body) since childhood. The first time I heard about it was in a documentary about women journalists shortly after she gained fame because of her multi-million dollar contract with CNN. My friend Sarah's 10-year-old son is autistic. He requires intense attention to keep him physically safe and to try to help him to some day live somewhat independently. She went to law school so she could make a better life for her two sons and grappled with her decision every day because it took so much of her attention away from Thomas and her older son, Mitchell. I heard about a women from New Orleans who was separated from two of her three children because she could only carry one during the evacuation. She carried the youngest, who couldn't swim. She's still searching for her babies.

So I'm lucky. My heartache is self-made. My daughters are healthy and joyful and support me, although they'd rather not be apart again. When I was commuting from D.C., an oppressive weight would begin to push down on us the closer it got to my departure date. Leaving again, the same lead is descending upon me. I can't find a good description for how it feels. George Orwell, the master of the metaphor, probably could but words fail me. Even though I can do literary tribute to others' pain, I can't name my feeling because I don't want to feel it. I know I'm not alone.

Death is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

2005-09-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

Word just came: I’m heading to New Orleans on Monday. I was trying to get down there but the logistics just didn’t click until now. I’ll be reporting from New Orleans, nearby Covington, where Camp Casey folks have a relief station set up, and anywhere else I can get to.

A man I interned with at UPI – a New Orleans native – is there. He told me he was trying to pick up the pieces of his life scattered by Hurricane Katrina. Essential gear to bring: a tall pair of rubber boots and clothes I never want to wear again. That’s it. The media are pulling out, on to the next crisis. It’s a good time to fill in the gaps they’ll leave behind, although the market for Katrina stories is rapidly cooling. So it goes. The nature of the beast. But Katrina is far from over.

I visited Abed today. His health got even worse so he’s in the hospital now. I hope they can fix him. He is still ready to die but he found out about an experimental treatment that his idiotic doctors failed to tell him about. So, he’s hopeful.

The sick thing is that his invitation to mortality made me feel like my head got turned around in the right direction. Little distractions popped like the soap bubbles that children blow. That’s how 9/11 and Katrina felt, and how the war in Iraq probably feels to some people.

Chris Hedges wrote a book called “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.” Well, death is also a force that gives us meaning. Abed gave me a glimpse at a force more powerful than any other. Then he made me stare at it without romantic illusions. Abed hadn’t cowered and he didn’t let me either.

I think war is wrapped in romantic illusions for many because they don’t want to or have to face death head-on. Those who die, or rather their deaths, are shrouded in our national mythology of sacrifice and patriotism. I’ve heard it was like that in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Germany and America (in WWII), and just about every other nation that rallied its people to fight for their country – and accept the death of those who died doing it. With few exceptions, they were really fighting for leaders who clung, with fat greedy paws, to power. When they recognize that truth (as in Vietnam or Serbia in 2000), they stop fighting.

Hedges was also right when he wrote that war gives meaning to lives of quiet desperation. The trip to New Orleans felt like that. Between Abed and Katrina, my life sure felt like it had meaning. I would be one of the people who participated in life, actually took a front-ring seat to history. I would see the destruction, smell the death, hear the desperation. Realizing my thoughts were getting warped into a war hero delusion, I took a step back to examine my motives. The reporting is supposed to be about working as an “early warning system,” as Amartya Sen put it. Not feeding myself on others’ misery.

It’s not like I want to be a tourist, visiting hell on earth just to see what it’s like. I lived through enough as a kid to get a taste. To be honest, it’s like another author wrote: “Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.” I wouldn’t use those adjectives in my case, but the struggle is about right.

The Legal Ringer

2005-09-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

It’s all I can do to keep up with all the reporting about the Supreme Court that John Roberts’ nomination has unleashed. It’s like water gushing from an uncapped fire hydrant.

The detailed coverage keeps reminding me that the law doesn’t work like people think it does. The law is not about guilt versus innocence, or even justice. No wonder so many of us are baffled by court decisions. Lawyers and judges are talking law whereas we want to sort what we believe is right from wrong. We operate on a gut feeling; we want to assign blame and make the guilty pay. But law is all about precedence. That’s what the law is: precedence – a technical roadmap.

Journalism can be confusing like that, too. Recently, a story I was writing about incest ran smack up against a legal paradox. The story was about a woman who said her husband won custody of their two daughters six years after he molested the older one. It happened because of a law that slaps the hands of people who molest children in the household with therapy instead of jail time then expunges the molestation charges from their record after a time.

Ironically, after she had been through the ringer trying to keep her daughters away from him, she wasn’t looking like a great parent in the court’s eyes. She’s high-strung and angry, but it was trying to keep her daughters safe that molded her. In contrast, her husband’s record was clean. So the girls now live with him and she is allowed supervised visits only. That irony was the point of my story.

I got started on the story while working on a separate piece about sex offenders. It sounded like a good one, and the editor of a paper I sometimes write for gave me the green light. Dropping everything, I whipped out of the driveway in our white Dodge Caravan toward East Oakland where she lives. East Oakland is an intersection of middle-class and poor residents, industrial zone and war zone of drugs, violence and poverty.

What I thought would be a short interview turned into a three-hour therapy session for her. It was okay because I have personal experience with molestation after a series of step-fathers and deranged cousins.

There is nothing worse for a reporter than being taken for a ride. So I looked over the documents she brought of court decisions and child protective services. I quizzed her over and over. She held nothing back about her own contribution to the outcome. Still, I made some calls to people involved in the case. Also, after talking to acquaintances, I learned that her case was not exceptional. Happens all the time, as the saying goes.

It was one of those stories that recharge my batteries. But not so fast, Nellie Bly. The paper wouldn’t print the story for the very reason I had written it: a law that made no sense, to me anyways. I was stuck. It felt like being trapped inside the recycling symbol of two arrows chasing each other. The paper wouldn’t print it because there were no charges against him even though an ample paper trail still existed supporting the allegation and recommending he be prevented from having unsupervised visits let alone custody. There were no charges because the law mandated they be erased. His name wasn’t mentioned in the story, but he probably could have sued for libel, so the paper wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. Even an unsuccessful libel suit can be expensive and damaging to a paper, so many are timid.

No one wants to believe that parents or other household members could molest their children. Stepfathers are a little more palatable. But if it wasn’t happening, why would a law exist protecting them from harsh sentencing? Why would there be so many people behind a bill to change that (the bill, Senate Bill 33, cleared the California legislature and landed on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s desk last week)? Family members, caregivers and friends are responsible for some 90 percent of sexual abuse, according to the Department of Justice and sexual abuse reports and experts.

The woman sounded so deflated when I told her the story was probably unprintable without charges to back up the allegation. She had been put through the legal ringer again. If I could argue with the editor I would ask what she asked me about the current law during an interview:

“You’re trying to break the cycle of violence and they’re putting you back in it. Whose bright idea was that? How could they possibly think that would work?”

Peace Amid the Rubble

2005-09-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

While the war in Iraq smolders, the country huddles together in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the White House ducks from its mistakes, Darfurians hunger for peace, and the other many calamities play themselves out, Abed is dying.

Abed Jaouni is a slight, Palestinian immigrant living in Berkeley, Calif. He's dying slowly and painfully from Colitis. Really, he is wasting away, suffering the pain of a slow, petty disease - a disease that makes bowel functions public and undignified.

It's a sad way to die. His mind is as sharp as ever, discussing Libyan and Palestinian-Israeli politics even as he wastes away. We spent many an hour pouring over politics instead of working back when we were at the Berkeley Geochronology Center. I moved on last year and he got to sick to look through his microscope for hours on end at grains of million-year-old rocks. I told him he can't die: who would I talk politics with? Few people grasp the events and policies that swirl about us as spot-on as Abed. At 100-pounds and bedridden, Abed still nails the truth like a sniper.

But he wants to die, and his knowledge and acceptance that he is dying is an unexpectedly peaceful shelter amid the rubble that lies at our feet right now. Nothing makes more sense to me right now than the peace he has made with his death.

Katrina's victims didn't get to make peace with death. The Bush Administration, FEMA and other dazed officials robbed them of that. While Bush and Brown may have been surprised by the ripples of destruction that Katrina sent through New Orleans and the rest of the country, Katrina victims were surely surprised when they realized the beacon of democracy - the light of liberty - was asleep at the wheel, leaving them vulnerable to death and destruction. The world's richest and most powerful nation can't even clean up all their bodies as the flesh is slowly eaten away in a watery, toxic cauldron. There's no peace in that.

Soldiers who have died in Iraq were robbed of that peace, even though death accompanies warfare, is an inherent feature of it. Soldiers, I am told, accept death when they sign the dotted line that makes them responsible for protecting the country with their lives. But the war in Iraq started with lies and is being propped up by foundations made from twisted logic. How many soldiers would be alive today without the war? How many signed up, convinced that without war, radical Islamists would see to it that 9/11 was just the beginning of terror for Americans? They died for lies.

Abed is honest down to the core about his death. As if trying to shake off the pity oozing from his friends, he said, "What the fuck. I'm sick of this pain. Then there are the people who like you, because you were nice...But what can you do?"