your honor, i object

Concert Princess for a Day

2010-09-15T23:33:00.000-07:00

Do you ever not want to fall asleep because you don't want the day to end? Usually I try to fall asleep precisely because I want the day to end. But not today. Today was a Very Good, Exciting Day, which isn't likely to happen anytime soon again - so let's just savor it. In addition to a successful presentation in my Law and Culture class which was made up on the spot using vocabulary gleaned from living with an anthro PhD student- In addition to being asked to give (and giving) an interview about the Buffalo Human Rights Center (of which I'm now a co-director) for a promotional school video- In addition to being invited to a vegetarian dinner by my new friend who is 23-year-old from Azerbaijan here on a domestic violence fellowship- In addition to getting through my human rights class AGAIN without having done the reading but still able to meaningfully participate-

Are you ready?

I was seated (for trial purposes only) in the first chair in orchestra. I was leading the orchestra as Concert Mistress:-)))) I tuned the orchestra. I cued the orchestra. I decided when my section should come in. And when I decided we shouldn't (even if we really should have), we didn't. There was no one in front of me but the guy with the beat. Schubert's Unfinished Symphony never sounded so sublime. And even though we all sight-reading and it sounded like s***, and even though I'll probably be moved back for next rehearsal to give the next chump a shot at leading in this painfully humbling 'rebuilding' year, and even though the invitation to sit in the first chair is tainted by the fact the the last time a conductor asked me to sit in the front it was because he had an obvious crush on me, and the orchestra knew it, I loved every minute of it. The new conductor shook my hand afterward and said, "you did a really good job." It makes me almost want to start... practicing... again.

So I don't want today to end like I don't want this year to end. I'm having fun in school again because I'm reaping the benefits of all this sowing. All the time sowing. All the time doing things, doggedly loyal to my future, when I'd rather be doing something else... and finally I'm in a position where it's not so hard anymore. And instead of being unsure of myself and in awe of the people ahead of me, I'm the one ahead. And from here it looks neither intimidating nor even quite so far away from where I just was. Is the lesson here that if you just stick around long enough, your day will come?

as if for the first time

2010-09-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

Getting back from Thailand and immediately starting law school didn't leave me much time to digest the transition. I did return to Central NY Labor Day weekend to attend a friend's wedding and was struck by the unabashed beauty of the region at this time of year. In Augusts past Upstate has turned dry and used/abused looking. This year apparently there has been more than enough rain, and the land couldn't look more vibrant. I was looking at it as if for the first time.

choosing my words carefully

2010-08-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

Expert trackers learn to identify animals by their footprints. The nimble indent of a fox, the frantic hoofprints of a doe, the scattering* of a mouse.

OK, that may be on the level of a "novice" tracker, achievable by a quick jaunt through the NYS Natural History museum exhibit, but anyway. What turns a novice into an expert? EXPERIENCE. Aaaand a naturalist guide.

Since I don't have the guide, I actually can't get past the novice level in bug bite identification, but let me be the first to say it isn't for lack of observation skills. Let's see, there are the bites that cluster near one another, like a spattering** of shrapnel (where do I get off making analogies like this?), I think this to be from the spider family. There are the bites that immediately swell to a quarter inch in both diameter and height - I believe these to be mosquitoes. There are the bites that itch but aren't seen - I believe these to be not bites at all but maybe prickly heat? There are the bites that are seen but somehow do not itch - perhaps ants? There are the exciting bites that cause blood vessels under the skin to break, creating a temporary mini-bruise. There are the ones that give me a greater than usual allergic reaction that makes the flesh swell ever so slightly. Then there was that one that wouldn't go away for weeks. I told my host sister it was a malaria bite, and given my level of Thai and my hair color, I'm sure her laugh when I told her can be translated as "she thinks malaria is an insect!"

If insects here were an actual problem, I think I would be able to give a name and face to these little vampire crimes. I'd confront the perps in the street and point to the mess they've made of my feet, ankles, and arms, in the hopes of getting if not a public apology then at least an explanation for why they seem to victimize me more than the next . But the truth is, I don't really notice the buggers dipping into my blood stream. Anyone read Insomnia? Yeah, like that. Perhaps a little prick, but no love lost. And the bites that become a problem later I treat with this balm that is similar in nature to the well-known Tiger Balm (active ingredient menthol) but has me convinced that the addition of clove oil, cinnamon oil, camphor, and something called cajuput make all the difference in the world. The unofficial name for it is Ya Hmong (medicine of the Hmong hilltribe people from Burma/Thailand.) I industriously connect the bites into imaginative constellations while rubbing on the balm. Like a raw tattoo that I got in a fit of proactive, preemptive nostalgia for the summer I've had. For the incredible hot, sticky, ridiculous, unimaginable, hilarious, understated and overcharged summer I've had. Nothing a slathering*** of Ya Mong can't calm down.

Can you believe I don't want the bites to fade? I want to get malaria so I can take it home with me. Or maybe so I can't go home. Back to law school.

Today was the culmination of my summer. I came to the meeting on the defensive. The Open Society Institute was visiting TRAFCORD to talk about what I had submitted mid-summer. I was asking them for $15 grand - a modest sum, but one that represents a substantial part of TRAFCORD's current overall budget. And I had boldly outlined who were were, what we do, why we're worth it, and what we're going to do with it. When I turned it in I was pretty proud of it, but when faced with defending it orally to their face, the nerves crept up. While my supervisor answered some preliminary questions in Thai, I ran over the goals I had outlined, the objectives, the need, the limitations, the time-line, the cooperating network agencies , the target groups. The long term sustainability of what we meant to achieve, the breakdown of the accounting.

What was I thinking? None of this can stand up to scrutiny. I don't actually know what I'm talking about. I don't even understand bloody Thai well enough to know what they're talking about without the odd English word thrown in there!

The farang woman across the table from OSI intimidated me. She spoke Thai fluently and asked questions that she clearly already knew the answer to. Then she abruptly switched back to English and turned to me.

-You wrote this?

[Look her in the eye, Sara. Learn to take criticism. Unequivocal.]

-Yes.

[Oh shit, I touched my eye with my finger that still had Ya Mong on it! Menthol in the eye! Burning!Tears!]

-Excuse me, I have something in my eye.

-You don't have to cry. Let me start by saying... it's very good.

And with that my heartbeat returned to normal, my confidence surged, and I spoke about our mission, our activities, and our ambitions as if I'd been working there 2 decades and not 2 months. Thank you law school for giving me the vocabulary and the poise to hold my own. Really, thank you. I may not be an expert in insect identification, nor am very good at speaking Thai. But lookie here, I can now write professional grant proposals.

*chosen deliberately over 'scampering'

**chosen deliberately over 'smattering'

*** chosen deliberately to complete a healthy triad of three syllable gerunds that start with S

In A Place

2010-08-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

I’m in a place
Where the ceiling is the floor
Where the bed is a table
And the window – a door

The clock tells the time
In a code no one knows
And a butterfly waits on the wall

There on the floor
With its corners laid bare
There is plenty of space
Covered only with air

Life looks so simple
When viewed from afar
And the butterfly watches it all

Notes reach my ears
From where, I don’t know
The tune sounds familiar
Wafting up from below (?)

I ask of the butterfly
Do you hear same as I?
But the butterfly shakes his head no

I hear a tune,
He says, Surely as you
But the music’s in my head
I doubt you hear it too

Oh! But I do!
It’s a beautiful song!
I’ll prove it by singing along

The butterfly busies
Himself with his wing
Which is torn on the side
Hinting places he’s been

The reason, he says,
That we hear different things
Is as plain as I am small

I sense the world
Through butterfly eyes,
Through butterfly ears,
At a butterfly size

Try putting yourself
In my shoes for a day
And with that he flies away

And here I am left
All alone, by myself
The ceiling is cluttered
On table, chair and shelf

Where the butterfly rested
A shadow cast on the wall
I can barely see it at all

A piece of his wing
He’s forgotten behind
Or maybe he means
To give me a sign

That hard as we try
To leave not a mark
We are but trees shedding bark

So I move from the ceiling
Back down to the floor
I start over again
Standing upright once more

The music, I decide,
Is an echo of the past
That flew out the window too fast

imagization

2010-08-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

World Takraw Championship, held conveniently in Chiang Mai this time. Not a sport that is part of the Olympics but it should be. This is why SE Asia hmmm....falls short.... at football (relatively) - all their major athletes play this. These are women's teams. Takraw is volleyball meets badminton meets gymnastics meets hacky-sack.

This doesn't really do it justice. To be clear, they can only use their feet and thus they spike as shown here. Men do backflips.

Here's my favorite Vietnamese player, doublng as the team photographer.

This is Anthony having a really good time.

My working group at the Anti-Child Trafficking workshop in Mae Sot.

Wattana Village Resort

What would a human rights conference in Thailand be without a couple of the participants dressing in drag to perform for us? These two lady boys were actually Burmese, and representing a group supporting those infected with HIV.

The TRAFCORD team at a government run shelter for female minors. The girl to my left was rescued from a brothel when she was 16. She's now 18 and being repatriated to Burma.

Here's Slavomir presenting to the workshop recommendations on how to improve capacity building for the service providers who take care of the reintegration of trafficked children. In the picture at least it looks like he knows what he's talking about. What a snazzy shirt he's got - where can I get me one of those? Oh wait -

There I am rocking the grey one with my two Burmese AIDS activist friends. I'm the one in the middle.

Leaving in my chariot.

Leaving on my motorcycle taxi. Oh dear - I just spelled that phonetically 'motocyle'. I guess I'm having trouble with final consonan.

Outdoor concert - only the BIGGEST band in Thailand: Carabao. Anthony is holding up the tag they gave him in exchange for surrendering his belt at security. Apparently these concerts can get a little out of hand. The concert was sponsored by jasmine rice. Or rather by the growers' association. The rice itself was being sold outside the gates by the 5 kilo bag. I didn't have room in my purse for one, a pity.

An-toh-NEE telling a ghost story in Thai to some hipsters at a Friday the 13th celebration. Caleb (foreground) helpfully pointed out that it was already past midnight and so technically it was the 14th.

The river dividing Thailand from Burma. I was at the border to get my visa extended.

I looked for this triangle. In vain. I found a lot of opportunities to by cheap cartons of cigarettes and pirated DVDs, but no golden triangle.

Visa in hand, ready to go home. Or back to Chiang Mai at least;-)

sink or swim

2010-08-13T02:16:00.000-07:00

Well after dark, the bus pulled into a parking lot sloshing with days of unrelenting fallen rain. Rows of parked motorbikes sat half submerged, lining curbs no longer visible. Ripples ran ahead of our behemoth vehicle giving life and depth to the shimmering black surface. The miraculous station floated as an island of artificial light, embodying a miracle not by floating but by not sinking in the recent deluge. I stepped off the bus into the water with faith that it was not as deep as it appeared. My feet and ankles were swallowed but my faith remained buoyant.

While I was in Maesot at an anti-human trafficking workshop, Chiang Mai was pummeled with rain. I got regular text message updates from my host sister and others who sounded like they were on the Titanic during its last throes. They were worried about me - because of the weather, because I had left Chiang Mai alone, because I had threatened to hitchhike if I missed a connection, and also because Maesot is, well, dangerous for other reasons. At my lush mountain resort where heads of ASEAN NGOs gathered to talk of the reintegration of child trafficking victims, I was sheltered from the suspicious goings on in the city and across the recently closed border to Burma.

Burma will have an election in November. One must forgive the masses of Burmese citizens inside the country and outside who are skeptical that the military junta has turned over a new leaf. Even as the elections are planned, hundreds of thousands have fled Burma because of direct oppression against those who speak out against the military regime and against those ethnic cultures which are not recognized by the government as citizens but only harassed by it to build its railroads and marry/service its soldiers.

A mysterious tornado came through Maesot and struck only one place: a Burmese school. It was not reported by any newspapers. Just rumors. So said a British traveler on the way out of Maesot to the city of Tak. She worked for an organization that was developing textbooks for use inside the refugee camps in the hopes that the Thai ministry of education would recognize the schooling certificates of the children growing up there.

I decided to attend the three day conference on trafficking even though I would have to absent myself on Day 2 to meet my TRAFCORD colleagues in Pitsanulok in Central Thailand to visit a gov't run shelter. TRAFCORD's social worker was following up with a now-18-yr-old survivor of human trafficking into the sex trade. She is Burmese but her family lives and works, undocumented, in Chiang Mai. She doesn't want to return to Burma but Thai law mandates that she be repatriated. I take some issue with that term in this context, thinking that it is still closer to 'deportation' than a victim deserves. She has been at this particular shelter for 2 years.

The workshop in Maesot, to which I returned for Day 3, was organized by BURMA ACT (Anti-Child Trafficking network). We sat in a room like delegates at the UN, half on one side fitted with earpieces translating English to Burma, the other half - consisting of representatives from the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, wore headsets that translated Burmese to English. Though English was the dominant language used, I was among a small minority (three?) of native English speakers. It's unclear how the Burmese participants came to Maesot given the official crossing is closed. The border is a river. Maybe they swam.

One evening after a lively day of learning the best practices of crossborder cooperation as spelled out by the numerous regional Memoranda of Understanding, we were treated to a performance by a Burmese theater youth group portraying a typical story of a desperate, vulnerable migrant turned exploited sex worker. A Burmese reporter asked me for an interview afterward to comment on the performance. Though I don't understand a word of Burmese, I've seen similar skits many times and had no trouble commending the children on their work, and questioning the political instability of the situation in Burma that puts people living there at risk. (Never has the term 'political instability' seemed so misleading in its neutrality as in this context.)

Returning from Maesot, our bus was stopped no fewer than 4 times at conspicuous immigration police checkpoints. The driver would often motion to its passengers as white foreigners and the officer would wave us on. If the officer's flashlight caught the face of one of the Thai nationals sitting with us, he would inevitably open the door and make them show their country ID. In the 4 trips over 3 days I made into and out of Maesot I always pulled out my passport at one of these checks but the immigration officer never looked at it. Once I was asked where I was from, and the word 'America' brought a crisp end to the interaction.

Funny, white privilege in Thailand working the same way as white privilege in the U.S.: not having to show my ID on Greyhound buses while Hispanic- and Asian-looking fellow Americans struggle to explain why they are not carrying their passports on a bus headed from Rochester to Syracuse.

Because the border is closed at Maesot, I now have to travel north 5 hours to the crossing at Maesai to get my passport stamped to extend my tourist visa another 15 days. I shall not complain.

On a Gangway Over the Sea

2010-08-06T02:45:00.000-07:00

What a beautiful bridge
To be stretching like this
From the land to the sea
It was made just for me
And for these others too
It will function like new
Glinting steel in the sun
I will try not to run

Can’t I see?
Just how far I’ll fall
If you don’t stay next to me, to me

On the way to the ground
I can't help hear the sound
Of the footfall of lovers around
And the fall lasts as long
As it takes to walk on
To the boat of my dreams
Rocking in the beyond

Wait for me!
In midair I’m caught by gravity, lost at sea

What a curious place in between time and space
Where we climb to the clouds up above
We lose track of ourselves as we marvel at shells
Where we hear a far crashing of waves on the shore

But of course!
You’ll be there to catch me when I fall, I'm yours

     Now how I regret that you
     Left me to board the ship, my shoe
     It caught the edge of the gangway
     Betrayed by rubber soles, you’ll say

     Now I will land where I don’t know
     All faces turn to watch the show
     Your scream suspended in my mind
     Like tapioca in a stein

What a beautiful face
To have met with disgrace
Suddenly seconds slipped by too fast
But what softened my fall
Was the knowledge that all
People stumble sometimes, now hear my plea

I am free!
How strange it is to go anywhere at all.

bendable, thus unbreakable?

2010-08-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

A smartly dressed woman stood with her nephew on a corner and looked across the street at a young man. Their eyes met briefly, casually. Neither side moved and both sides waited for what seemed a leisurely eternity. No cars passed between them, and in fact, no car motors were within earshot. The street was empty, clean swept, and protected by an unwavering right-angled curb in white concrete, like the sand of some far-flung isolated beach. The woman caught the gaze again of the man across the street. Her eyes were drawn not to his appearance but to his effortless restraint. The light changed from red to green, and the parties crossed as if they had never been stopped.

Ajaan Ganya is an elegant and sophisticated law professor at Chiang Mai University. She speaks English with a crisp British accent fit to be cast in any Jane Austin remake, though she has never been to the U.K., nor to the U.S. for that matter. Her career as a law professor stretches unbroken from her time as a law student, having been immediately turned off from practicing law in her country after an ill-fated internship where she realized the extent of the problem. The problem, which she will be the first to frankly point out, is that in Thailand there is no rule of law. “Rule of law” for those uninitiated to the concept, refers to a system where the law reigns supreme as opposed to any person or persons. Unhelpful cynics may point out that there exists no system in this world where there are not people or corporate entities above the law. Moreover, the fact that we still operate in a world of discreet systems (nations) means that many entities can and do exist in the cracks between. In law school we are exposed to the concept – albeit unofficially – that, in the U.S. at least, most people follow most laws most of the time. Cynicism should be left at the pristine curb if it cannot distinguish degrees of adherence.

Ajaan Ganya has two nephews, one of whom is working on masters degree in music performance in Dusseldorf which she is helping pay for. She had just returned from a visit to him. Both the nephews are pursuing classical music – a fitting profession for my impression of this highly sophisticated and western-oriented Thai family.

My knowledge and experience with Thai law is limited by many things – by a language barrier, a cultural barrier, the short-length of time I’ve been working here, and the second-hand nature of the knowledge which I glean from the NGO. But it is limited further in one important way which I had hitherto been unaware of: the depth is limited to one narrow area of victims' rights attached to criminal law – that of human trafficking. The law operating in this area is so new (3 years?) that much of its lack of application and proper enforcement is chalked up to the inexperience of the police officers and public prosecutors. Or so I had had the impression.

My lunch with Ajaan Ganya yesterday reminded me in a very credible way of the overall irreverent attitude towards the law which, in her opinion, is crippling the society and preventing them from moving forward. She is highly critical of the lack of respect that the law is given, but her criticism is directed at all levels, starting with the government itself which enacts and enforces law in ways that make it clear the law is meant to be obfuscated.

Traffic laws, although of relatively low-level importance, are a window into the culture of the relationship Thai people have with the law and the approach of enforcement. Take helmet laws: the purpose of enacting helmet laws is to prevent serious head injuries. Helmet laws here, like in many places, are quite laxly enforced. But here the enforcement is not just lax, it works with you to ensure you do not have to comply. There are announcements next to certain intersections alerting people that the helmet law will be enforced here. IN other words, if they are enforced at all, they will be enforced at the stated intersection. OK, so unless all accidents have been shown to occur only in these places, it looks like the traffic police are making things easy on themselves and on the public. Another illuminating example is the ‘No U-Turn sign’ posted every now and again. A sentence underneath the universally recognized symbol says ‘especially not normal cars’. This is funny, and quite revealing I think.

In my domain, the issue of trafficking enforcement comes up against the world of prostitution which is all but legal. According to Ajaan Ganya, the flouting of the Suppression of Prostitution Act has become even more conspicuous in recent years. Whereas once it was enough that the act of having sex for money was confined to hotel rooms and go-go bars, now women just line the street. Which is true. I’ve seen it. And the problem is, where is the line between the woman who is forced to sell her body by an abusive pimp and the woman who is forced to do it because of her vastly diminished economic and social status? The latter is not considered a victim by law even though she may consider herself one, while the former can be categorized a victim of trafficking even if she thinks otherwise. Ignoring one set of laws makes it virtually impossible to enforce another set – impossible, that is, without the oversight of organizations like TRAFCORD, of which there are few.

Returning to the traffic laws - I should point out that they are sporadically enforced, but not for their stated purpose. For instance,traffic cops use helmet laws as an excuse to pull over migrant workers to check for their papers and extract a fine. The rule of law then becomes the oppression of the state.

of rice and men

2010-08-02T04:44:00.000-07:00

This post is being drafted without the help of the internet, so I caution the reader against reproducing the facts, ideas, or causal relationships contained therein even more than I normally would do. I admit only to writing that which has been sincerely inspired by true facts.

“Khao” means rice. It might as well mean “food”. The word for “meal” is interchangeable with the word for “rice”. The word for “hungry” is literally to “hunger for rice”. There is no sufficient metaphor to illuminate the importance of rice in this society. On the contrary, the status of rice here should be the substance of other metaphors seeking to describe a relationship of complete, content, and categorical dependency. For Americans, petrol is the rice of…

Rice is served with most meals as the vehicle for the sauce or meat. Rice is also made into milk, into noodles, into gummy, sweet concoctions, into various dried and puffed snacks. If there were such a thing as the FDA in Thailand that decided to make a food pyramid as a public information tool on the proper diet, the category of ‘grains’ would surely just be called the ‘rice category', and it would comfortably occupy 2/3 of the whole pyramid. The Thai FDA doesn’t really need to issue such a pyramid; this is already how people eat, not how they should eat.

We in Thailand are now about a week into the 3-month holiday of Khao Pan Sah during which some practicing Buddhists will give up something – like meat or alcohol. In this way (only) it's reminiscent of the Catholic Lent. One of my co-workers has given up meat. Previously he had confided to me that he wanted to lose weight, which I've concluded must have contributed to this decision to some extent because I don’t know of anyone else having given something up.

More than self-imposed dietary restraints the period is marked by the isolation of the Buddhist monks within the temples. They are not supposed to leave the temples at all. If the exigencies of modern life require they leave, they must arrange for permission from the head abbot at the temple. Since they cannot leave, throughout the period they will be dependent on the temple’s patrons to bring them offerings of food, water, and any other supplies of daily life they might need. Like the self-reinforcing responsiveness of an American Rite Aid to the buying habits around Halloween, stores are currently stocked with pre-packaged baskets filled with non-perishable foods and basic personal hygiene products, all wrapped in cellophane. For the Thai Buddhist-on-the-go.

When I asked about the origin of this holiday, I was told that during his life the Buddha became aware of the hardship that his veritable army of ‘disciples’ [please excuse my Christian terminology, on another day I would try to look up a more neutral term for this] caused to farmers during the planting season. The monks were trampling young rice in their effort to reach the villages to spread the word of the Buddha – or whatever. That too sounds very Christ-like, eh? Who knew that my ability to talk about organized religion would be so influenced by a religion I don’t even practice. So anyway, the Buddha decreed that for three months out of the year the monks would stay indoors at the temple and use this period to study the religion. This was also a good chance to strengthen the relationship of the villagers to the temple since, unlike in Christian practices where there is a weekly or even daily opportunity to pray in a congregation, there is no equivalent of “mass” as far as I can tell. Khao Pan Sah may be the period of the year that Buddhists visit the temple most regularly.

On foot I can see how an itinerant monk would have trouble avoiding rice paddies. The paddies blanket the landscape and are both regularly placed enough and irregularly shaped enough to make it nearly impossible to navigate around them on foot in the country. Most of the rice cultivated appears to be the wet rice variety meaning the paddies are flooded. So rice paddies everywhere. And monks? They are everywhere too.

The best way for a family to make merit is to have a son and for that son to join the monkhood. All Thai men have been initiated into the monkhood at some point or another. Most just join symbolically, and devote a token period of, say, 3 months to the training. Others stay longer. The monkhood also serves as a place for old men to retire who have lost their wives and who cannot work anymore. To join the monkhood means adopting a life of near poverty, of meditation, and most importantly of voluntary support by the public. So there are a lot of monks walking around all the time. Old, young, prime of their life. It is a position highly revered.

The Buddha must have wanted to protect the source of people’s livelihood from the means of their salvation. The two should be in conflict as little as possible. The monks meanwhile must have time to memorize things. From what I understand there is an emphasis within Buddhism on orthopraxy (as opposed to orthodoxy) which means that the study of the religion is focused on the details, on precisely how it should be practiced as stated in the old Buddhist texts. There is a sect of Buddhism in which all knowledge of Buddhism is passed down orally. Some ridiculous (used to emphasize size, not to ridicule) number of words is memorized by heart. Alas to be more specific, I would have to look it up on the internet. Which I still don’t have. Anyway, this is my impression. Let’s say, for effect, that they memorize as many words are there are grains of rice.

Try crossing this valley without getting your feet wet.

Young rice plants are a distinctive vibrant green.

Way high up in the hills between Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, there is an eponymous mountain, Doi Chaang, on which a famous brand of coffee is produced. Pi Anny and I went on an adventure to try to find a rare type of coffee produced by collecting and washing the partially digested coffee beans from the feces of the Civet cat, an animal native to Asia which isn't exactly a cat. (Would a cat eat coffee beans? This is my lay person species analysis.) Turns out they only produce 40 kilo per year, 1 kilo of this coffee goes for approx $2000, and they are sold out anyway by now. So I had some of Doi Chaang's regularly tasty organic roast in the form of an exquisite espresso in Thailand's highest coffee shop.

legends of the fall

2010-07-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

Large red leaves from the santol tree, freed by the umpteenth heavy downpour, litter our driveway. Today I stood outside, barefoot on the wet pavement, and noticed the difference in the air: it was pleasant and cool. Fresh. Thin. Could this be...?

The second half of my summer is underway and it has already distinguished itself from the first half. I went to the U.S. for a week in mid-July to attend my cousin's wedding. I didn't trumpet this return to my university in Buffalo nor to CMU because it would have appeared more frivolous than the trip was at heart. For the Korol side of the family, it was not a question of whether to attend, but rather, for how long. The extreme length of travel to get from Chiang Mai to Hampton, VA made it more like 10 days away for me. Then, immediately upon my return to Thailand, there was a 4 day weekend in observance of a Buddhist holiday Khao Pan Sa for which I accompanied my host-sister and her friend with children to the beach on Phuket Island. It has been a dizzying two weeks, but not without ample time (on airplanes) for reflection.

The cooling of the Northern region in Thailand, thanks to the monsoons, marks a general easing of the perceived extremity of conditions in this distant exoti-scape of mine. In fact, even before I hit the default midway of my time here, I found myself in an earnest debate with my American friend Anthony about whether we were riding through the "jungle" I as hugged the back of his moped on the climb to Doi Suthep one evening. He remarked something about the "jungle" around us to which I laughed and exclaimed loud enough for him to hear over the strained whir of his confused automatic gear-shift bike "This isn't a jungle!".

Sure it is! he countered, If not the jungle, then what?

I eventually lost the argument after a lame attempt to explain the "wild" and "impenetrable" nuances of a jungle replete with poisonous fauna and dense flora. The forest around Chiang Mai IS in fact jungle, and we civilized people live at its edges. Anthony was right. But at that point it had started to seem less wild.

Another marked change in this half of the summer will no doubt be my position at work which, thanks to the arrival of a new intern from Slovakia via London, has promoted me to a level of 'expert' in the operations of TRAFCORD that I would not otherwise have imagined possible. Slavomir, who is my age and completing a BA in 'international development' at the University of East Anglia, joined us last week and overlapped with me on Friday in my attempt to fight jetlag by ignoring it. Though I knew of his arrival beforehand, having been the primary contact with his university regarding his stipend and some paperwork for his degree, I had not prepared myself mentally. To my ill-concealed dismay, I came back to work to find a second desk pushed up right next to mine. One hour later, I had an office mate.

I must stop myself from placing too much emphasis on first impressions, but my first impression is nonetheless that he is going to be a bit out of place here. His school requires that he do an internship abroad. [Side note: always be wary of people who are required to do things as opposed to doing things of their own accord.] His program in international development is supposedly one of the best, although the competition does not appear stiff. He said he wanted to be in Bangkok and not 'up here in the jungle', but because he had a connection to the wife of the former project manager, he was able to set this internship up more easily. His knowledge of human trafficking consists of a handful of generalizations and dramatically grim snapshots of victims as portrayed in mass media. He does not have a legal background nor a background in anything to do with Thailand. At one point during my impromptu attempt at an orientation on not only the organization's activities but on the state of human trafficking overall and a bit of the history of the country as a whole, I exclaimed without meaning to "Have you done any research before coming here?" His unapologetic naivete' was wearing me thin. To which he produced a pile of academic articles he'd printed off before coming but had not yet read.

If you, the reader, suspect I am being too harsh on him, don't. When I suggested he read the U.S. State Dept report on trafficking to orient himself to some of the issues, he had the gall to brush off the report as a 'bureaucratic piece of garbage'. I then proceeded to summarize the important points of the report for him. When I asked him what he expected to do everyday, he countered by asking what there was to be done. Trying hard not to escalate the conversation into an argument, I meted my reply slowly enough to seem calm: there is quite a lot to be done for those who speak Thai and are familiar with what is going on. We interns must be careful not to make more work for them than we ourselves are capable of completing.

That said I'll be the first to remind myself that when I arrived I felt out of place and without much of a background in trafficking and not particularly well-suited to do anything. Sara, The Hypocrite At Large

So thus began my Fall: the season of reaping what we sow; the season of giving thanks for what we have and have achieved; the season - more recently, perhaps - of returning to work after a long summer break to see what is to be done.

View from plane over Pacific, heading to wedding. Neither this nor any of my photos have been touched up with color or edited with light - this one is beautiful though, is it not?

What Sara looks like after 24 hours of travel

Sister Alicia and cousin Sophia at beach in Virginia, two days before Georgina's wedding. I misplaced my camera before the wedding so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the colorful event.

This is my cousin Konrad, grandmother Helen, and Helen's brother Johnnie. I bet Bachie (Helen) doesn't even remember there was a wedding by now.

This is my cousin Georgina, who is now married and somewhere in China on her honeymoon sans the dogs of course. I hope.

Connie Korol, mother of the bride, drinking her favorite, I presume: a margarita

Uncle Jack, Father of the Bride, on his favorite toy: the iPad. Oh No! It's actually the menu this time. At all other moments before and after, insert iPad into hands.

[photo has been removed]

Auntie Barbara with Alicia

First day in Phuket at hotel.

Walking out of the ocean.

Some traditional Thai dancers at the mall.

Below is me with my arm around a transvestite performer from the Cabaret in Phuket. He/she was fabulously entertaining, dressed literally half as a man and half as a woman. How fitting!

Here's the gang, from left Pi Nui, Nong Noon, Pi Anny, Nok Yung.

definitions, illuminations, ruminations

2010-07-06T03:06:00.000-07:00

So it's high time I dispel the myths swirling on the internet (of my mind) that all I do is sit around all day on Facebook, getting massages, going to hot springs, climbing mountains, and watching the World Cup. The strongest myths grow out of a seed of truth, this is true. But in my case the seed is but a tiny spore. Patently mostly false. After all, as we all know, the World Cup games aren't on every day. What do I DO at work?

What I'm most proud of is my identification of a possible grant from the Open Society Institute/ Soros Foundation specifically for Southeast Asia which can be used broadly for projects that will increase "access to justice". The deadline is July 15th so we have to scramble.

Some background and further clarification. The work my organization does primarily utilizes three acts: the Anti-Trafficking Act of 2008, the Prostitution Act of 1996, and the Child Protection Act of 2003. As any good lawyer, I will define trafficking to be sure that you do not think the TRAFCORD team is out there trying to plug their thumb into the breached levee that is the overall prostitution situation in Thailand. Social 'norms' here have accepted prostitution with much less stigma attached to it than in other societies. I put 'norm' in quotation marks, because I think that people apply that term as if a norm is something irrefutable, untouchable. I understand what a social norm is, but I do no give it any more weight than it is due, knowing that norms can and should and do change. Social mores (norms?) in Iran still dictate the stoning of women to death for unproven accusations of sexual activity. Given the choice, of course I prefer a society where there is too much extramarital sex than too little, but from my perspective, both are repressive of women in their own way.

Thailand became a target for international sex tourism around the time the U.S. troops were stationed in Vietnam. The Thai government wanted to get in on the lucrative industry, and so passed an act in 1966 (if I remember correctly) that provided for the regulation of quasi-brothels in the straight-forwardly named "Entertainment Places Act". The Act refers always to the 'services provided' without going into further detail, and as long as the 'services provided' are not provided on-site, the owner of the establishment - usually under the indifferent guise of a 'massage parlor' - is not only doing something perfectly legal, but also taxable. This Act was not overturned by the 1996 Prostitution Act, and still remains good law to this day.

The 1996 Prostitution Act on the other hand, overturned the 1960 Prostitution Act which Thailand passed five decades ago under extreme international pressure to do so. Neither the 1960 Act nor the 1996 act read as ingenuous since both have gaping holes which make it virtually impossible to prosecute most of the day-to-day prostitution which occurs - the biggest hole being that the selling of sex is illegal when it is done "openly and shamelessly or causes a nuisance to the public" or if it is done in a brothel. A woman whom everyone knows is a prostitute but who does not have a sign hanging around her neck who accepts the offer of a John - or perhaps the tacit offer is the other way around - and who goes to a hotel room or where ever, would be almost impossible to prosecute under the current law. Not open and shameless. The 1996 Act for the first time contains a fine for the john and up to a month in prison. But it isn't a big fine ($33) nor is it enforced seriously.

There is little moral stigma on the profession of prostitution, and I'm told that married women accept this past-time of their husbands as the more desirable alternative to him having an affair. It goes without saying that he will seek sex elsewhere. And given the well-developed market and the wages in other lines of work, I don't think prostitution is going away anytime soon. But we are not combating prostitution. In TRAFCORD's cases that stem from the sex industry, what we deal with are those in which children (<18 yrs) are the victims or in which the women are being held captive, we can safely use the term 'slave', either physically or by indenture. Many are undocumented immigrants but some are from the Thai countryside as well.

The OSI grant I'm writing would enable TRAFCORD to go beyond its normal capacity, and extend its reach into the legal sphere. TRAFCORD would be able to train regional prosecutors in the new 2008 Anti-human Trafficking Act, an act which came about thanks to Thailand's commitment under the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. It would also provide for the fostering of a network of attorneys to represent victims in court. TRAFCORD already trains the police in dealing properly with victims. Unlike in the U.S., TRAFCORD as an NGO handles the identification *and* the initial case investigation, gathering evidence of possible trafficking instances, whereas the police only collect evidence once TRAFCORD has put together a big enough case to warrant a raid/rescue operation. But law enforcement aside, there is much to be done to get the current law properly established in the courts, and also to study its application in practice so as to push the government to fine-tune the legislation and correct the regulations. Just today I learned that our staff lawyer had to provide the judge with a copy of the 2008 Anti-Trafficking Act during court when the judge said he was unfamiliar with the law.

One of many examples of how Thailand looks good on paper but fails in practice: the 2008 Act provides that victims who are not Thai citizens are to be given a work permit while they wait either to stand witness at trial or wait for the Thai government to arrange for their deportation. However, the Dept of Labour has not issued such a permit, so women who have been 'rescued' from brothels, languish in 'shelters' for periods of up to two years awaiting either the trial of their trafficker or simply waiting for the Thai authorities to repatriate them, all the while they are cut off from supporting themselves and are dependent and, basically, captive to the Thai government. I would categorize the shelters as 'holding centers' personally, but this is not their official translation. The current situation cannot be what the policymakers envisioned if indeed they meant to protect victims and prevent trafficking, I am sure, but first the situation must be studied, documented and analyzed to give legislators the tools they need to make the law more workable.

After the OSI grant, there is UNICEF money up for grabs, but that doesn't have a duedate so I'm leaving it for August.

For next Monday's staff meeting the project manager has decided that everyone has to report their weekly activities in English except for me who must do so in Thai. This is the only instance that I would like to downplay what I do to the greatest extent of vagueness possible. I will say "I work on stuff, and do some things... I read, I write, and I communicate with people. OK, finish."

The Day the Earth Stood Still

2010-07-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

As July 4th wraps up for me over here in Thailand, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the greatness that is my coun- OK, I'm done. It isn't a long reflection. Actually, it only consists of the recall of a recent experience here which provided a nice contrast to good ol' Purple Mountains Majesty. For a generation that has grown up with two never-ending wars, eight years of Bush II, and the evident erosion of America's moral hegemony (what's left of it), sometimes we need to step outside the box to remember what was so great about being inside it. America is great because we do not have a ----. Say what you will about the illusory transfer of power between two centrist parties, at least every day at 6pm there is not a national moment of silent reverie as our anthem is pumped into loud speakers wired to every corner of every public space. I am wary of any displays of nationalism.

Somehow I had missed this particular happening in Thailand up until Saturday. I was wandering through a 'Walking Street' which is basically the 'Main Promenade upon which one walks to see and be seen', and I was aimlessly blowing on a (shoddily) handmade, questionably-tuned recorder I had felt obligated to buy because I really and truly knew in my heart of hearts that no one else on this earth would ever buy it - like saving an elderly dog with only three legs and no bladder control from being put to sleep. Anyway, after paying the equivalent of $1.30, I tried to play a scale but found the notes were not in order and were not spaced properly. So I resolved to at least figure out how to play notes that either ascended or descended in order on this bamboo stick. Start small.

Pi Anny and her friend Pi Nui, and Pi Nui's little 5-year-old girl Nong Noon trailed behind me buying up various edible concoctions that only taste like the sugar added to them. I paused for a long moment in front of a juice vendor and dedicated 90% of my brain activity to reading the different types of juice in Thai (Carrot, beet, lemon grass, penny leaf (!), pineapple, something I don't recognize, orange,...) and 10% was happily engaged making up melodies fit for the Pied Piper if the children to be lured were into new-age- ethnic/folk-experimental-minimalism. Emphasis on the "experimental". As I'd been walking down the row I had made a mental note that the pipe I was holding was not as out-of-tune as I thought since it seemed to match the atonal chords played by some of the street musicians. More evidence that my ear is just a product of Western classical training.

Then the background music changes and I'm having a harder time matching the notes - and also I'm stuck on the Thai word for "papaya" - and goodness, the music is pretty loud so I have to play louder to hear myself.

...Carrot,
beet,
lemon grass... what a crappy song this is....
penny leaf (!),
pineapple....look at me everyone, I'm reading Thai....
where's Pi Anny? Wha-?

I look up FINALLY and it is EXACTLY like that scene in the sci-fi movie 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' - possibly the coolest scene in any movie. Ever. You just know that the concept for the movie - like the concept for this post - came after the conception of the scene in which some greater power makes everyone freeze in the middle of whatever they were doing and holds sway until it releases them again. Frozen. The whole world. Or in this case, the whole country.

Well, that was the Walking Street for you. The national anthem had come on over the loud speakers. The anthem is about Thailand, the country - but if you ignore it, it is a slight to the king himself. Not a soul was even perceptibly breathing. Children were stopped mid-romp, old folks were frozen mid-wheeze, shoppers were caught mid-bargain, and vendors were strangled mid-pitch - as was I, although an entirely different type of pitch. My first thought was actually Oh no, I didn't stop playing my bamboo recorder in time, someone is going to arrest me.

Then I realized this was not a threat: 1) because I am a farang (white foreigner) who didn't know any better, and 2) since everyone was frozen, no one could actually look to see where the stray notes were coming from.

In all seriousness, of course no one would be arrested for not stopping. But it is notable that in Chiang Mai, the heart of the resistance to the current administration (red shirt territory) not even these people want to ignore the national anthem - it isn't fear, it may be respect and love for their country that they stop for. The punishment would be in the form of public rejection. Both sides of the current controversy want what's best for Thailand and operate under intense nationalistic convictions.

After the song ended, life resumed as if it had never stopped. I asked later if this public broadcast was some sort of special thing. Nope. It happens every day. And twice a day, at that - in the morning at 8 too.

The American in me cried Freedom and the musician in me cried Uncle.

one two many misunderstandings

2010-07-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

How great is it that Thai is the first language I've studied not to have any conjugations or declinations. It does not decline nouns so when you learn the name of something, you can use it immediately without caring whether it's the locative, genitive, etc. It doesn't have genders. Not clear ones anyway... It does not conjugate verbs: so the literal translation of the sentence 'if yesterday had been Wednesday, what day would tomorrow be?' is 'if yesterday Wednesday, tomorrow be what day?' Pretty great.

Except in those rare instances when tense matters. See, I haven't got all the little indicators straightened out to tell the difference. To my ears

'Do you like shopping?' is the same as

'You like shopping, right?' is the same as

'Would you like to go shopping?' is the same as

'Did you go shopping today?' is the same as

'I would like to go shopping so you should come too.' is the same as

'The President of the United f***** States likes to shop on the moon when the team he had been rooting for in the World Cup loses'.

Oh yeah, and I have a hard time telling when things are questions or not because you can't rely on intonation. Oh and also by the way, Thai people usually will drop the subject pronoun of a sentence even when it seems necessary (to me) given the neutrality of the verb.

So what am I saying? I'm saying that I usually have no idea what is going on. I went to campus today for the first time in a while to pick up my University ID number - not that I need it at this point. And since it was Friday, and since I actually do do work at my job - will explain in detail later - I was tired and just wanted to go home. I met Pi Anny after she was done with her work day and we started driving home. There was some back and forth about shopping which I tried to determine/assign as food shopping, knowing we were out of breakfast cereal (my American dietary hold out). I think I agreed to the fact that I like shopping generally and suddenly we're at some godforsaken outdoor second-hand clothing market - really far away from anywhere I want to be and my eyes are watering because my contacts need to be taken out and I have to go the bathroom and - and- [gasp for dramatic effect]. Shoot Shoot Shoot. Even once I realized the mistake, I had a hard time fixing it. Poor Pi Anny was confused that suddenly I DIDN'T like shopping but I still did like food and I was hungry yes, and will go home, go to store first, remember cornflakes, yes, there are no cornflakes at home, OK, yes, I like shopping but no I don't like shopping, I'm sorry. OK let's go home.

Living in the Now has its Ups and Downs.

But every once in a while, when a phrase or - Buddha willing - a whole sentence registers with clarity and minimal effort, it makes it all worth it. Example, 'I'll turn the lights down, ok?' This was said by my masseuse. The fact that I have one is only being revealed because it's better than letting your imagination wonder in what context someone is telling me they'll turn the lights down. For the record that is my blog, it is actually quite NORMAL in Thailand to get massages. Note that Friend Anthony's US State Department sponsored language program incorporated a 2-hour massage for all its students just today in fact. Not bad. Your personal thank you note from Anthony for paying for his massage is in the mail, dear taxpayers.

OK, I go to bed. Tomorrow wake up 8AM. Go with Pi Anny to Doi Suthep, then we go to mineral spring. Can swim. Don't forget bathing suit. Will not forget bathing suit. Am not forgetting bathing suit. Have not and will never forget bathing suit. Would not if my life depended on it be forgetting the bathing suit. Kah.

It's a Thai thing.

2010-06-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

Thailand is a country where people believe in ghosts. Correction: Thailand is a country where people know about the ghosts. The rest of us don't.

Someone asked me recently what I have found most surprising since coming here. I Palined for a bit before admitting that "surprise" isn't the right word to describe the reaction of a person who immediately accepts just about everything. But I do of course see differences. Here's a difference for you. Pi Anny (host sister, 37 yrs old) carries around with her a dead cat in her wallet for good luck. To bring her money, more specifically. The cat made its debut in my awareness a few days ago when my American friend Anthony came out to dinner with us. He's becoming a professional Thai studies person so he could chat with her on a somewhat deeper level than my usual 'how do you say [insert inanimate object] in Thai?' I had zoned out of their conversation until woah, what's this? There's a small ziplock bag on the table that Pi Anny isn't letting Anthony touch. I look over with some interest and see what appears to be the desiccated remains of some living creature, although it is flattened beyond recognition by lay people. Think: small mammal run over continually on a hot tar road in the summer and left to scorch for a few months.

Anthony determined that it was a stillborn cat, which explains the minute size. She explained about her activity on the Thai stock market and how the cat helps her increase her earnings - although for the past eight months it hasn't been strong enough to overcome the effect of the Red Shirts. Note the context of the first time the Red Shirts have come up in conversation without me prompting.

Superstitions are sometimes contagious. I hope I don't catch the one that lands a dead animal in my purse. Poland, another country that has a superstition connected with every daily movement and situation, "taught" me not to ever put my purse on the floor else I'll lose money. I tell myself that I adhere to this rule as a matter of decorum and proper purse care, but when I find myself hiding my purse behind my back on a plane so as not to be asked to store in under the seat (a.k.a. on the FLOOR) in front of me, I know that I've caught the contagion.

There is a fine line between superstitions and believing in ghosts and spirits. Once you believe that something has the power to alter your fate, it's a small step to believing that the something is a someone, or more accurately, a sentient something. On the way down to Pattaya this past weekend where my office was presenting at an anti-human trafficking road show I leaned nonchalantly on a tree in a parking lot waiting for others to come back from the bathroom. My supervisor quickly and kindly pointed out that this tree had a spirit who lived in or around it, and thus leaning on it was not a good idea. Disrespectful. We know that this tree had a ghost because someone had tied a spirit marker around it - some colorful ribbons on the trunk.

Do all trees have spirits? No.

How do we know when a tree has a ghost? The knowledge is either passed down from generations or someone sees something (?) that indicates it has a ghost.

I did not pursue the matter further. My previous studies in Thailand in January introduced me to a myriad of possible answers, none of which is more satisfactory than the answers given above.

On the way back from Pattaya we ate in a seafood restaurant in Ayuttaya in Central Thailand. There behind me sat a little boy with his head shaved but for a spot on his crown sprouting a long straggly ponytail. Pi Duean (my supervisor) told me that it is a belief in Central Thailand that to leave such a ponytail uncut allows ghosts/spirits to care for the boy and protect his health up to age ten.

Is there any such tradition regarding little girls? No.

What happens at age ten? The ponytail gets cut.

This is my friend Anthony. He'll be a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin this coming Fall in their Thai Studies dept. He's here doing an intensive language course at Chiang Mai University. We met 7 years ago when neither of us had anything to do with Thailand.

Here I'm using a stick with a sheered off soda bottle at the top to harvest fruit from our driveway. Neither the Thai word (Gra-tawn) nor the English word (Santol?) should be familiar to you - they weren't to me anyway. Just one of the many reasons I love Thailand.

Success:-)

Don't even think about leaning on this tree.

Looking out from hotel room in Pattaya. My supervisor was a resource person/guest of the Anti-trafficking event's organizers, so this was a 5-star establishment.

Our booth at the road show. We later set up in downtown Pattaya also. I was proud that when I was speaking to a Thai woman in English and she misunderstood the term 'human trafficking' to mean 'auto traffic' I was able to clarify using Thai.

There's my supervisor in blue standing next to some Thai superstars on stage at this government-sponsored event.

Pattaya Walking Street where prostitution, although technically illegal, is right out in the open.

Go-go girls. Almost no Western women anywhere. White women were probably Russian, as some thought I was. Just Western men with tiny Thai women on their laps. The girl on the right in this picture used to be a boy.

At the beach on the way back. Not for swimming though, across the bay from Pattaya

Under a sea of umbrellas. Tanning is not the goal for Thai people. Neither for me.

A very astute boy peanut vendor behind me. FYI: I am mimicking him, not the other way around. I see that I have fresh coconut juice spilled down my shirt, how attractive.

We stopped by Ayuttaya, the seat of Ancient Siam, on the way back. See the sweet panorama function on my camera? I believe if you click on the photo you can enlarge it.

Th Burmese ransacked this place sometime a long time ago. I'm too lazy to look it up and pretend I know this kind of thing off the top of my head.

There are my co-workers, wondering what the heck I'm doing. I went into spy mode and approached them undetected running along the terraced walls.

The two fingers is actually a Korean thing, not a Thai thing.

Small boy, aged <10 years, who has ghosts watching over him. Calling them ghosts is misleading because they are not spirits of people who were once alive. Then again, calling them spirits is misleading because they are not "holy" in anyway, it's my understanding.

On the ceiling of a brand new SUV, painted by a Buddhist monk to protect the owner. Traffic accidents are the number one cause of accidental injury in Thailand.

Sara with Baby Elephant.

height of character

2010-06-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

So there I was. Naked. Soaking wet. In the dark. On the top of the highest mountain in Thailand in a cabin with six people I had just met three days earlier. And lizard's tail was flopping under foot.

If you sometimes have trouble relating to my life, I know how you feel. I have trouble too. I have trouble with many things. Like the Thai language, for instance. Although, today in the car on the way back from work Pi Anny told me that my Thai was improving. Too bad I didn't understand her.

Back to the mountain. Lucky for me I chose to start work when I did, for this weekend was their annual planning retreat in the mountains, specifically on Doi Inthanon, three thousand-some meters or eight thousand-some feet above sea level. It would be easy for me to look up for the exact height, but I think we both consider such distances to be rather abstract, do we not? Would it be more helpful to know that Doi Inthanon is higher than the highest mountain in New York State? But not as high as the highest in the U.S.? (which is over 10k if I remember correctly.) Once, my well-meaning but rather casually prepared father took my siblings and me to climb the former, Mt Marcy. But we got a late start and got to the nature park when shadows were already long. Then we couldn't find a map of the park. Thus we ended up in a mosquito-ridden swamp after a minor, dispirited 20-minute walk, not knowing which of the slopes before us was actually Mt Marcy - they all looked equally high. We slept that night in a motel.

So I never got to climb Mt Marcy. And thankfully we did not climb Doi Inthanon either. We drove up in the fog in a 4-wheel drive extended pick-up. I'm glad I wasn't driving. I would have been paying too close attention to the yellow line, reminding myself to 'keep left, keep left', to notice that a chunk of paved road the size of a Hummer had fallen away down the side of the mountain. The Thais have a knack for making an effort so minimal where public safety is concerned that it almost would look like an aggressively willful omission if it weren't for its breathtaking sincerity. In this case, four brave little orange cones were neatly placed between us and our doom, which took the form of a gaping hole two thirds of the way into our lane. Why hello Doom, fancy meeting you here. Have you tried the sticky rice? It's quite tasty.

Our cabin was nestled among tall cedar-type trees: a would-be familiar landscape about 50 feet up, but on my level the plant life was still something out of Jurassic Park. Or maybe Jurassic Park was something out of Thailand. Forty-five minutes into the staff meeting on the evening of our arrival I decided that I had made enough of a show of participation. (I think at one point I suggested "the airport" when they were brainstorming new places to put donation boxes.) So I made off into the woods with my camera. There are only so many translations of terms like 'capacity building' and 'main objectives' that one can take before the glaze starts to impair vision. The fruits of my walk can be seen below.

Ah yes. The dark. And the nakedness. The tail. When I returned from the walk and they were still meeting about meeting, the powerpoint projector about to overheat, I went to the the girls' bedroom to read and wait. I didn't want to be the first to use the shower in the cabin, especially when my co-workers were still so devotedly WORKING, but around 9PM the drowsiness brought on by air thick with sounds of cicada-esque creatures threatened to put me to sleep in a pool of my own sweat. I switched the light on in the bathroom and like all Thai bathrooms, it was a tiled cube with a sink, a toilet, and two (?!) water heaters on the wall. Something skirted across the floor. Hard to see because it was the same pale green as the tiles. A ghost. A reptile. Jurassic park! No, just a lizard. I caught it before undressing, walked it back through the common room to the front door, and dropped it with what I hope was compassion out onto the porch.

Back in the bathroom, I was faced with a decision of which water heater to use. The old, rustic looking one with dials and levers or the new-fangled electronic one with reassuring buttons and a digital neon temperature gauge? The electronic one, a no-brainer. This, I learned later, was the one that shorted the fuse, that made the electricity go out while I was showering. I stood in the pitch black for many moments upon moments, waiting patiently at first for the situation to right itself like a flipped kayak with someone else in it. But after I detected no break in the staff meeting conversation through the wall, I knew that no one was in this kayak but me. Though what was the sound of flopping in the water at my feet? Better not to think of it.

Telling myself there was nothing to be embarrassed about, I cracked the door to the meeting room and disrupted the conversation by asking, through the ever-so-tiny slit with an even tinier voice, if my supervisor could please come here a minute. After some demonstrations of inactive light switches, I was back in business with the light on and the shower running. And just when I noticed that the thing flopping on the floor under my feet had been the frightened lizard's discarded tail (flopping like a chicken with its head cut off, minus the blood and feathers... and legs. Actually, not like a chicken at all) I realized I had made the same mistake again with the water heater. Because the power went out again.

Our precious cabin.

The shadows have grown long.

See the Brontosaurus behind the Banana Tree? Trick question. Brontosauruses do not really exist. And that's not a banana tree. So if you said "yes", well... I don't know what to say.

I stumbled upon a Mong hill tribe village. They are an ethnic minority in Thailand.

The Thai government has set up the Mong, and other hill tribe peoples, with modern farming technology so they can produce things for market. Like these flowers. It's called the Royal Project.

A Mong family.

Abandoned and confused sandals.

Shadow modeling.

Look, there's my chair whence I bestowed my wisdom.

If you look really hard you can see a spider's filament twixt the two berries.

FERNS GALORE.

Enjoying nature with a can of coffee-flavored sugar drink.

Magic mushroom.

OK, yes. I admit it. I FORGOT about the whole red-shirts thing when I bought the T-shirt. Nobody talks about it, it's not my fault.

There they are! There are my lovely co-workers.

The Money Shot.

How often are we eye level with such majestic clouds?

Look at what the highest point in Thailand is!

And that, ladies an' gentlemen, along with Murphy's Law, will ensure that all my future potential employers will be directed to this post upon doing an internet search of my name.

a giant among men

2010-06-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

It's about 80 degrees but with the humidity it feels like 90. The 5'9'' American sprawls across a love seat that Thai people call "so-FAH". Her extra foot of legs reaches over the end table. Her arms, long even in her estimation, have no where to go but above her head, extending slightly uncomfortably off the other end of this so-FAH. This is a deliberate calculation of comfort. Keeping her arms by her side would cause them to stick to her body in the heat. Length = greater surface area = greater stickiness, so up they go, up and over the armrest and out of sight. This must be what Gulliver felt like in the land of Lilliputians.

There are no fewer than two doorways in the house that the American must duck under so as not to whack her head. Counting the staircase, three. The refrigerator stands flush with her breast and the counter top reaches in vain to her hip bone. Alice has eaten the cake, but can't locate the vial.

At the modern shopping mall she stands in the glass elevator among full grown, perfectly healthy middle class adults and gazes thoughtfully over their heads at the glass atrium as they ascend to the 4th floor. I wonder what we look like from the outside. Like a bouquet of violets with a stray dandelion weed poking through the center?

It isn't just a matter of height. Thai people are small overall. The security guard at the university has a waist the size of the American's thigh. And her thigh is a normal thigh. Or was. What type of security is he providing? If she ran into him, would she notice? Would he survive?

Back on the so-FAH she rearranges herself to make room for her Thai sister. She folds her legs and reels in her arms. She collapses her waist and makes herself fetal in the corner until the sister sits down. Thankfully Thai people are what one would call 'touchy feely' and usually seek out body contact. Thus, with the sister's encouragement, the American stretches out again - aware of the increased heat from body contact, but persuaded vehemently by her legs. Legs, which have developed their own brand of claustrophobia independent of the rest of her body. Good bye, Legs, she says. Good bye, Arms, she says. If you go far enough East, you get to the West. She trusts her limbs can meet up again on the other side.

sabai- sabai

2010-06-16T23:57:00.000-07:00

Relax relax.

I feared showing up at TRAFCORD and being only about as useful to them as a mop - perhaps less so since at least it's clear what a mop should be doing. My fears have been somewhat allayed however. My supervisor, the project manager of TRAFCORD, graciously welcomed me, gave me my own room and desk, and quickly gave me responsibilities and goals that are doable. Unlike my last summer position where I had to hide my play on Facebook during work hours, I am an official Facebook administrator of TRAFCORD's English language version Facebook site - to which I just posted an article which quoted my supervisor. Actually, the article quoted me because it was by an international reporter from a group that monitors Burma who was interested in commentary after Monday's release of the US State Dept report on Human Trafficking. The US ranked Burma as low as you can go. More than half the population TRAFCORD serves is from Burma one way or another. Anyway, I responded on her behalf and lo and behold, there are my quotes in the article. How exciting:-)

My supervisor, Pi Duean, took me to a community meeting today with a committee that deals with child abuse in the Chiang Mai region. The meeting was across from one of the oldest, most venerated temples in Chiang Mai, Wat Suandok. The extent of my participation in the meeting was introducing myself to the group. When I signed in I realized I only knew how to write my first name in Thai. We'll have to look into that... Given the severity of the topic of conversation the meeting seemed pretty light and administratorial (not a word, I know) - or perhaps it just seemed that way to me since the part I understood was when they updated the list of member names and their phone numbers. If nothing else, I'm VERY good at counting in Thai. Knowing the word for 'child' and 'children' in Thai didn't get me very far with the rest of the discussion but Pi Duean was nice enough to translate the more important points. Quaintly, in Thai the word for children is just the word for child twice. Dek dek.

Afterwards we got lunch at a vegetarian restaurant at the temple where the monks eat. True vegetarian establishments are rare in Thailand and only exist for religious purposes or in tourist hot spots. Out of pure luck down the road from where we work there is a Chinese Buddhist vegetarian restaurant also. There is a Chinese vegetarian festival coming up where Buddhists give up meat. I guess it's something akin to Lent, to make merit. Thai people are generally very impressed that I have been a vegetarian my whole life, meaning I've compiled a whole lot of merit. Their eyes light up and they look at me like I'm Scrooge McDuck doing his signature dive into a mountain of gold coins.

As the English PR person from TRAFCORD I believe that next week I will get a chance to travel to Pattaya, the famous beach south of Bangkok where American soldiers during the Korean war first solicited prostitutes and put Thailand on the map for transnational sex trafficking. There will be an international 'road show' exhibition there and I will help man our booth. I've never been to Pattaya so this will be exciting. Fellow American travelers have said that it is quite seedy and even depressing if you know what you are looking at.

This is a metaphor of me in all my merit accumulated from being a vegetarian. It is also a sign that I was born in the 80s.

The door on the left goes to my office at TRAFCORD and the door on the right goes to Pi Duean's. I need to get me a comparable door decoration, wouldn't you say? Pi Duean has the Buddhist wheel of fortune.

Me in front of Wat Suandok. Behind me to the right is a place where important Buddhist people's remains are kept after cremation, to the left is the temple where ceremonies are performed. The tall gold monument is a "chedi" which by definition contains some artifact of the Buddha himself.

This style of architecture is typical of the Lanna region of northern Thailand. Lanna is very much separate from the Siam culture to the south centered around Ayuttaya.

This is Pi Duean, the director of TRAFCORD. 'Pi' is how we refer to older siblings, family, and colleagues. 'Duean' is an old name which means 'moon'.

A bodhi tree - very significant for Buddhists. I believe it was the tree under which the Buddha sat when he obtained enlightenment. Tree of Wisdom, etc. Reminds me of the baobab tree which in the The Little Prince took over the little planet. Probably not the best association.

Very delicate flowers like tissue paper, or a spiderweb.

dis-orientation

2010-06-13T22:41:00.000-07:00

Anny, my host 'mom', is only 10 years my senior. (You know you're getting a little old to be an exchange student when...) She went to work at the University today and I opted to stay back at the house, slowly trying to speed up my recovery from jet lag - contradiction intentional. The first day I arrived I slept 18 hours from 2PM on Saturday until roughly 8AM on Sunday. I say 'roughly' because, like me, none of my electronic devices made it onto Thai time completely: my iPod is still in Kyiv and my computer is somewhere over the Pacific. Baffling, since I flew over the Atlantic.

Sunday I got in some major bonding time with Anny and Nong Nai, her 10-year-old nephew who visits on the weekends. Anny doesn't have any children of her own but has had numerous exchange students at her house, happy pictures of whom are reassuringly taped to my bedroom wall. The three of us went shopping at Carrefour (world's largest retailer in front of Walmart) for various sundry items I had forgotten/lost/decided that I needed; we watched a movie dubbed in Thai with English subtitles for the hearing impaired [crowd cheers]; went swimming at a public pool; and met her cousin Pen who lives around the corner with her own family of elderly Thai people hanging around in the humidity and heat. Hanging around our own house are Anny's parents of indeterminate age, the mother is always busying herself with laundry or riding somewhere on the motorbike. The father is spotted watching TV on the reclining chair in the front room or alternatively lying on the reclining chair outside in the garage. I have yet to see him move about, but move he must for neither of them is home today. I have the house to myself.

Anny is impressed with my ability to retain the Thai words she teaches me. Little does she know that she is just reminding me of words I should already know at this point. Nong Nai and I had a little vocab lesson on body parts with a stuffed lion. The kid knows more English than I know Thai - but this should come as a surprise to nobody. Anny is more interested in teaching me the names of food. After stocking up on dried fruits at the store she slowed the car down every 100 feet or so to point out the types of trees the fruit came from. From my window alone I can see banana and mango trees. But my favorite so far is rambutan, the spiky red fruit you see in my hand. Believe it or not 'rambutan' IS the English word, so I can't help you much in describing it, save to say the inside is white, silky, and delicious.

On this, my self-declared day off, I took a bike ride around the neighborhood. I am six kilometers outside Chiang Mai. I would have ridden in to see the city except I left at noon. Bad timing, hottest part of the day - or should be. After snapping some photos more for your benefit than mine, I retreated to the AC of my room and a deliberately cold shower which still seemed too warm. As you can see, the shower is in the bathroom next to the toilet, so your whole bathroom is a shower. Your whole bathroom which you share with large tropical wasps, moths, and ants. Room enough for all.

Tomorrow I'll check in at the University and Wednesday I'll start at my internship. My boss will be so impressed that I can count my fingers and toes, and order fruit at the roadside stand.

This is after the pool, forgive my washed out look. My body thinks it's 3AM.

Me and Nong Nai in front of pool. 'Nong' is the prefix you give to siblings younger than yourself.

From left to right: Anny, Nong Nai, Nong Nai's mother who came to pick him up, and Anny's mother. They're all holding pillows because they said they felt fat. But they seemed to like to being pictures in any case. This is one of a series of pillow shots.

Corner of MY bathroom, the shower is attached to a water heater on the wall. I'll tell you right now, the water heater is not going to get any use form me this summer. It's my bathroom because I get the whole upstairs of the house to myself:-)

View from my balcony.

Requisite portrait of the king and queen in their younger days.

Spirit house in the front yard.

Our superbly Thai house.

This is rambutan. Arroy!

A Thai Stop Sign. It says 'Stop'.

through the looking glass?

Land Ho!

2010-06-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

Hello. My name is Sara Korol, and I feel alive again.

Like George Clooney in the movie Up In The Air, there's something about international air travel that is oddly invigorating despite the almost unbroken state of discomfort one is in while traveling. The American sitting next to me who was also going to Bangkok via Kiev on Aerosvit started subtracting stars from the airline's rating: the seat cushions which doubled as flotation devices felt more like flotation devices than cushions. My seat was stuck in the reclining position. The water and light in one of the four bathrooms were out of order. The lights above our seats were directed towards the aisle. My requested vegetarian meals were not in the system and so I ate lettuce and white bread rolls with margarine. There was NO alcohol on the plane (perhaps a good thing). And the TV screens were located on the ceiling every 10 rows or so, and were approximately the size of a passport, closed. It was so bad it was hilarious. We decided that Aerosvit could retain at least one star if we got to our destination safely. Which we did - to thunderous applause.

The state of disrepair of the aircraft was compensated for by very friendly flight attendants who all spoke to me in Ukrainian even though I would reply in English. There is a very limited repertoire of interactions that one has with a flight attendant so if you recognize the word 'seatbelt' or 'juice', you're good to go. Ah Ukraine! I missed your women who at any age wear detectable thongs and busty tops by clothing labels only found at open air bazaars. And I missed your men who shave their heads and wear track suits like they're going out of style (which they never are). And I especially missed how you slip meat into every edible delight even where it isn't necessary, e.g. breakfast pancakes.

So here I am in Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok. The time is 7:03AM and I am waiting for my flight to Chiang Mai, splurging on precious internet time. What really has been the focus of this entire journey, beginning yesterday, is my lower back which has seized up and actually is causing me an incredible amount of pain. The gods smiled on me during the second leg when my seat partner decided to move closer to his bleach blond beach bunny, leaving me the three middle seats to set up camp in myself. I was able to lie down and mentally gain a hold of my back which actually suffered a mini-spasm at one point. "Scary as hell" does not even begin to describe what I felt. I am human, I am resilient. And I can get to Chiang Mai still walking... with the help of hydrocodone.

The airport was empty at 3:30AM when we arrived. The only interaction I had was with immigration who prompted me to move on when I took too long putting my passport back in my wallet. I couldn't tell if the woman was being impatient or if I was truly moving too slowly. After losing a night's sleep, there is no way to tell.

Green tea, cream of corn soup, and an omelet have revived me some. The tea here is steeped to the perfect level of subtle flavor - not too watery, not too astringent. Glorious in the morning, and glorious to the parched traveler who tries to appreciate the little things when the big picture is too overwhelming to comprehend.

In Bangkok airport. Cool Kid Alert

Back in the Valley

2010-06-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

I leave for Thailand in a week. Today on the bikes my mom and I passed a Thai food restaurant in Mohawk. Since it isn't Chinese Food Take Out it looks out of place in the Valley where pizzerias are the closest we get to actual restaurants. This place still holds some surprises for me, and not all of them unsavory.

The bike path we were on ran from Mohawk to Herkimer, a.k.a, a mile. The townships had gotten together to pave a path from Utica through Frankfurt, Ilion, Mohawk, then to Little Falls a little farther on, but as the construction was underway a Canadian cruise boat ran into the shore and caused a lot of damage and erosion which needed fixing. Then they ran out of money. This is how the story was shared with me, with an emphasis on the Canadian part of the story. Those bloody Kanuks. They prolly got mixed up and were drahvin on the wrong sahd of the river.

I recently turned in a paper on Gypsies in Europe. There's something about outsiders that draws me in. I wonder why. Every time I come back to Ilion, I realize we've been here long enough remove ourselves from the newcomers club. We aren't exactly the old guard, but with my mom having worked in health care for twenty years around here, I bet she's seen one member of each family in the valley - be it through her work in public health doing Hospice, working in the ER in Utica, Urgent Care in Utica, St Elizabeth's in Utica, the Ob-Gyn in Ilion (I know she's done pap smears for girls I went to high school with) and now she's back working with elderly in the Mohawk Valley Nursing Home.

And like any clan that wants to assert its right to territory through identifiable markings of recognizable status, my brother now has a largeish tatoo on his right pec. Now the Korol family can hold our heads up high, knowing that there is at least one of us who bears the right markings to be given a spot on the life boat should Ilion sink to join Atlantis.

On the way back from the river, we rode by the house where my old violin teacher still lives. I guess he's old now in both senses, although to an 11-year-old, a man who has white hair is old. Mr McAvaney had white hair by age 35. He's the same age as my mom. And he's the reason my mother moved us to Ilion instead of Utica where she worked at the time. Ilion High School was the only string program in the area. It's rather pointless to play the 'what would have happened' game, since the possibilities of outcomes of one's life are both limitless and ultimately unknowable. But I owe a debt of gratitude to this music teacher for putting up with my family of three delinquent children who never practiced and of parents who dropped us off late and picked us up late and paid every three weeks when we weren't months behind. I remember the day he told my mom he was upping the price from $10 to $15 for half an hour. My mom took the news in stride, especially when he told her that he had already raised the price for his other students months before.

Beyond having an orchestra, it was easily the best high school in the valley (Mohawk Valley) and thus gave me a fighting chance to make it out. The scenery of delightfully decrepit turn of the last century houses doesn't feel as oppressive when you already have bought the ticket out of town.

The Cure For Procrastination

2010-05-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

My mother just got a full-time job. Hooray. Scratch that. My mother just got a full-time job that pays. Her previous full-time yet unpaid position was monitoring the situation in Thailand on CNN and through the State Department which led her to contact my university. The university in turn was forced to articulate its policy towards travel to Thailand when there is a State Dept advisory. The policy is: don't go, we do not sanction you going, and if you go, it's no skin off our backs. And if you go against our advice-née-adjuration, then don't expect your university insurance to cover anything bad that should happen to you, and also, don't expect to get reimbursed with university funds.

This friendly message stating its Thailand travel policy was recently distributed to the entire University faculty, staff and students. A coincidence, I'm sure. There's no way it had anything to do with me. Or with my mother. A lot of people at the University are planning to travel to Thailand this summer. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are lots.

I moved back my ticket to June 10th: partly because of the uproar my mother caused among the administration, and partly because of her concern for my Safety (her choice to capitalize this word) and the concern of various close friends who were unconvinced that I am in a position to adequately and objectively assess the risks involved, but mostly because I'm just now finishing my last paper for the semester and the thought of leaving the country on Thursday was simply overwhelming. Oh how I wish the adverb and adjective could be reversed! This gives Thailand time to start a real revolution and it gives me time to enjoy a couple weeks of summer with family and friends after a harried end of the semester. I just needed more time.

What Not To Do In Law School (the G-rated version, going straight to home video)

Do not take three seminars in one semester. If you do, then at least do not leave all three papers until the finals period because you WILL also have finals. I was forced to treat my papers like 48-hr take-home exams, and I'm sure the products reflect this approach. It has absolutely killed me. The upside is that now I can walk into any room in the world, and I will be the only one who can talk intelligently about the situation of the Roma in Eastern Europe, AND the status of women's right to a therapeutic abortion in Latin America, AND the Catholic Church in Buffalo. (There are common threads there, but not enough for me cut the papers from the same cloth unfortunately.) Now granted, there may be someone in the room who knows more than I do about any one, or even perhaps any TWO of these three topics. But rest assured, if you need someone to give mini-dissertations with questionable sources on all three - I'm your man. I mean, woman. Shit, I'm a terrible feminist.

I already have one grade back out of five: a solid A minus. A minus what? A minus the joy of having me in class. Let's just leave it at that, shall we? I won't check for the rest of the summer so I can enjoy myself. The key to getting that unstable element was taking a 7-hr exam (a real exam, not a paper I'd left to the last minute) while listening to the Cure and David Bowie. I let the frenzied, power hungry, overly confident yuppie sensibilities of the 80s wash over me as I typed. And, for the first time, I wrote about 'due process' with what appeared to be confidence - even to me. I remember as a 1L thinking of 'due process' as a nebulous cloud, the opacity of which depended less on its content than on the viewer. I was told where this cloud originated but it seemed to regularly stray from its natural environment and show up in the oddest places, like a polar bear on the island in Lost.

I can't believe I just referenced a show I've never even seen. That takes... skill?

So with all this time I suddenly have on my hands, I'm going to return to my steady state normal life. I hope that it's a biological default I don't have to think about because I truly can't remember what Sara Korol does when she's not doing - or avoiding - school work.

getting my summer's worth

2010-05-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

Gosh, the picture of Spring on my blog heading is so lovely - if it were on my editing page I would just sit and stare at it, and I'd never get around to posting anything new. Why is it that I am never around for the summer? I don't mean to complain, but I have missed the last 3 upstate NY summers, then there was a couple years where I was around... but before that I missed 6 in a row. Unbelievable that I would squander the one truly unbeatably gorgeous time of year. This time I'm giving it up to take a three-month-long steam bath in Thailand during their hot season. I hear the heat there peaks in April, so there's a decent chance I won't asphyxiate... immediately.

And now, it's time for another episode of It's A Small World After All, starring Sara Korol.

Previously, on It's a Small World, we learned that Sara had landed a job with a human rights professor because the professor was friends with her hold landlord in Warsaw from 6 years ago.

In today's episode, we learn that eight years ago Sara met a boy named Anthony when she was housesitting (squatting) in Rochester, NY. Anthony appeared to be an artist. He was the son of friends of the couple Sara was housesitting for. Sara was then a junior undergraduate at the University of Rochester, freshly back from a semester in Poland. Anthony spent most days chiseling a large piece of Styrofoam into an abstract sculpture in the garage of the house Sara was sitting. They became friends. Four years later Sara entered law school and Anthony in the meantime went abroad to teach English in Thailand. He learned Thai and becomes infatuated with the culture. The next year he entered a Thai graduate studies program at the University of Wisconsin. Sara, in the meantime, decided to go on a three week study abroad course to Thailand offered at her school (the only study abroad course offered.) While there she found out she had received funding from her school to do an international human rights internship for the summer - all she needed to do is set one up. So she did - in Chiang Mai, at an Anti-Trafficking Coordination Unit. Meanwhile, Anthony's master's degree was wrapping up and in order to start the PhD track he needed to complete an intensive Thai language course over the summer in Chiang Mai. So... little did Sara and Anthony know way back eight years ago as they sat on the front stoop and drank beer in Rochester, NY, that they would reunite in Chiang Mai, Summer 2010.

Who do YOU know today who you will reunite with halfway around the globe a decade from now? The knowledge that life holds little surprises makes it easier to give up the Knowns (the NY summer) in return for a grab bag of Unknowns.

no [funny] business necessity

2010-05-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

As I dutifully and a bit belatedly sit down to study for finals so close I can already hear the collective over-caffeinated chicken scratch on the Bluebook barn floor, I came across a bit of Employment Discrimination law that was ray of sunshine in world of legal cynicism. Employment Discrimination Law focuses 90% on one chapter (Title VII) of one federal statute, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which makes discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, or national origin unlawful. The statute in and of itself is a breath of fresh air for people who care about people (generally: human rights advocates, or in their more narrower iteration in the U.S.: civil rights advocates.) It is one of the few laws that reaches into the private sector to ensure a right - here, not to be discriminated against based on a handful of immutable or otherwise hard-to-change characteristics. As Americans, we actually have very few rights with respect to private employers - and this, some would say is a good thing (for flexibility of the economy, stupid). The employer can fire you for any reason at all at any time for the most part - except when the employer is doing so based on race, etc.

But as with most things that arose out of the heady, intrepid Civil Rights movement, a lot of its potency has been eroded over the years as employers have gotten savvy as to how to NOT get slapped with a lawsuit. Without getting into the 101 Ways to Discriminate and Not Be Found Liable that is being co-authored by Justices Scalia and Rehnquist, one primary defense to an unintentional practice that has a discriminatory effect is 'business necessity'. Example, if your practice of requiring a high school diploma means that you have fewer minorities working for you, all you have to say is the diploma is a business necessity (actually, you must prove it, but that shouldn't be too hard.)

Guess what isn't ever an excuse under the business necessity defense. You'll actually never guess.

Cost.

So if you pay your female employees less because you as the employer know that statistically speaking women will live longer and will cost you more in pension contributions, you can't claim COST as a reason for doing it (and thus, you have no lawful reason, and so you can't do it.)

Outside of T VII, once you drop the C-bomb, it's all over. Which is annoying in the utmost since Cost always can cut both ways. Considerations of cost is the main argument for not regulating the safety of off-shore drilling [oh no, you didn't go there, Sara. Yes, I just did.] Well, let's see if BP can pay the bill for this spill with all the money they saved from being mostly self-regulated... Wow, I sound like a crazy, communist hippie. Well, my crazy liberal hippie self was disappointed with the NYTimes today when the Cost of the oil spill was measured by how much seafood New Orleans has to eat now in anticipation of not having much later. Really NYT? The Cost of the Spill is that families are having to eat out twice as often at oyster bars?

Liberals aren't very good at wielding the Cost Sword. They let the ball drop during the health care debate when they should have been crying Cost to Businesses as a major justification for shifting the burden to the gov't/public, but they were too busy feebly fighting off specters of death panels and abortion mills. Unlike conservatives who only pretend to lay the Cost Sword down. (See: Republican solution to need for Wall Street regulation).

Well, my midnight rant is costing me precious sleep. I wish I could blog my final exams instead of write them. It would be so much more fun. For everyone. I have pretty bad handwriting.

Spring Rundown

2010-04-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

Part of the privilege of living in Buffalo is that Spring here comes later than in the rest of the country. I am therefore partially excused for waiting so long to update this blog and its colorful header. The rest of the excuse is even flimsier however, for it consists of making the argument that I in fact had too much to report and therefore was overwhelmed by the task of keeping you all up to date. Had I been wedded to blogging in any binding way, I would have certainly posted on the recent tragedy in Poland, and the overlapping/interlocking/inevitable resurgence of Poland as a presence in my personal and quasi-professional life.

Two days before the plane crash which killed 10% of the Polish government and other notable notables in Poland my class on abortion, law and film brought another law professor to guest lecture who specializes in women's rights in Eastern Europe. The professor brought with her a visiting Polish attorney who had worked on a high-profile abortion rights case in Poland (which I'd happened to have come across in my research assistant position), and a current Polish Phd candidate in feminist studies (who happened to be good friends with my former landlady from when I was on a Fulbright in Warsaw, aka Agnieszka Graff, the preeminent feminist writer and public personality in all of Poland.) On top of that, the professor was there to make introductory remarks on a film I happened to have already seen - 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 days which depicts a college student obtaining an illegal abortion in Romania during the Ceaucescu regime. I felt bad for the other students in the class who, from the moment I opened my mouth to greet the visiting attorney in Polish, had to endure a class specifically tailored to Sara Korol.

As a result of the class I have a job for next semester and, unrelatedly, a new Polish friend. The UB professor, who herself is a very high profile academic in the field of women's studies, asked me afterwards to be her research assistant next fall based on my participation in that class. I told her yes, even though I'm already a research assistant for another professor. I'll have to moonlight. And the Polish Phd student asked me to hang out. Bardzo dobrze.

I get daily updates on the situation in Thailand from my friends and concerned acquaintances. It really saves me a lot of trouble of following the news myself. I would like to announce that I will also be traveling soon to Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Darfur, Chechnya, and Haiti. I prefer my country briefs between 8 and 9 in the morning over coffee. Thank you.

Speaking of Haiti, I just participated in a Run to Rebuild charity event to raise money for Haiti. The organizing group (Latin American Law Students Association) was somewhat chagrined that there was a intervening earthquake in Chile, but the T-shirts had already been printed. I am confident that the $10 I spent will get to people who need it, and am not that upset that it may not get to the people who need it most. I ran 3.1 miles in under 28 minutes after not having run in two years save the occasional push to catch a bus in flipflops. Rather than be inspired to take up running again, I am lulled into thinking I am in shape, and happy to wait another 2 years before I do that again.

The film which my friend Catherine and I are making with the footage we took in Thailand in January is coming along nicely. We spend two whole days per week (16 hours) working on it, so it had BETTER be coming along. Just kidding. It is the one bright spot in my life where I have full (qualified by cooperation as a pair) creative control and artistic liberty. As opposed to the film we made last semester on the American Legal Education System, we are both NOT using a narrator NOR do we have pointed interviews to explain where we are going with the film. As a consequence, the sparse use of slugs (blank screen with text) combined with clever splicing of conversations and visuals makes the viewer work a bit harder. To compensate the viewer, we have been using music from a CD we bought on Amazon, Thai Pop Spectacular 1960s-80s, as the soundtrack. Better reserve your places now at the film premiere before they run out.

Lastly, a couple weeks ago the news broke that UB Law had dropped significantly in the US News rankings - from 100 to 139 (?). When I was accepted it had been ranked 77. Apparently the smallest variations in employment of graduating law students is what is killing us. Concurrently, I endured a personal drop in rankings when a professor of mine called me to her office to say that the "A" I received in her class last semester was due to a human error in Records and Registration, and I actually received a "B". I don't care about grades but it was hard to see a professor whom I like very much think a degree or two less of me. So, as a B student at a B Law School, I trudge ever onwards, hoping that there is glory in being extra-ordinary;-)

the real issues

2010-03-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

Today the House passed...something...that will 'clear the way' for the health care bill to be passed. I'm not up on Congressional procedure, but there seems to have been some hump that has now been overcome. In any reporting I have seen on the march towards health care reform, the first thing mentioned as a major obstacle is coverage of abortion, which a good contingent of Democrats along with most if not all Republicans are against. Abortion funding has long been off the table however as a component of a bipartisan bill, and given that the amount of coverage allocated to this one small and relatively safe procedure must be less than 1% of what gets spent overall heath care, it seems clear to me that this sticking point for conservatives is a politically safe way of opposing a bill that will ensure coverage to 16 million more Americans and will give the ones who have coverage more protection. I would like to see a Congressman or woman get up and tell their constituents that fiscal conservativism won the day over concerns for Americans' personal integrity and dignity.

Incidentally my class on abortion just spent the day at a women's health clinic where abortions are the primary service rendered. Each student was given the chance to shadow a female patient through out the whole procedure - from sonogram to counseling to surgical abortion to the recovery room - with the patient's consent of course. Yes, I was present for a surgical abortion, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been given the opportunity. I am constrained in providing the details by my commitment to protect her privacy, but I will say that my patient was a young woman getting her 6th abortion. Sixth. She was absolutely the poster child (figuratively speaking only, she was well over 18) for what anti-abortion activists fear most - that abortion will be used as a form of birth control. And she represents what some pro-choicers continue to struggle with who have moral qualms against the procedure but believe the government should not be the restrictive force.

I wish I could say that my patient, whom I bonded with and befriended, would not be back. But she has many more childbearing years in front of her (behind her too, she has children already) and although she walked out of the clinic with a prescription for the Nuvaring, I'm sure that she must have walked out the last time with something similar. The medical and counseling staff at the clinic are not there to make a buck, but work tirelessly and in professional isolation from the rest of the medical community to help the women to NOT have to seek their services again. I can't say that any other medical atmosphere I've ever experienced has ever quite been as singularly focused on stopping the revolving door. They educate, they follow-up, they lay out the options, they provide the contraceptives, and they recommend. It's an uphill battle though. Much like the diabetes and obesity epidemics, the population the clinic is dealing with has a lifestyle that is not easily changed in a 30 minute conversation - nor a 15 minute procedure, no matter how traumatic.

What is completely incomprehensible to someone who has understood contraception since 7th grade health class is the incomplete sex education that is still prevalent among certain populations - low income, minority, immigrant, and overly religious (forgive my characterization but in this case, it fits). The women at the clinic might know about IUDs but think that they can't be removed once inserted. They might have been told that tying your tubes is easily reversible. They may have heard that that Depo,the shot, is good for seven years. They may not understand that the pill needs to be taken at the same time every day. They may think the ring prevents you from having sex, or at least from enjoying it. The myths abound and the information they receive is coming not from health care professionals or even from school but from girlfriends, grandmothers, and whispers on the street of procedures gone wrong and women's wombs hung out to dry.

So what are the real issues? Race and class seem to be at the heart of the matter - highlighted by the fact that the protesters outside saying their rosaries were all white save one, and the women in the clinic were all black and latina save a handful. A black president is about to overhaul health care, Good Job, Obama:-) and racial slurs - as we saw yesterday on Capitol Hill - have reemerged as a common mode of protesting it. Good job, America:-(

Spring Break 2010

2010-03-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

Plucky and vivacious, hot-tempered and impulsive, capricious and carefree - the Korol Sisters are in town!

It was with a certain degree of satisfaction that I noticed Alicia's boyfriend (the tall, good-looking one in the photos) would refer to us as such - as a unit. Since it has been eleven years since we lived under the same roof to be referred to in the same breath is really a treat.

Our dad called a few times with nothing to report on his end and wanting everything reported on ours. He pointed out that we've now gotten together in Warsaw, Rome, Rochester, Buffalo, Ithaca, DC, San Francisco, and Ecuador. Not bad for some backwater clodhoppers. This particular trip was enabled by a week off of school during which I wanted nothing to do with school. We rode bikes around the capital, played frisbee on the lawn of the mall, went salsa dancing with Alicia's dance instructor and semi-professional troupe, ate out at trendy vegetarian and delish Ethiopian restaurants, watched Alice in Wonderland in 3D (well worth the extra three dollars and not just because it felt like Johnny Depp was sitting in your lap); visited the grandparents; hung out with the aunt; toured a Frank Lloyd Wright house; went karaoke-ing (details on this will be omitted in order to best capitalize on the silence that accompanies still photos); and read 99% of Franny and Zooey (please don't tell me what happens in the last 6 pages); got together with old Fulbright friends a couple times and exchanged reminiscences over glasses of Zubrowka; got together with old UR buddies who are doing our alma mater proud; saw a lion roar at the zoo and a peacock fight at the Freer Gallery.

All in all a success of a weekend. I'm sorry so little of it is documented. Then again, not really I'm not.

Romania

2010-03-03T21:24:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of the semester, still reeling from jetlag, I missed the first class of EU Law. On that day everyone chose countries on which to present later in the semester. By the time I got to the list not only was Poland (and Italy and Spain and pretty much any other country I know and care about in Europe) taken, but also the only slots open were the first ones. So I got stuck with Romania, and I got stuck with today.

It's hard to take a 15 minute presentation seriously after being an admissions counselor tasked to do hour-long interactive unscripted presentations on the university or teaching 100 minute classes of English to 11-year-olds. But I tried. And here's what I told them:

So guess what - I lived in Europe before, during and after the last couple expansions. And let me just say that nothing has left as indelible a mark on my mind as the iconic image of the Polish Plumber, coming to steal away your jobs and take away your social security.

No, that's not how I started. But I did manage to work that in even though I wasn't supposed to be presenting on either Poland or on myself. I started:

So Romania joined the EU in 2007. ... The end.

Nobody laughed. It was 8:30 in the morning, tough crowd. Then I went on to explain some things that not even I had had clear up until that moment. Explained the uniqueness of this country - nee kingdom - that was once southeastward facing under the Roman Empire, then tethered as a suzerainty to the Ottoman Empire for centuries, then got greedy during the world wars and won the gamble with the Allied powers first to win Transylvania but then lost the gamble with the Axis powers in a grab for Moldavia, only to find itself stuck under the auspices of the one world power it hated most: Russia. No love lost between the countries, Ceaucescu turned out to be oppressive enough w/o encouragement from the USSR, and Romania festered for 24 years until 'the Revolution' that deposed him - which wasn't even a revolution, the media manipulated the footage to make it look like a revolution. Rather, it was really a slight of hand. Romanians just hated Ceaucescu, not communism. So after the disintegration of the Soviet Union when communism wasn't cool anymore, this country full of card carrying communist party members privatized just a little bit to just few friends, and the result was a country mired in corruption, rural backwardness, and organized crime. Romania applied to be in the EU way back in 1995 and was allowed into official EU Accession talks in 2000. If the EU hadn't been so eager to stick it to Russia and swallow as far east as it could go without hitting Islam maybe it would have thought twice about letting in this country that as late as 1993 was still having pogroms against its Roma population. But lessons learned with the Accession of Ten in 2004 disproved fears that the immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe would over run Western Europe. (Lo and behold, Poles had started returning to Poland.) But who will pick our strawberries for €52 a day? Who will be our favorite sex workers? Who will, God bless them, send 200 lbs of heroin to Haiti nestled in a shipment of earthquake relief goods? Who will happily volunteer to give NATO (U.S.) more space for the anti-ballistic missile defense system? Don't be cagey- Why! Romania will! And they'll laugh all the way to the bank with the €500 billion they receive to upgrade their roads, secure their border, and make their justice system produce decisions that can actually be repsected outside the country. To be fair- it was Romania who CAUGHT the herion being sent to Haiti from Bulgaria, but one honest official the Rule of Law does not make.

After describing this ugly stepchild as the newest addition to the EU family, I thought I may have gone too far off the deep end. But then, oh! The professor kicked the horse when it was down with her own gorey anecdote: when she shared with the class that when she was a graduate student at the U of Chicago, she had a Romanian professor who was murdered in the university bathroom, shot in cold blood with a silencer. A student walked in to find a pool of blood spreading out from under the stall. The hitman had used a silencer and was never found. The professor had spoken out against the Romanian government. It was 1991.

the abortion 'debate'

2010-02-26T10:56:00.000-08:00

Abortion seems to be one of the sticking issues that is being used by opponents to universal health care, although I'm not sure why. The Hyde Amendment passed by Congress in 1976 is still in effect which bans federal funding of any type being used to support abortion procedures or providers unless in cases of rape, incest, or when the woman's health is in danger from PHYSICAL (excluding mental) injury or illness. New York is one of only four states that voluntarily allows Medicaid to be used to cover abortions (in good company with WA, HI, MD). Thirteen states are under court order to allow state Medicaid to be used - among them Sarah Pailn's, Barak Obama's, and Nancy Pelosi's. That's probably the only thing the three of them have in common. The rest don't allow state funding at all.

More so than the health care reform developments, the reason the issue of abortion seems ubiquitous to me is that one of my classes this spring is on abortion, the law, Buffalo, and film. Interesting combo, I know. But who knew how central Buffalo has been in the 'abortion wars'? New York repealed its abortion prohibition a few years before Roe v. Wade, making NYS a destination for women seeking abortions from out of state and from Canada since at the time Canada also prohibited it. Buffalo was well-positioned on the border, and closer to the more conservative mid-west states.

In the 90s Buffalo was a target for the infamous Operation Rescue movement that shut down abortion clinics in Witchita, Kansas during the Summer of Mercy Campaign. The next spring was the Spring of Life - destination Buffalo. What a coincidence then that two of the four ob-gyns who have been murdered by anti-abortion extremists (is that redundant?) in the United States were George Tiller in Witchita and Barnett Slepian of Buffalo.

Two female students in my class went to school with the Slepian sons. A professor at UB law argued in from of the Supreme Court to uphold an injunction against agressive protesters that prevented them from coming within 15 feet of the abortion clinics, with the exception of peacefully approaching on the public sidewalk. Given how staunchly supportive of the First Amendment our Supreme Court is, this was a major victory. Unfortunately, the case was not framed as a women's right issue, it was based on state law of tortious interference, harrassment, and Intential Infliction of Emotional Distress. The Supreme Court still to this day does not consider pregnany a gender issue. Reasoning: because since there are both men and women in the 'unpregnant' category, it is gender neutral. I kid you not.

After watching a 'Silent Scream' - a pseudo-documentary providing an ultrasound of an abortion being performed with a chilling narration by a doctor in case our untrained eye could not (and I couldn't) make out much of the fetus being dismembered, I realized the full extent of what the pro-choice movement was up against. Technology has allowed us to blow up the fetus to life-size proportions (irony intentional) so that it looks like a human is being murdered. My feelings on this issue will prevent me from ever taking public office. While I do respect the 'potentiality of life' within a woman's womb in as much as calling it a baby if the mother wants to keep it, I do not think that it comes close to trumping the importance of the woman's life or the sovereignty of the woman herself. And as long as the fetus is attached to the mother, it does not have personality (the quality, state, or fact of being a person). New slogan: Life is full of tough decisions, get used to it.

White Girls Can Jump

2010-02-23T21:47:00.000-08:00

Bump, set, spike. Bump, set, spike. Bump, set, spike.

There was a time when I underwent serious athletic training and thus a rewiring of the brain. I played two years of varsity volleyball for the University of Rochester. My involvement began as a fluke - or, more positively - as a twist of fate. (The coach was new my freshman year and didn't have time to recruit real players, so I got recruited simply because I'd played volleyball in high school.) It ended with me being appointed co-captain as a sophomore - another fluke, really. (I was one of the only players who didn't have a personality conflict with the coach or with other players.) I sat the bench mostly, and I must have been the shortest center ever to be assigned that position, towering just 5'9".

Just two weeks ago I started playing intramural volleyball with some other law students. Our team's name is 'Asylum Seekers' - a self-conscious nod to the fact that most of the team is made up of minority students. We've got Korean-, Chinese-, Jamaican-, Pakistani- Americans. I'm a minority on the team; there's one other white female. She is my secret rival - having skillz and all. Now I know what it feels like to be the black dude on a basketball team who was chosen because everyone knows black guys can play basketball. Similarly, everyone knows white girls can play volleyball.

Last week I wasn't so sure about us. There is one guy we play with who is particularly out of it. The best contact he had with the ball was when he wasn't paying attention and it bounced off his foot in a way that someone could rescue it. Then there's the guy who likes to use his moves from basketball every time he "Kobe"s the other team.

But where we lack in training, we make up for in heart. The Asylum Seekers are the loudest, most insane team in the whole gymnasium. Every time anything goes in our favor (like the other team goofs and we get a point) we go wild. Mitsie howls, Mudassir leaps, Sean woops, Molly races in a circle, Chak yelps, Tiffany does a booty dance, and I siren my voice above the fray, cupping my hands into a bull horn. It's great fun. We actually pulled ourselves together this past Monday and won two matches - like some cheesy Disney movie plotline where the rough and tumble ragtag underdogs come back to win the championship. There was so much momentum, even my serves went over the net. (Serving is the bane of my existance).

But what is surprising to me is that my training came back. I can hear my old coach in my head telling me if it's over my head then it's out. Telling me to go up for the block, telling me to call the ball, watch for tip, side out, short serve, free ball, it's out, it's in, it's over the net, watch for short, watch for long, call the ball, cover, get back, get up, get down, GET THERE!

You get the picture. I feel like a machine on the court because I don't have to think. This is what it must be like for people in the military after boot camp - for the rest of their lives they're drawn to routine. Never the same. I don't consider myself particularly athletic, but it's nice to be an asset to a team for once. And it's even nicer to once in a while relinquish decision-making responsibilities in return for the comfortable conviction of knowing you are where you are supposed to be.

candy hearts

2010-02-20T20:38:00.000-08:00

Happy Belated Valentine's Day, everyone. I ate a box of candy hearts the other day in class. Someone who buys too much stuff at Rite Aid gave them to me - the ones with messages printed on them in Red 40 and Blue 5. The list of messages was as follows:

Hey Babe
Angel
Call me
Baby doll
You rock
Sweet love
Miss you
Meet Me
Marry Me
Sweet Pea
My Boo
Puppy love
Tweet me
Love me
First kiss
Text me
Me & You
All mine
For ever
Hug Me
Wink Wink
I (heart) you
Sweet Talk

The range of romantic involvement runs the gamut, doesn't it? I wrote down the messages as I ate them, each one tasting worse than the last. Very important research task. The last time I had eaten candy hearts, they said things like 'fax me' and 'page me'. We've taken a significant step forward technologically (Tweet me) but have taken a rather large step backwards regarding terms of endearment. (My boo?)

Law school is consuming. I spend a lot of my time reading - about the justiciability (damn it, the spell checker doesn't even recognize that as a word) of economic, social, and cultural rights; about the theories behind land use (zoning); about how to file a complaint with the EEOC (I had to look up that acronym to remind myself that it stands for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission); about the byzantine legal structure of the European Union; about media wars over abortion rights and how the pro-choicers really can't come up with a positive symbol for what they stand for. I spend a lot of my other time blogging for the law school - about refugees, and the Miracle in Rwanda, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (see the blog listed on the right-hand side of this screen). In my free time I listen to podcasts of dorky NPR shows and watch Jon Stewart distill the day's news into funny, cynical one-liners that make me feel smarter than the average American. I still play in the orchestra and I hope that our next concert (Viva America: Gershwin, Copland, Barber, Diamond) doesn't suck as much as our last two. And soon I'll start putting together a film essay from the footage we took in Thailand as an alternative to writing a paper for the course (the professor's idea, not mine). All of which is to say that this blog, my personal blog, is really getting the shaft. I don't have the energy to write anything here that is well thought out. So I list what is written on candy hearts. Saccharine filler. That level of composition is about all I'm up for in my free free time. So I'm sorry to all my millions of readers. I (heart) you. Still.

last bit of Thailand photos

2010-02-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

rough 96 hours

2010-02-06T09:37:00.000-08:00

Thursday evening. Cell phones rings. Sara stumbles out of bed.

Sara: (flatly) Hi Dad.

Sara's father: (excitedly) Hi Sara! You're back! Where are you?

Sara looks around. The room is dark. It's a bedroom.

Sara: (slowly) I - don't - know. I guess I'm back. (pause) If this is an international call then it's costing me an arm and a leg.

father: It's your U.S. cell phone.

Sara: Oh. Well, why are you calling me in the middle of the night?

father: It's only 7:30.

*********************************
Four days ago I was halfway around the world, walking around Bangkok, wishing I hadn't lost both my bank cards so that I'd have some cash on hand. Was approached by a Korean-American semi-professional photographer (yeah right, I know) based out of Sweden who looked like a 35-year-old pothead but was carrying a camera worth $4000. Desperate for company (my friends had ditched me for the air-conditioned mall) I agreed to let him tag along on my walk. Over a couple gin and tonics in an outdoor cafe, he told me about studying film in Sweden, about the naturalization ceremony in the U.S., and about the 5 different clans of 'Kim' in Korea between which marriage is legally prohibited. Eventually I agreed to let him snap a few shots by the river before I hopped on the plane back to the U.S.

24 sleepless hours later, I was taking a short flight from JFK to Buffalo. I was talked out and had mentally checked out. The older gentleman sitting next to me was thankfully not a talker, thought the square pair behind me droned on the entire ride about dividends and risk assessment. I asked my seatmate if I could read his USA Today (Look! the USA survived a month without me!) I ended up doing the crossword puzzle and successfully solicited my seatmate's help without having to go into the Five Questions every traveler hates: Where are you from? Where have you been? How long did you stay? Where are you going? How long will be there? No more. The only question that mattered was what the heck was a bitter fruit, similar to an apple, six letters? [What is a "medlar"?]

The very next morning I had a 3 hour seminar followed by a 90 minute class. I was reunited with my cell phone, my primary winter jacket, my computer, my violin, and the flower that my brother had given me for Christmas. All had been sent through various channels to await me in Buffalo and all had weathered the neglect unscathed except for the poor tropical flower, frozen to near death by a window in a friend's drafty apartment. The weather, by the way, is not entirely unwelcomed after staying in a city that necessitated a shower at least 4 times a day. I unpacked - which was the easy part. The hard parts were dealing with the mass of mildewy clothes, not having been fully dry since leaving Chiang Mai, and finding the sources of the seemingly infinite supply of beach sand the had made its way into the most remote, untouched crannies of our house. (Source 1: camera bag; Source 2: scalp; Source 3: deodorant cap.)

The next day Sean and I, both delerious still from jetlag, decided to take a nap before going to see Cornel West speak at UB. The reception prior to the speech started at 6. Sean woke me up at ten to seven. Fumbling into formal attire, weighed down by winter coats and grogginess... I couldn't find my keys, Sean couldn't find his glasses. Good combo, I drove. The campus was clogged with cars and teaming with police officers who were directing traffic by flailing fluorescent wands.

*******************************************

Four way stop sign intersection. 12 lanes of traffic. Two police vehicles off to the side. One officer in between lanes to the right. Interminable wait.

Sara: Can I make a right turn here?

Sean: The car in front of you did.

Sara inches into the intersection.

Sara: Is he telling me to turn?

Sean: Yeah, he's telling you to go.

Lights, horns, wands, darkness. What side of the road is it that we normally drive on? Sara makes a right turn into the left lane of the two-lane road, driving around the officer waving his wand. Eventually she finds parking. A cop pulls up alongside her in his cruiser.

Officer: Can I see your license? (yes) Do you know what you just did? (no) You almost ran me over and almost ran into my partner.

Sara: Oh my goodness... I don't understand. It must be the jetlag.

Officer: (snaps) I don't care about jetlag. All you cared about was finding parking and you disobeyed the command of an officer, isn't that correct?

Sara: (suddenly on guard) No, sir, that is NOT correct.

Officer: Are you telling me you didn't see the officer?

Sara: (hesitating) No, I didn't see the officer. But my friend here in the car also thought we could turn there.

Officer: (gruffly) Wait in the car. (several minutes later) Here is your court summons. You are being charged with willfully disobeying law enforcement. Do you have any questions?

Sara: (coldly) No.

Thailand photos 2

2010-01-30T18:10:00.000-08:00

Tiger's Eye

2010-01-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

I know pictures always make a bigger splash than a post, but let the record show I DID try this time. Brought the camera chord and everything, but this foreign Thai computer in this sitting room-turned-internet-cafe in Chantaburi does not recognize my Kodak. This is one of two computers that appear to make up this document-media center. Also I could fax, scan, or watch late-night cartoons with the 10-yr-old who was booted off the computer by his mom when I walked in.

Chantaburi is southeast of Bangkok - which, by the way, is NOT called "Bangkok" in Thai. Bangkok is of course the British term for Groong-Thayp. It is unacceptable that the British came up with such a crass sounding name out of the blue - I always assumed it must have been inspired by the local word. And the Brits didn't even colonize Thailand. No worries. I don't think many Thais know or care what we call their capital. The name, with all its sexual explicitness, is perhaps apt given how Thailand was discovered by and transformed by American soldiers during Vietnam. My travelmate and I skirted around the most famous of the sex tourists spots (Pattaya), but there are hints of it whereever one goes. Prostitution is never very far away.

We're in Chantaburi because it was the farthest we could get from Bangkok towards the islands in one day. Turns out not to have been a bad place to take a breather. There are gemstone stores everywhere selling raw stones, loose uncut gems, and gold- and silver-mounted rocks galore. Not to sound too much like a guide book but the traders who come here are Indian and Sri Lankan so there is a fair amount of 'Muslim Food' (their word) around. Good for vegetarians.

Chantaburi is on a river. The most picturesque spot is perhaps the Catholic cathedral erected by the French in the 1700s. My trained eye from living in Italy with an engineer noticed that the nave, although wide and impressive, was bolted together at every arch to keep the ceiling from buckling in. I wonder if I will ever not be critical of structural stability for the rest of my life. The Chantaburi stamp on the interior was a statue of the Madonna covered and colored entirely by glittering gemstones. Beauty inspires charity, and I gave 100 Baht (3 dollars) in her offering box.

If you are part of my Facebook-following audience, you will be wondering whether I could see properly today. Two days ago (i.e. the day BEFORE my birthday) I was riding to Si Sachtanalai on the back of a moped when I was struck in the face by the largest tropical bee imaginable. I actually did not see the bee; my conclusion is based on the force of the impact on my EYE and the length of the stinger which had to be removed by my travelmate (henceforth "Miranda"). Large chunks of yellow pollen splattered us, mimicking what blood would have done in a gunshot wound.

Lucklily the eye didn't swell that day, it only hurt. But the NEXT day I awoke to it swollen shut. It was grotesque and uncomfortable. A person of lesser character would have felt that it had ruined her birthday. However, we were only traveling, and I consoled myself by thinking how lucky I was NOT to have had the ability to see into the future. There would have been the risk that I would choose to see what I looked like on my 27th birthday. The image would have been of a ragged looking girl sitting in a dingy Bangkok bus station feeding a stray dog a chicken wing [the meal provided on the bus], and with apparently ONLY one eye. My former self would have looked really hard at my 27-year-old self for signs of distress at having only one eye, and seeing none, would have reached the horrific conclucion that I had been deprived of my eye for some time, and I had obviously been outcast from society, which would explain why I was wandering around a bus station making friends with the only creatures in a sorrier state than myself. You see, it is VERY lucky I was never able to see myself in the future on my 27th birthday, because I would have been very depressed in the meantime.

Today my eye isn't so swollen. It isn't by any means attractive, but everything's relative. I feel like a veritable beauty queen. Miranda and I walked around accessing gems and getting our legs waxed in preparation for the beach. It's sticky hot here. Watching the languid river, no matter how serene, doesn't do it for me anymore. I need to swim. My eye will be better just in time- I was worried about being mistaken for some mythical sea creature.

Thailand is Patience

2010-01-25T06:26:00.000-08:00

Thailand is Patience like the U.S. is Confidence: always, but sometimes misplaced. Thailand is Patience because Thailand is patient with me as I sound out words with the visible effort of an illiterate adult flexing an atrophied muscle. Thais are patient enough to communicate with unimaginative hand signals on my end and with perpetually present-tense, monosyllabic English on theirs.

But Thailand is Patience Exercised as well as Patience Received. The patience received when a Westerner's voice on a cell phone expands to fill an entire bus. Patience exercised when a Thai's cell phone ring of We Wish You a Merry Christmas is loud enough to make Santa double check his calendar.

Patience is exercised in the face of service weighted by heat and humidity. Or from their perspective Patience is exercised in the face of foreigners' insistence on a 1-to-1 ratio of time-to-money. Food served is a coincidental afterthought to food ordered, transport is inspired by the gait of an elephant, business clerks idle attention is enough to convince that the items displayed are indeed for sale.

But patience with language and patience in commercial transactions is trumped by the patience necessary to achieve "sah-tee", or mindfulness, to not be distracted by material needs and wants, by vices and habits, by urges and whims. The mindfulness of a modest village abbot (Buddhist monk) who resides at a temple and meditates from morning to night. The monks are restricted in their activities and can neither work for money nor touch it. The monk's poverty is the highest blessing a village can hope for when wayward villagers need opportunities to make merit. A healthy monk begs for alms door to door. An elderly monk sits and waits.

images from Thailand

2010-01-17T20:09:00.000-08:00

Paper airplanes

2010-01-17T05:42:00.000-08:00

Nong Mong is a 12 year old boy who looks about 7. In some ways he is like every other 13 year old boy you've ever met. He wants to be a pilot and he likes to ride bicycles. He has a younger sister whom he cares for when his father is at work. "Nong" means "younger brother" so actually his name is "Mong". Mong was born in a lychee orchard. How about that.

We met Nong Mong today at School 122 where 60 of the 90 students are of undocumented Burmese workers in Thailand. Actually they ARE in one sense documented and actually they AREN'T Burmese, but this is how one would describe them quickly. They are an ethnic minority, known in English as the Shaw and in their own language as Thai-ai (their native language in fact is close to Thai although they are of a different blood line and culture than any of the so-called Tai ethnicities). The Burmese government sends its soldiers into their villages - burns, rapes, and pillages, in a word. Many have fled to Thailand. Those who come into the control/protection of the UN refugee camps cannot leave the camps and have been there for years, sometimes over a decade as I understand it because Thailand does not want to take them as refugees. The ones who cross the border into Thailand are treated as undocumented economic migrants. They are undocumented in the most dire sense of the word because the Burnmese government does not recognize them as citizens, and they entered Thailand without inspection and so the Thai government does not give them a path to legality either. On the other hand, they are here in Thailand in such high numbers the Thai government decided that if an employer registers them, then they can be issued working papers and have a quasi legal status. The status doesn't come with any rights per se but does allow the Thai government to attach criminal records to their names. This is why Nong Mong was born in a lychee orchard and not in a hospital. His father makes 6 dollars a day (not bad compared with Burma standards) for the family working in construction but they do not qualify for the state healthcare program so they must pay out of pocket. (Sound familiar?)

When Nong Mong was 11 he entered a contest at the university sponsored by Air Berlin: a paper airplane contest. He won. He then went to Bangkok and competed at the national level. He won again - his plane stayed in the air for 12 seconds. He was then invited to compete in an international paper airplane contest in Tokyo. But the Thailand government wouldn't issue him a passport. He was stateless. Then some smart lawyers got on the case and appealed the administrative decision to deny him a passport because they found a clause that suggested that the minister of the interior had the DISCRETION to issue a passport to him, and when Mong had applied, the ministry had claimed it did not have any discretion. Then the national media picked up the story and the boy was invited to have lunch with the Thai prime minister. He was issued a temporary passport the next day. In Tokyo he was on a team with two adults representing Thailand. The Thai team won first place and he won third place in the individual contest. In the practice round his plane broke the existing record and soared for 16 seconds but during the actual competition he was nervous and couldn't repeat this performance - alas only 3 out of 30. Not bad for an 11-year-old. You can read about it here .

Everyone in his school now knows how to make a killer paper airplane. His father's work permit expires next month. He may be deported to Burma, which won't help him much unless the Burmese government issues him papers. The family's fate hangs in the balance of a capricious and indefensibly inconsistent government policy. This is just one of the stories that our group has learned about since coming to Thailand. Stay tuned.

new year, new continent

2010-01-01T10:22:00.000-08:00

I was asked recently to expound a bit on this mysterious trip to Thailand, and realized I had been remiss in explaining myself on the blog. Contrary to appearances here, the trip is not sudden nor is it being made on a whim: it is a long time in planning and preparing. I will be spending the month of January with a group of UB law students on an exchange with the law school at Chiang Mai University for which I will (unnecessarily)receive academic credit.

The opportunity has been on my radar ever since the first semester at law school with the program's organizer, whom I fondly remember as my Torts professor. Professor Engel is, hands down, one of the best law professors in the school if not the world. (I am pretty sure he does not read my blog, so it's okay to sound gushing here.) Professor Engel spent a couple years in the peace corps in Thailand in the 70s. He met his wife there and the rest is history (one that is not mine so I will not try to recreate it here for fear of misremembering.)

I had to interview for a spot on the trip, which proved more stressful after the fact than before. I stumbled over a number of questions, not the least of which being "why do you want to go to Thailand". What I WANTED to say was Haven't you seen my resume? Don't you see that if I don't leave the country soon then I will absolutely DIE. Though I didn't say this, I bet it was written all over my desperately eager (eagerly desperate?) face. Technically it's a comparative law class although Engel is educating us in more than the law. None of us has ever been to Asia.

Thailand is not a common law country but a civil code - think, Napolean - country. There are some general observations that can be applied to most non-former British colonies. As far as I know, the only countries that do employ a common law system get it from the UK. A major difference is that in Thailand, the judge is more active and the lawyers are more passive in the court room. Only in the U.S. do we give lawyers such a podium for persuasion like in the court. Also, it is less adversarial in Thailand than in the U.S. In Thailand, the judge looks for what justice dictates (go figure). In the U.S. the judge will be persuaded by the best argument.

But in Thailand there are differences that run deeper and are more culture specific. Like the fact that they are Buddhist. Our professor has done one of the only studies to date on the effects of globalization on tort law in Thailand. Just in the decades since the 1970s there has been a drastic increase in development and urbanization. Thailand's economy, if I remember from my economics education, was termed the Tiger of the East up through the 90s. Once, when Thais got hurt by negligence in small towns, there was a complex belief system that supported them and ensured that some level of 'justice' be had. If, say, a woman was hit by a car driven by an old man, her first inclination would be that she must have done something wrong and her karma and the stars and her family's karma must be in a bad way. Also- other culprits for bad occurances were local spirits that may have been offended that particular day and to whom merit needed to be made to appease them. The village elders or the woman's husband would seek reparations from the old man, not because he was a fault per se, but because in order that the community remain strong and in tact, someone needed to help the woman with her medical bills, and fairness dictated the old man pay some.

What has happened in recent decades, is that as people have moved from the towns in which they grew up to the anonymous and unforgiving cities, they continue to believe in the power of their own individual karma and cosmic fates, however the system that would remunerate them when victim to an accident has all but disappeared. There is no sense of community when no one knows their neighbor. The research that Professor Engel and his wife carried out over a few decades indicates a trend that is counterintutive. One may expect that when the informal social safety net is taken out from under you, you would naturally look to the courts to be made whole again. Sadly, the Thais seem to be as unaware as ever that formal legal remedies exist, even when there are no friends or family around to push the tort feasor to pay his/her fair share of the cost of the accident. Instead, individuals are more likely to seek out universal dieties or Buddhas or the King (as an image to pay homage to) in order to make merit, strengthen their karma, and take personal responsibility for what ever may become of them.

Engel is careful to point out that to a western sensibility, this passive attitude of acceptance of one's fate seems totally incompatible with modern ideas of justice and the individual self. However, we must not judge a society that we do not completely understand. I cannot say yet, but I have heard that the Thai people are among the happiest, most serene nations on Earth, so who are we Americans to say otherwise. Our justice system is costly and I do believe that it fails to ever make victims entirely whole. It certainly neglects to repair the pride, integrity, and honor of victims. It only looks after people's wallets. I know that in Japan, for instance, public apologies are common disciplinary measures that courts will take.

Anyway, I'm here in the States for five more days. I know nothing about reading my stars or knowing the balance in my karma account. Nonetheless, it is safe to say that I must have done something good in this or a in a past life a chicken or bug to merit this incredible opportunity, and I for that I thank my lucky stars.

hole in the floor

2009-12-29T09:13:00.000-08:00

Last year in February there was a chimney fire at my father's house. Incredibly enough, the all-volunteer fire department (quaintly called "fire brigade" in British English) responded in time to save the house itself, and only the area around the chimney suffered significant damage. As I am rarely at my dad's, I am still noticing some of the fire's calling cards. One of them is a HOLE, now covered by a grate, directly from the bathroom floor to the basement. (The chimney runs between the bathroom and the kitchen.)

In case you haven't had the delightful occasion to discover a hole in the floor of your own dwelling, allow me to share its effect: it can be startling, and even unsettling.

There I stood, in the bathroom, with a direct view of the cellar floor, mesmerized. Well, "floor" is a little misleading since the house was originally built in 1847: the cellar floor is actually just dirt. In any case, there is something particularly disconcerting when one is forced into an awareness of the artificial nature of one's surroundings. In my case, becoming aware of my height above the Earth, of the depth of the floorboards, of my relative position in the house with respect to the furnace, etc., ... were all awarenesses I could have done without.

Some have acute discomfort in enclosed spaces (claustrophobia) and others in open spaces (agoraphobia). Is there a fear of abruptly connected spaces?

This (minute) discomfort of mine is doubly unexpected given that in my life at large, I specialize in creating holes in the floor: I poked one through to Poland, and Spain, and Peru, and Italy for starters. And I currently boring a hole through to the other side of the Earth to Thailand. This hole is the longest I have attempted to dig, and of all my rabbit holes, it is the most ambitious.

I can safely say that in the Mohawk Valley in upstate NY (see pictures) there are no other direct holes to Thailand. In fact, since I started digging, people have repeatedly asked if I have reached Taiwan yet. The mix-up, understandable and not at all annoying, serves to heighten my excitement at reaching a place previously TOTALLY unknown to those around me. My dad appears to think that Thailand is an island. My mom accidentally confused it with Taiwan like many others have. She does know the difference for the record, but if you've never been to either one and hardly given them a thought then it follows that the brain might store the names in a general 'Asia' folder, neatly alphabetized. I, for one, will be the first to admit that I have accidentally said 'Dutch' when I meant 'Danish'.

What to people know about Thailand? Do they know it's the largest majority Buddhist country in the world? Do they know that it was never colonized by a European power unlike all its neighbors? Do they know that it has the longest reigning monarch in the world (King Bhumibol on the throne since 1946) or that it was an important ally of the U.S. during the Cold War? (We know what "ally" means in this context, I hope.) Maybe they have seen the musical "The King and I", or its screen adaptation with Jody Foster "Anna and the King". Maybe they read yesterday's NY Times article about Thailand kicking out 4,000 Hmong people from a refugee camp back to Laos, claiming the people were economic migrants and not fleeing persecution. (The U.S. begs to disagree, and actually would like to offer the people asylum.) Do they know the Thai written language is one of an alphabet that has over 80 characters and is NOT directly related to Mandarin or anything Chinese? Do they know the Thai spoken language is tonal (5) meaning that each word, while having a unique pronunciation and spelling, also has a unique inflection and pitch of the voice, and to change the tone is to change the word entirely? This is particularly hard to learn to appreciate since English speakers rely so heavily on using tone to convey meaning in a DIFFERENT way, i.e. whether we are asking a question, emphasizing a point, or declaring a statement.

(As a side note, English relies on tone much more than other languages I speak to convey emphasis. Our grammar structure is relatively more rigid than other European languages that have the freedom to put the object of a sentence before the subject instead of after. Of course, we can do this in English, but it tends to sound rather like Yoda or bad poetry. Return, I must to the point.)

If they're at all like my father, they associate Thailand with a healthy - or "unhealthy", depending on your usage of the term - sex industry, especially in the realm of child and male prostitution. Well, I'm about to drop down this rabbit hole to see what Thailand is really about, because frankly, before a few months ago, I knew close to nothing about the country. And that, while not an offense, is a state of being with respect to any country that I will forever seek to remedy.

Life's Work

2009-12-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

I know that I didn't necessarily write about it but I would like the record to reflect that I did a whole lot of work this semester. If I could, I would pause the record here in this heavenly blink of time that occurs after one semester has ended and before the next has begun. But I would be better off trying to catch my own shadow. My brother has also just finished a semester - at community college. I asked him how he thinks he did. He hopes he passed all his classes. Isn't this, I asked rhetorically, what we always hope for?

Life had become such a frenzy of activity that now I feel like I'm moving through molasses. I like molasses.

My mom asked me to get the air out of an air mattress for her this morning. She was bustling around the apartment, busy like a bee cleaning up after breakfast. I eyed the air mattress on the floor, and contemplated the task deeply. Then I undid the air valve, which turned out to be annoyingly state-of-the-art in that it didn't allow air to leak out even when open. So I lay down on the mattress, forcing the air out in an agitated hiss.

My brother walked into the room some minutes later and asked what I was doing, lying on a half-deflated air mattress.

"I'm working."

I may or may not have had the energy to say the words in addition to the considerable effort expended to think them.

I leave for Thailand January 6th. The only major thing I have to do between now and then is play some songs at a wedding on the 2nd. Otherwise I'm manning (womanning?) my mother's store while she does errands and continues on her path of productivity that puts the rest of the world to shame.

friends got my back

2009-12-25T05:42:00.000-08:00

My sister told me that I should work out more, my back muscles must be very weak.

My father told me that it was because of the stress of trying (and succeeding, I must say) to do a thousand things in addition to law school.

My mother told me that when we hurt our lower back it is a sign that we feel like the universe isn't supporting us.

My housemate Sean told me to concentrate on my breathing because it was what I could control.

The EMTs didn't think it was only a back injury because by the time they arrived I had been on on the floor in excruciating pain for twenty minutes and terrified that I would spasm again. I almost fainted when they picked me up and they asked Sean if I had been taking any drugs.

The nurses in the ER ignored me for two hours while I whimpered under fluorescent lights, unable to look around me. They helpfully told me that they had had back pain too as they administered the powerful narcotic into my arm through an IV.

The doctor, when he finally saw me at 3am, rolled me on my side, looked at my spine and remarked that it was remarkably straight, prescribed some Vicotin, muscle relaxants, and an anit-inflammatory. And left.

Sean drove me home in tears at 6:30am the next morning. He had called 911 at 9:40pm.

Pain is a very lonely, isolating thing to 'manage'. The first few days after the accident I was too terrified to allow myself to move faster than an inchworm, and relied heavily on friends to get me things and prop me up. But when you're in pain, you can't DO very much. There's a lot of negotiating with your body to find the least uncomfortable position to be in. And when the position is found, there is a lot of waiting until the next round of painkillers kicks in.

No one knows what's wrong with my back but everyone has a theory. And almost everyone has had some sort of back problems. How helpful is that to be told that everyone knows what you're going through? Not very.

Where's Christmas?

2009-12-13T10:11:00.000-08:00

The snow is not fluffy -
But rough and refrozen,
The air is quite stuffy -
Not sweet or ambrosian,

The days rarely vary,
Spent reading and writing,
Not lively, not merry,
Not warm, not inviting,

It's now mid-December,
But where went September?
From what I remember,
Much better was November,

At least we had inklings,
The holidays were coming,
The night skies were twinkling,
The airwaves were humming,

The joy of the season
Is lost on the student,
Who, with every reason,
Must focus, be prudent

With finals approaching,
And papers due yesterday,
The deadlines encroaching
On end of semester play,

My only reminder
Of yuletide rejoicing
comes as a kind of
commercialized voicing

Of Santa and Mrs. Claus
And a reindeer named Rudolf,
Heard when I briefly pause,
Studying my head off,

Actually. Truth be told...
I'm not the best pupil,
Time's squandered and sold
Without care or scruple,

In the absence of diligence,
I expect in the void,
Some Christmas as a pretense,
for the studying I avoid.

The Terminal prequel

2009-12-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

There once was a man
Who was filled with woe,
He came from no where,
And had no where to go.

On the news recently I heard about the man trapped at the Narita airport in Japan, unable to return to his home country because it would not admit him. (The new program made the obvious comparison to the Tom Hanks movie The Terminal.) The Chinese man is a prominent human rights activist who, I presume, has criticized his government on its human rights record. The story was very moving. In his interview he revealed the hardship of sleeping, eating, and keeping clean - none of which are easy at this particular airport only meant for transfers, and not as luxurious as some. (I spent the night at an airport once - a layover in Zurich, brushing my teeth in the bathroom, sleeping across some chairs without armrests.) He apparently lives on handouts from flight crews because there are no places to eat. And of course no showers.

Passengers look at him like he's a homeless man. And he is in one sense, but not in the most important sense: he's not TRAPPED at the airport.

From what I understand, he still has a valid Japanese visa and could return into Japan if he wanted to. He is choosing to have a 'sit-in' in the airport in the hopes of drawing international pressure on his government to let him back in. His OWN COUNTRY won't let him back in. A preposterous thought to Americans who must be admitted back in, regardless of how much our government may despise us.

We let in Americans, but Congress does have the power to exclude anyone it wants, even those with no where else to go. An interesting Supreme Court case on this topic, SHAUGHNESSY V. MEZEI, from 1953 was about a man who had been a Legal Permanent Resident for 25 years in Buffalo(!), NY. He returned to Europe in 1948 to visit his dying mother but was refused entry into Romania where she resided. It is unclear where he was from exactly. Perhaps he was a gypsy. In any case, he hung out in Hungary until he could secure an 'exit permit'. In 1950 he finally got on a ship back to the U.S., at which point he had spent enough time outside the U.S. to be said to have relinquished his LPR status. Thus he had as much entitlement to enter as would a freshly arriving alien. (That is to say, he had zero entitlement.)

Perhaps because of his sketchy background, certainly having been behind the Iron Curtain for a couple years, and given the times, he was refused entry into the U.S. on the grounds that it would be 'prejudicial to the public interest.' This was the vague reason they gave him, and I don't believe the Attorney General needed to even say that much. Mezei tried to return to France but they wouldn't take him. Nor would Hungary. And forget about Romania. After the U.S. finds you unfit to enter, do you think any other country will want you?

He was being detained on Ellis Island and he challenged this detention on 5th Amendment grounds that he was being deprived of life, liberty, etc. without due process of law. (The Fifth Amendment, by the way, applies to all persons, not just citizens.)

He lost.

Why? Because the Supreme Court created a legal myth that Mezei was still "outside" our proverbial gates. He existed in the ether between countries. Our decision to not let him in need not be influenced by the decisions of other countries to deny him the same. And in terms of his harsh reality? Why, the fact that he was detained and not shoved off the island into the water was an act of 'legislative grace'. Pretty gracious.

This case has never been fully overturned: a specter of indefinite detention for those non-U.S. citizens who do not fully reach our soil. Pretty scary, eh?

This is what I thought the situation was for this Chinese gentleman. Compared to the Mezei case, you will forgive me if I have little pity for a man who chooses to live at an airport. There's a big difference between one country turning you away, and every country doing so.

home for the holidays

2009-12-03T18:41:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I took time out of my busy-yet-boring day to go to the 7th floor of the law school library to sign Christmas cards to be sent to an orphanage in Uganda. The initiative was the brainchild of my two friends who were in Uganda this past summer. We were taking names from a list and writing generic things like "you're a very special person" and "be good and study hard". At least I was doing this. What do you write to an orphan in Africa? The bigger question - what to you draw them that they will associate with Christmas?

Snowmen? Nix, no snow in Uganda.

Reindeer? No, they may think it a wildebeast.

Candy cane? Probably not, even if they do recognize it, maybe they don't get candy.

I settled for Christmas trees and gift boxes and smiley faces. Lots of smiley faces.

I was recently 'home' for the Thanksgiving holiday. Which reminds me, I guess I'll attach some pictures so you can see the progression of the Korol family of upstate NY. There's my brother shooting an arrow. There's my sister sitting in front of the computer at my mom's store making a flier for the store. There's our Thanksgiving meal made 80% by me, 15% by my sister and 5% by my mom... although I can't quite remember what she made, I just remember her insisting on making it.

Though I cannot begin to compare myself to orphans, there was a certain sense of loss I felt at being at my dad's house. This was the first holiday spent exclusively there in the country and not at my mom's house, which she sold last spring. My mom is around because she actually is staying with my dad temporarily until she can find a place of her own. (They are divorced, you see.) So if you thought your Thanksgiving was weird, imagine if the last time you had eaten dinner with those seated at your table had been 15 years prior.

We had cranberry sauce, stuffing, green beans, marshmallow sweet potatoes, pomegranate salad, and .... tofu loaf (in place of turkey). For us this was the most traditional Thanksgiving meal we'd ever had. It had to be. My dad doesn't have internet so we couldn't look up any crazy recipes. Probably better since Thanksgiving isn't the meal at which one should be trying new things - especially when everyone at the table is trying to ignore a new sensation of old familiarity.

Although my dad doesn't have a farm he is surrounded by farms. Apparently farms are in vogue - at least with kids. Kellogg's produces a new fruit snack with the John Deer logo on it in the shape of tractors, barns, and pigs. I won't tell you why I bought them but I will say that I was delighted to discover the pig shape.

At the risk of this post losing all sense of direction and cohesion, I will segue clumsily from my rural setting back to the city of Buffalo where the cable TV show Extreme Home Makeover (EHM) recently renovated a house on the Westside in a neighborhood that is struggling to revitalize itself. A friend of mine recently wrote a scathing opinion piece in the paper arguing that EHM represented everything that was wrong with America's attitude towards urban renewal. That it was a band-aid and that restoring one house on a street doesn't set a sustainable track for the rest of the neighborhood. When I learned that a family in Buffalo was getting a new home, and the EHM was putting money into the surrounding houses, my only thought was 'Gee, what a lucky family'. I wonder if I could get them to come to my dad's house. Hakuna Matata

offer you can't refuse

2009-11-17T16:44:00.000-08:00

Two 1Ls recently voiced interest in one of the two events I'm organizing this week, which made me really happy because I'm pretty sure no one is going to show up at either. They wanted to take part in a 'mini tour' of three non-profits in Buffalo that serve the refugee population here.

Then Barbri stepped in.

Barbri is to law school what Kaplan is to the SATs, perhaps an enhanced Kaplan that lurks outside your 7th grader's homeroom, lures them away from their group of friends with candy and free zip drives, and tells them if they don't starting preparing with Kaplan immediately for the PSAT in 9th grade, they won't do well, they won't get into college, and they will end up sorting garbage at a recycling facility with undocumented workers making below minimum wage. Now imagine that not just Kaplan is waiting outside your 7th grader's homeroom, but Princeton Review and a third (I don't even know another prep course) wait outside the lunchroom and the studyhall respectively. Your 7th grader is bound to succumb to one or another.

Well, a bit if an exaggeration perhaps, but pretty close. Barbri, the head honcho, is flanked by the so-called competitors Kaplan (Kaplan not top dog for once) and Peiper, who all sit at tables in the lobby, fund events, give you candy and free pens, and they tell you if you do not sign up for their bar prep course now, the price will go up (the courses cost thousands of dollars), and also if you don't sign up (by making a substantial down payment) you won't get the benefit of the supplementary material it provides during the first and second year 'bar' courses (those subjects that appear on the bar exam).

Then your friends (oh, the horror) become reps for the companies, and they put ever so slight pressure on you as a friend to sign up with their organization (mostly so they can get a discount on their bar course but also mostly because they care and they want you to know that their organization is really the best one and that the others are a waste of your money.)

It was one such Barbri review session that has just been announced for 1Ls this Friday that conflicts with the tour. I don't remember going to any review sessions. I believe they are just video feed into a classroom of a pre-recorded lecture. (Recorded lectures are also available to all from the library in all the first year courses, by the way.) Oh, but these vulnerable 1Ls! They think that if they don't go and their classmate does, the classmate will have the upper hand on the final, and since first year grades will determine whether you get on law review, which determines whether you get a job for the big firm, if they don't attend, then they may as well drop out and apply at the recycling center working on the sorting line.

I should own up to having succumbed myself first year to one of the aforementioned brilliant business models by giving a down payment. It was a security blanket to know that I had taken some proactive step to ensure that all this money and effort I'm putting in will actually put me in a position to get a job. But as I suspected, the most important thing I did to do well last year was take notes, go to class, make my own outlines, listen to the review tapes at the library, and generally be a diligent student. There are no shortcuts, and luckily in law school, you still can't buy your way to an A.

I should also discourage any of my readers (the millions of you out there) who are reps for any of the brilliant business models from feeling the need to defend your particular prep course. Know that most of my ire stems from the simple frustration of having put a lot of effort into organizing the tour and then being told that watching a 5-hour pre-recorded lecture that condenses your whole semester into a soundclip, instead of getting out into the city and making connections with people you may want to work with or for, is a good idea.

an unlikely encore

2009-11-02T20:38:00.000-08:00

In a windowless and uninspired practice room on the top floor of the music hall I slumped at an upright piano and did injustice to a Chopin nocturne that hasn't seen significant improvement since I began learning it this past summer. It is still played 4 times undertempo and one could argue, given the irregularity of the tempo(s) used, that there is no tempo - just a general relatively of notes wherein each has a loose relation to the one previous and to no other. Note that in my description of the practice room I did not use any terms like 'secluded' or 'forgotten' which would imply a degree of sound-proofness wholly absent from the experience of being there. It isn't that I am bothered by hearing others practice while I play. It is the reciprocity of sound that upsets me: they must nessecarily be able to hear me with the same clarity. I really am playing awfully these days.

I was in the practice room today because of the fiasco that was my last concert. I'm glad that the pictures someone put up on Facebook include neither sound nor movement, and the photographer miraculously caught me at those brief moments when my hand and bow appear in the same position as those around me. Or perhaps the photographer just had the decency to not put up those photos. Thank you, mystery photographer. I was in such a state of panic at needing to perform music that was still largely unfamiliar to me that I paralyzed my fingers and mind and relied on the most primitive of musical instinct to keep up. I even CAME IN when the rest of the orchestra was resting. If that mortifying moment were the only thing that went wrong, it would have been bearable.

Anyway. I made an effort today to look at the music for our next concert de novo, as it were. And since I am less embarrassed at being heard play the piano, and also since I genuinely like to play, I vacilated between instruments every 10 minutes or so until I was deafened by the building's fire alarm. Which went off 3 feet away from me. Since it has already been established that the practice rooms are not soundproof, it is certainly not for my benefit or safety that the alarm was placed in my room. But since it was there and not out in the hall to equally alarm and deafen everyone, I can only sadly conclude that my practice room must have been chosen because it possesses a particular quality of amplification, so as to maximize the alarm's efficacy. Everyone must be sick of that Chopin by now. This renewed embarrassment too shall pass.

Relatedly, my mother called me today and left one of her ominous 'please give me a call when you get this' messages. It is impossible to tell from her tone whether she wants to tell me that she has just been in a devastating car accident or whether she has just decided on what main dish to make for Thanksgiving. Although I doubt she is conscious of my reasons for doing so, she succeeds in getting a callback from me faster than anyone else does. (Let's attribute it to love and call it a day.)

An old friend of hers from her years working in public health almost 2 decades ago dropped by her store. The woman was not interested in buying anything but was interested in asking her whether I (Sara) could play in her daughter's wedding. (!)

Ha!

When I was in my early teens I was called upon to play my violin at a young woman's wedding. My piano teacher was the facilitor of my first (and to date singular) "gig". I remember very little, and actually have superimposed my sister's participation with me on the memory even though my mother asserts that I played by myself. But oh! It doesn't matter! This woman liked me so much that all these years she knew when her daughter got married she wanted me to play! Wow. A real gig. Maybe I should get an agent. Maybe the agent could talk to the music director about getting me a better seat in the orchestra too. And a soundproof practice room with a piano without sticky keys and a corner window. And of course, the agent would negotiate all the gritty details of my performance fee and what type of flower arrangement I would like in my dressing room.

All kidding aside, it is nice at times to be reminded that no efforts are for naught. And that even though I am nothing special here in Buffalo, that there are circumstances in which my talents can be appreciated. Bravo, Sara.

Neglect

2009-10-27T05:01:00.000-07:00

My poor blog. If it has any readers anymore I bet they visit it like one visits a 95-year-old man with cancer that has metastasized. I'm sorry, but there is so little time these days. The only reason I am able to sit down to write is because my housemate walked off with my Human Rights textbook that I got up to read early before class.

Probably the coolest thing I got goin' on, is blogging for the law school's center for law and social policy events. I get to attend lectures, and then write about them. AND... (this is the coolest part) I was hired because they KNEW about this blog. See kids, persistence pays off. Wait no, that doesn't apply. Blogging is so self-indulgent for me, it's the only thing that doesn't take much effort. If you're interested in my other blogging life, you can find it by following the link to the Baldy Center blog on the right side of my blog window. I'm not the only contributor.

I'm still tutoring at the high school on Fridays. I now have specific kids who are assigned to me who I take out of class and work with one on one in the library. One would think that letting someone out of class who is already behind would be counter-productive. But not in the case of my kids. They are so far behind, any personal attention is better than nothing. I had to quickly recall my geometry (if alternate interior angles are congruent, then the lines are parallel) and world history (Greece the first country in the 19th century to revolt against its empire and become a nation state) prowess. Quick! Recall! before the student sees the panic and confusion in your eyes!
I'm taking classes on the weekends to prepare for the Thailand trip. Oh, did I mention yet on this blog that I'm doing abridge course in Thailand over winter break? In preparation, the class of 12 students meets with the professor to go over readings that cover aspects of Thai history, religion, culture, and LAW. (It is, after all, a law class.) Another student and I are taking the initiative to meet with the professor's Thai wife to learn the basics about the Thai written language - a topic for another blog. Let's just say that if third party not of the Earth but familiar with Western language patterns tried to create a language that would be near impossible for Westerns to read, Thai would still be harder.

In my free time I have started researching disability cases in Europe for my Human Rights professor. I had a bit of an anxiety attack (I'm using this term in its popular sense, not in the clinical meaning) the other day when I had spent 5 hours reading and trying to distill a 51 page court opinion, and had no idea what she wanted. Luckily yesterday, the other research assistant hired who is a 3L, was also having trouble and sent her an email asking for more guidance. I was relieved. When we were both hired, the professor was telling me that she was excited to be working with us because 'Scott's a really strong writer, and Sara - you're really into Human Rights.'

Yes, and there's orchestra which is currently a disaster. Our first concert was last week and it went so poorly for me personally that I almost cried on stage. I didn't invite anyone so no one was in the audience, but that turned out to be a good thing because I actually came in when the whole rest of the orchestra was silent. A mini solo. God, haven't done that in a while. Last night I went to rehearsal to find it had been cancelled. I joked with the timpani player that finally, the conductor is giving us a break. We really don't need to be practicing this much, we're already starting to sound too professional. He looked at me quizzically and said, 'You're kidding, right?' to which I responded, 'Obviously.'

So I took the opportunity, in the absence of the orchestra rehearsal, to go to a practice room and play the piano for half an hour. Yes, in the end, it's the PIANO I'm neglecting. Everything else is under control.

Miss, are you married?

2009-10-02T14:27:00.000-07:00

I tried to span the cultural gap between me and my urban high school students by wearing my Ed Hardy hoodie but then I learned that there was a dress code against hoodies (harder to carry a concealed weapon?) so I was left exposed in all of my white, middle class small town splendor. As I walked to East High School on the east side of Buffalo from the bus station, I flanked what I assumed were high school students going to the same place I was. Turns out there was no chance I would have missed the building. As an admission counselor on recruiting trips I saw a fair number of high schools, from the immaculately landscaped greens and neo-Greek revival (is there such a thing?) of the private schools to the stodgy, bland suburban complexes to the defensive, institutional city school, never have I seen a building so out of sync with its surrounding. Rising out of the desolate landscape of boarded up, rotting houses and empty lots was a behemoth fortress of beige brick - no noticeable architectural details beyond vaguely art deco windows in their height. It was going to the zoo and seeing an Indian elephant in the arctic vole exhibit.

Back up. So I took a job tutoring for the Liberty Partnership program, a state funded initiative to provide support in schools where the graduation rate is, let's say, quite low. I have good rapport with teenagers, not perhaps as a peer, but as a no-nonsense role model that will persist in trying to help you as long as you are paying attention. I have to be careful in my characterizations of the kids I'm tutoring. Already in the tutor training I overstepped some boundary and said that it was important for the tutors to follow up with the students week after week because they MIGHT not be getting follow-up with their school work from home if perhaps they lived in an overworked one parent household, or from the teachers if the class size was ridiculously big. It was made clear to me that I had made an assumption about the student body that would negatively bias my interaction with them if I wasn't careful. Well, guess what. The fact that the high school could seriously benefit from our tutoring presence can speak for itself.

Today was my first day, and it was interesting. I saw a girl asleep in class who may as well have been in a coma she was so nonreactive. I saw a teacher chase a student around who had taken the teacher's chair on wheels. Pants pulled down past the butt line and necklines pulled down past the bra-line. Nothing out of the ordinary. Even though there are only 3 minutes between class periods it takes 15 minutes for the halls to clear out. Even though there is ostensibly a school uniform, the liberties taken with the polo and the khakis make it hard to notice unless you are looking for it. The weirdest thing though was not the edgy character of the student body, but the perceived youth of the teachers. The head of the math department was 31. I guessed 28. I woke up today and found myself in the generation responsible for the next generation. Scary thought.

I don't mean to dramatize. Mostly I had a good time, wandering around finding a niche in this class or with that student (they are still figuring out the best way to utilize the tutors' services). The highest need was in math, so in math I stayed. The algebra muscle in my brain awakened with an angry and painful protestation. It came back though. It all came back - the factoring and the FOIL method and the quadratic equations and the geometric relationships with radius and pi. The ability to do the problems came back faster than my ability to explain what I was doing. My first attempt sounded like 'well, this goes here because in order to do this you need to do this first, but, or you could actually do this if you wanted to get this number out of this number, then this whole thing cancels out but don't forget to keep this the same as this.'

And the ones that got bored trying to figure out problems by themselves would get my attention by asking how old I was or if I was married. And unrelatedly, did I have any kids. Then I felt good that I looked frumpy and uncool and not someone they would want to talk to after class. [riiiiiiiiiiing] Saved by the bell:-)

Kofi Annan: my friend and yours

2009-09-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

Kofi Annan visited UB last week and I got to hear him speak. For me the former Secretary General of the United Nations is a big deal and I wondered that the auditorium was not sold out. This semester I'm taking a class in International Human Rights law which deals almost exclusively with Covenants and Treaties signed and executed by United Nations States parties. (Awkward wording, I know, but that's what they're called.)

Just that week in IHR class we had had a mock UN debate on what types of additional measures needed to be passed in order to bring Business, particularly, Transnational Corporations, into the picture and make them accountable for their violations of the international human rights law. It's a hard question and a hard problem because corporations cannot be party to international treaties, only States can. And therefore corporations are only accountable to States. Treaty bodies, like the Commission on Human Rights that reviews human rights violations, have no jurisdiction over businesses.

But what if State governments are weak? What if corporations aren't incorporated in the the countries where they are committing violations? What if the state governments are benefiting from the exploitation of their people? What if there is no government?

What currently exists is an international understanding between businesses about good practices. This clearly isn't binding on them and also clearly hasn't done much in the way of shaming businesses that have polluted Ecuador, enslaved West Africans, destroyed the Earth. (Forgive my generalities for the moment.)

In the debate I was Argentina. Other member states were there and also NGOs. I was the ONLY state to push for a binding treaty on Member states. My proposal, which I came up with pretty much on the spot, was a tariff on exports from countries that where working conditions did not meet some minimum standard, this would speak a language businesses would understand. Also I proposed that jurisdiction to have standing against companies be extended to any country in which they do business, including sale of goods. Therefore, any company that wants to profit from selling to the American consumer could be held accountable in American courts for violation international human rights law in its business practices.

I fumbled on the details of these proposals and no other member States save Jamaica (who happened to be represented by a good friend of mine) backed a binding resolution. Instead, all member states just said that they didn't want another treaty to impose on their sovereignty.

After the debate I was flabbergasted that even in a MOCK setting my classmates were so hesitant to take a stand on human rights issues. It is very easy not to do anything, and it was clear that disillusionment with the efficacy of the UN and human rights treaties is rampant in the classroom. But it would have been nice to hear a little more creativity from them. I wish more had attended Kofi Annan's talk later that night.

Kofi (if you'll allow me to pretend I'm on a first name basis with him) gave a stock speech on the 5 lessons he learned being Secretary General which was book-ended by some personal anecdotes about living in cold weather (for the benefit of bringing it close to home for Buffalo) and some questions. The five lessons were nothing revolutionary in terms of newness but would certainly be revolutionary if they were taken to heart:

(1) the security of every one of us is linked to that of everyone else

(2) we are not only all responsible for each other's security. We are also, in some measure, responsible for each other's welfare

(3) both security and development ultimately depend on respect for human rights and the rule of law

(4) governments must be accountable for their actions in the international arena, as well as in the domestic one

(5) We can only do all these things by working together through a multilateral system, and by making the best possible use of the unique instrument bequeathed to us by Harry Truman and his contemporaries, namely the United Nations

Yes, I know the man was involved in some oil for food scandal but I do believe he's done more good than harm in this world. To hear him speak is like hearing a modern-day Ghandi or John Lennon. I was particularly impressed by the tact he used in answering questions about the Iraq war and on the UN's failure in Rwanda.

Regarding Iraq, he said generously that the jury is still out as to whether the war would have made Iraq a safer place. And he also said that his greatest failure was in preventing our invasion of Iraq. (What more could he have done? I believe he told us not to.) And regarding Rwanda, he pointed out that there are two UNs. There is the UN that is the executive arm, of which he was the leader during that crisis, and there was the UN made up of member states. There is nothing that he could do until he was given troops by the member states. The U.S. was at the time pulling 32,000 troops out of Somalia after we lost a handful in the incident immortalized in the movie Black Hawk Down, and the handful of UN peacekeepers on the ground were too few to make a difference and had been given orders only to protect themselves. Then a couple Belgians died and they pulled out too.

Sounds like instead of using Kofi Annan as a scapegoat, the international community can turn their fingers around 180 degrees.

A couple days later I was in a cab in Canada and the driver was Kurdish from Iraq. Upon learning I was American he immediately started telling me how much he loved President Bush and how thankful he was for the American presence in Iraq. He left after the war but is still in contact with his family in the Kurdish region. He said that things are much improved and he fears the day when the Americans will pull out. He was the first non-American person I've ever met who fully supported the war and I felt unexpectedly grateful to him. Kofi had said that only time will tell.

a sign of the times

2009-09-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

Right before leaving San Francisco I was able to orchestrate a donation of $4000 from my grandmother to my brother to cover a semester at community college. It was her idea to help support him,while it was my idea to get her to cover a whole semester. I felt bad that he was working 30 hours a week at Walmart while taking five courses. (That sounds harder than law school!) The satisfaction of helping ease a family member's financial stress is then coupled with a shared responsibility with that family member that the money be used for its proper purpose.

Imagine my dismay when, a week ago, my mother calls me up and says those five little words that all law students dread: 'since you're in law school'. Since you're in law school I thought you may be able to offer some advice. According to my family, one year of law school makes me an expert in all areas of law: federal, state and county, criminal and civil, procedure and practice. Ugh.

Apparently my brother went and bought a BED for $1100. How anyone in my family has any business spending over a grand on a piece of furniture is beyond me. Upon hearing this from my mother I almost refused to listen to the rest of the tale, outwardly fuming that the money was supposed to be for college. But as any good mother she smoothed over protests with half-excuse, half-rationalization that Grant had a girlfriend, and he had been planning on buying a bed anyway, and he can't help getting talked into purchases by sleezy salespeople, and he's been having trouble sleeping, etc.

ANYWAY, my brother bought a bed in a mattress store in Utica. The store was supposed to deliver it on a Wednesday. Wednesday came and went. Grant called and they told him it would be delivered Friday, which also came and went. On the following Monday he went back up to the store and lo and behold! It was gone! The space was locked up the floor was barren of furniture, the sign had been taken down and the key thrown away. Grant went to the police in Herkimer where he lives who told him he'd have to go to the police in Utica. At which point apparently Grant was out of ideas and steam. He didn't do anything until my mom found out about it a week LATER. Then she called me.

In my new-found authority as a law school I asked questions - had the check been cashed? (unknown) If it had, who was the entity that cashed it? Was the store a chain? Did Grant have a receipt? Did he have a name of a person? Then I directed them to find out these things and perhaps the police could track who had cashed the check or check with the city for the owner of the building where the business had been located and find out if it was rented and by whom. If the business was still somewhere in existence then the Better Business Bureau would be a good resource for what to do next.

My mother was very pleased at all the good ideas I gave her and acted like they were an affirmation of legal training. But as you can see, my approach to the problem of getting scammed out of $1100 was drawn from my earlier education in a class - what was it called again? Oh yes, LIFE 101.

My mom and brother were able to find the name of the owner of the business which had rented the building at the county office and were given the owner's home phone number (I think this was in violation of the owner's privacy, but oh well, when law breaks down in your favor, you do not complain.) The guy who sold the mattresses acted like he had been meaning to get around to delivering the bed and mattress but had been really busy. Long story short, the bed was delivered the same day Grant called to confrontationally inquire about the missing merchandise. Happy ending.

I reflected that I shouldn't be so hard on my brother when I could equally have been a victim of the recession economy profiteers. I bought a dining room set in Buffalo at a warehouse downtown that was temporarily being used to move furniture. I paid with a check and only got a business card with a cell phone number scribbled on the back and instructions for ME to call THEM 'sometime later in the week' to see if they'd be able to deliver it. The number was always busy or went straight to voice mail. There was a sticky period where I started to realize I didn't know whom I'd paid or what I'd do if they had left the warehouse. Of course that turned out OK too - only because when I finally got a hold of someone I pretended that I needed the table that very day or there would be bad, vague, consequences for someone...

Maybe it's just me but there seems to be a thriving grey economy of quasi-legitimate businesses that pop up here and there, accept cash or check only, and generally give the appearance of being perpetually on the brink of going out of business or moving elsewhere. My mother has chosen this auspicious time to start a business or her own, a health food store, to provide an alternative in our area to the Walmart Supercenter grocery section where 80% of the residents of the Mohawk Valley get their groceries. My brother, though a Walmart employee, is not torn in his loyalties. He, as we all, wants to see her succeed. If she does succeed it will be DESPITE all the questionable legal advice I've been forced to give her regarding contracts law, tax law, employment law, torts law, property law....

International House of Pancakes

2009-09-11T06:22:00.000-07:00

Sean, Caroline and I are settling in on a quiet little street in Buffalo where the houses are mostly owner occupied and there are children that race around on bikes and skateboard when not in school. The street is a dead end off of a more prominent thoroughfare leading up to UB's South Campus. It takes 15 minutes to walk to the free shuttle that takes me to North Campus.

On the way to the shuttle on Engelwood Ave, I pass house after house rented out to undergraduates. It is a student ghetto in the sense that the students have money, being in college and living off loans and parents, and the money attracts crime from the people in Buffalo who have it not. There is now a police camera and a visible police presence on the street after a shooting a few years back of the corner store clerk at night by some hoodlums. There was $15 in the register.

But our street is still a nice neighborhood. Understandably so, the neighbors are openly skeptical of us. We represent the encroaching student presence that so wrecked the surrounding area. The neighbor to our right has blatantly ignored Caroline's attempts at friendly introduction and glared at me suspiciously through a screen door when I went over to borrow a tool upon moving in. He told me to leave it on the porch when I was done, and he didn't introduce himself.

Our house was previously occupied by a group of undergraduate males, the baboons of the animal kingdom. God only knows how they scarred the neighborhood with their beer-pong and flip cup parties. When they left the house had to be gutted, repainted, and a company hired for $1000 to remove all the trash left behind. This would explain why the owner was falling over herself to accommodate our wish. We, three graduate students, represent the ideal tenants. There was some misunderstanding and Caroline had communicated to the landlady that I, Sara, really wanted a garbage disposal. So they had one installed the day we moved in. Now, never before in my life have I lived in a house with a garbage disposal. Frankly, the idea of them being able to grind my hand if I had to reach down the sink drain sends shivers down my spine. But we have that luxury now too.

I can only imagine what the neighbors thought of us the day that Caroline brought out her saris that she had custom made in Chicago by Indian women. She and I got all dressed up and made Sean take pictures of us in the front yard in the morning sunshine. (Caroline, although not Indian, is obsessed with Bollywood film.) Or what they thought of Sean who walked to school on the first day of classes wearing his traditional African sari for men that he brought back from his summer in Uganda. (Sean is a white boy from long island whose usual accessory is a skateboard if his nephew hadn't permanently borrowed it while Sean was away.)

So we must seem a little off to our neighbors. But that's ok. Once we get around to bringing them some African fried grasshoppers and Bulgarian sheep's head stew as neighborly gesture, I'm sure they'll warm up to us.

Summer/Fall Collection

2009-09-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

There are one hundred and one reasons that this year in law school will be better than last, and I will detail a few of them in a second. But ever since leaving San Francisco I have been wearing this faux pearl necklace and an audacious gold colored ring with pink and white glittery pieces of what I take to be glass. These treasures are what my grandmother gave me as I was leaving. At first I didn't want them because I don't really wear jewelry, and also because I know that my grandmother's collection has been picked over by aunts and cousins many times, leaving only the cheapest and least sentimental costume jewelry left. But then the nicer, less egotistical half of me realized that taking the necklace and ring wasn't about me.

Well, go figure. The two pieces have been worn nonstop since I made the painful (run-of-the-mill back pain plus the pain of a wonderful summer coming to a close) drive south to San Diego to return the truck and then fly back to Buffalo.

I have successfully moved in to a house within walking distance of South Campus with two friends of mine, one law student and one PhD in Anthropology. The law student's dream is to have a farm where he makes his own food. The anthro student tells us daily that she is in the wrong department after every time she makes a politically incorrect, but funny, remark. And I, neither wanting to farm nor change departments, am completely happy where I am.

Four of the five professors I have this year are female. So... the reverse proportion of last year. I was worried about having female professors actually. I guess I fell into the trap of only being able to picture men leading a law class
in a way that did not waste the students' time. But to my subconscious surprise, the women commanded the classrooms with knowledge, grace, experience, and wit. My particular favorite moments during the first week were being put on the spot and being asked 'what is human rights law?' in front of 80 of my classmates and my mind went blank. I couldn't even define what the class was about!. It was also great when when during a fun, immigration law exercise modeled after Jeopardy I was put on the spot and asked what famous ballerina from the Soviet Union emigrated to the U.S., and my mind went blank. FYI: Baryshnikov and I SHARE A BIRTHDAY. What is the point of knowing useless trivia like that when it is unavailable during the one time in my life when 'Baryshnikov' is the answer to a question. Or a question to the answer. Whatever. Oh wait, my mistake: these weren't my favorite moments, they were my lowest.

All joking aside, I am very interested in my classes, and this year is shaping up to be just grand. Tonight I'm going on a boat cruise on the Niagara river with 200 of my closest law school friends. They serve alcohol on the boat, so the trip has been dubbed 'the Booze Cruise', explaining why I didn't go on it last year. But who am I kidding - wine, hors d'oeuvre, the Buffalo skyline whilst the sun sets and some drunk 1L tries to impress me with his plans to either save the world or buy the world... what could be better?

Soon I will post pictures of my new house. There is ample room for people to stay over if you visit. Just a suggestion...

back to school

2009-08-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

My memory is less than that of a goldfish. This conclusion was reached when I (1) learned that a goldfish remembers for more than three months after the fact, (incredible but true!) and when (2) I looked at my schedule of 5 classes this semester and didn't run screaming and drop out of school. Classes ended but three months ago and the idea of having five finals this semester instead of three should be unthinkable if my mind hadn't employed some subconscious defense mechanism that erases all of the torture I was subjected to in order to prepare for just three.

A reminder: in law school your grade is based entirely on your final exam which will probably last from four to six hours and is so hard that they let you use your textbook and any other book out there that has been published on the material covered in the course. Or on any material under the sun. You can use anything you want. You can have exams in front of you from years past and they won't help you. You can have flow charts and diagrams and sparknotes and shortcuts and a direct, prepaid line to God and you still will need every second they give you and every brain cell that hasn't yet self-destructed in order not to fail miserably.

But I don't remember any of this. I am padded by comfy oblivion. This is why there are no goldfish in law school. They would drop out after the first year because their memory stretches back too far.

Not many people have asked not many in depth questions about this upcoming semester. The number one question is - will it be harder than the first year? To which the answer is obviously 'yes'. But I am excited because two of my five (oh god) classes are things that I am deeply interested in: immigration law and international human rights. What I am hoping for from the latter is an open discussion about just how many human right violations happen right here in the U.S. I think most people think of Cambodia and Sudan when human rights issues are raised. And of course, there are those extremes. But the U.S. would do well to adopt international standards for its own citizens and people standing on our soil. More on this later.

I'm also taking Employment Law (not labor law), (trial) Evidence, and a seminar in Constitutional Sovereignty. I am baffled by this seminar because instead of the costly tomes that the other classes require, it calls for one book that, new, cost $26. Maybe we'll just be watching a lot of movies? Wouldn't that be great. Or maybe the HBO mini-series on John Adams. I'll suggest that at the beginning of class to really make a strong impression on the professor. Just like in undergrad when in my Russian literature class I cracked a joke that I really The Hobbit, but then realized that since the professor didn't know me she was aghast that I had apparently confused Tolkien with Tolstoy. Let me just say that as important as first impressions are, they can be overcome.

Today I am making my final move out to Buffalo. Sean, musketeer numero three is picking me up on his way back from D.C. where he just presented his findings as a human rights intern in Uganda for an international think-tank on food distribution in third world countries. He washed his own clothes over the summer until I told him that his stubborn righteousness of doing as the locals do was probably depriving some poor (goes without saying) washer woman of much needed income. This, in economics, is what we call your Comparative Advantage. The best use of the Ugandan washer woman's time is doing Sean's laundry instead of begging in the streets. And the best use of his time is learning how distribute food in such a way that minimizes corruption, hunger, and reliance - not necessarily in that order. I don't know if Sean took my advice. But I told him not to worry. If he really wants, he can do my laundry when we get back to Buffalo. I'm progressive enough to not need to do it myself.

la vie en rose

2009-08-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

I just saw Julie and Julia, the movie with Meryl Streep about Julia Child and the woman who blogged about doing all the recipes in Child's 1961 Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Brilliant. The review on NPR's Fresh Air didn't do it justice. Or perhaps the person who reviewed it didn't happen to be a 20-something blogger who loves to cook and is living in the land of fresh and fantastic cuisine AND living with an uncle who learned to cook by watching Julia Child's TV show when he skipped school as a teenager. Uncle Jack is never as endearing as when he describes practicing how to flip an omelet using dry beans in a frying pan, as Julia instructed once. At a dinner party with my friends UJ got so excited in his remembrance that he demonstrated for us with the pan and beans, getting them all over the floor.

This summer, as a microcosm for my life in general, has been dominated by the demands of my law school internship but deliciously punctuated - and made worth living - by food. I'm no Julia, nor am I this Julie blogger who dedicated all of her free time to cooking at the expense of her marriage and sanity, almost. But I guess it's time to change the bi-line of this blog to something more along the lines of "how not to let law school get in the way of what's important in life'.

Since my uncle is the true gourmet I started out the summer cooking very SAFE things that I know everyone, on some level, likes. Oh - I should back up and say that I don't cook all the time, but perhaps twice a week to pull my weight around the house since my aunt and uncle are letting me stay here free of charge. In any case, I started with so-called comfort food: Kix casserole. The souped-up mac-and-cheese casserole recipe that uses crushed Kix instead of bread crumbs that I got off the back of the cereal box when I was 11. My uncle said it reminded him of Thanksgiving stuffing, for better or for worse.

Meanwhile, my uncle who is a veterinarian for the SPCA as his day job, lives for gardening and cooking. We don't ever buy vegetables save the occasional avocado, which is the only thing he doesn't grow in his garden in Lodi. On the days when he WASN'T in the country I lurked under foot as he made polenta from freshly ground blue corn he had grown himself; as he made ratatouille by painstakingly grilling the onions, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant separately; made chili relleno by whipping the egg whites first until they peaked so that the hot peppers stuffed with queso fresco cheese turned into the fluffiest pieces of heaven when they were breaded and deep-fried; made pickles out of fresh cucumbers and sauerkraut out of fresh cabbage; reduced tomatoes into a life blood and reduced our appetites into yearnings for something greater and more intangible than the sum of the kitchen's parts.

I moved tentatively away from American-style comfort cooking to its closest ethnic cuisine cousin: Polish cooking. Think potatoes, mayonnaise, and butter. I made my classic Spring egg and potato salad with mayo and parsley for which the secret ingredients are the complementary chopped pickle and fresh apple, and the cold borsch 'Chlodnik' which everyone enjoys thanks to the heavy cream that swirls in the beet juice making for an exciting Pepto-bismol-colored broth. When you taste it and it doesn't taste like Pepto-bismol, then it automatically is a success.

Then came the tour de force of making potato pancakes for Eight with the upper-body strength of One. I shredded 13 large store-bought whites (shh, don't tell Uncle Jack that his garden's potatoes were too small to justify peeling them)and- here's the secret - soaked the potato shreds in a bowl of water before skimming them out, leaving behind most of the potato starch in a lovely silt on the bottom. The pancakes were inhaled, compliments abounded to yours truly, and my arm felt numb the next day.

My pièce de résistance, my crowning moment and the meal for which I pulled out all the tricks in the book was the pistachio pesto pasta for which I combined two different recipes I'd learned in Italy and ground a quality pistachio with arugula, olive oil, salt and (shhh) a little sugar, so make a pesto so divine that it elicited a conversation about the last meals requested by convicts on death row. This was accompanied by a green salad made with lettuce provided by a our surfer-foodie neighbor, hair-thin sliced baby red onion, goat cheese (thank god this happened to be in the refrigerator because I forgot to get it), pear from the farm, and... a simple yet elegant reduction of balsamic vinegar. My uncle told Bachie (my slightly senile Polish grandmother) that the meal would have cost at least $200 at a fancy San Francisco restaurant. I highly doubt that but it was a flattering comment nonetheless.

I will be sad to leave this land where most things are grown within a 100 mile radius of where I sit and type this. I can do no more and no less than continue to lead a life rich enough in time, rich enough in ingredients, and rich enough in experience to know when to stop and savor the crème de la crème.

California pride and prejudice

2009-08-12T13:51:00.001-07:00

I needed time to understand why I reacted the way I did. I wish I hadn't reacted at all but I did, and the only thing I can do is figure out why so that it doesn't happen again.

At a dinner party with friends the other day I was talking with a girl who had studied abroad in Pavia, Italy. Things were going along so nicely, reminiscing about Italy. Laughing at the memories of Erasmus student hang outs, lamenting about being abroad during the Bush years. The girl is from Sacramento but now lives in SF, and is trying to get back abroad to Switzerland to kill two birds with one stone: learn German to qualify for a PhD program in history and be near her girlfriend who is Swiss. Currently she's an aerobics instructor and she's possibly the most cheerful person you'll ever meet. Which is to say the hostility which surfaced could not have been directed at her.

She said she never identified herself as American when she was abroad, but rather would introduce herself as being from Northern California. What followed is a bit of a blur, but it was along the lines of her being proud of where she's from and listing some of the things that makes California stand out, 8th largest economy in the world, the heart of liberalism, etc. So then I say with friendly sarcasm if such a thing exists: Yes, we all know that California is the best state in the union. To which she says What?

Here it would have been nice if I had backed away from the hole I was digging myself. But I jumped in instead - I repeat what I've just said. Yes, we all know that California is best state in the union. She then replies matter-of-factly upon hearing me:

But It Is.

Corey, trying to make light of what was quickly becoming a strained situation, jokingly asks another friend at the table which he liked better, New York or California, to which the Italian who is studying law (LLM) at Berkeley replied 'California, of course'. Corey recognized in retrospect that he didn't help matters.

The following thoughts were not expressed at that dinner because neither I nor the girl really understood how we had come to be at odds, and we spent the rest of the evening sheepishly apologizing to one another. My sheepishness the most warranted.

Her identification abroad as a Californian is not surprising. I would likely have done the same in her situation. If you are uncomfortable with what your government is doing, then instead of saying 'I'm American, and I don't agreed with Bush.' You can say, 'I'm from Northern California' e basta. Word economy.

When I first went abroad in '99 I too was immediately uncomfortable with my American identity which felt foreign and unrepresentative of who I thought I was. But unlike being from California, I couldn't just say 'I'm from New York' because that too was misleading by associating me with a city that exhibits the cultural pull similar in magnitude to that of California. And saying I was from Canada was just silly. Sooner rather than later I realized that being abroad as an American and making the effort to learn the local language and appreciate the national culture was the best reflection one could make of ones own country and background. Thus I developed a brand of understated American patriotism that could draw its pride from the mirrored pride of others.

So there was that swirling around in the background of my subconscious. But nearer to the surface was my natural distaste for the highly visible (Northern, in this case) California pride. I think if she had been in Pavia telling people she was from Idaho I would not have had anything to say on the matter. And I'm sure people from Idaho have their own brand of pride that is perfectly justified. However, California pride has an annoyingly Separatist undertone. As in, California doesn't need the rest of the country, and in fact doesn't want to be a part of it. It wasn't the first time I had a Californian rattle off some of the million things that are great about their state. Most of which I readily recognize, by the way.

Later as I lay in bed and chewed over the confrontation and inspected it from different angles trying to get perspective, I realized that under it all the thing that bothers me most about California is the same blindness that bothers me about the United States as a whole. It is the very thing that has inspired me to go into immigration law. It is an inability or unwillingness to recognize TO WHAT we can attribute our greatness. California is symbol for the whole country of forward-thinking, innovation, high culture, glamour and majesty of both people and landscape. Its size, its coastline, and its history dictate that it is objectively one of the most important states in the Union. And IT IS CONSTANTLY BEING INFUSED WITH DRIVEN, HOPEFUL, INSPIRED, AND INDUSTRIOUS PEOPLE FROM THE REST OF THE COUNTRY, as well as the rest of the world. In an earlier blog entry I opened with the fact that the U.S. would suffer if it stopped attracting immigrants. I'm sure California would like to stop attracting people too, but the fact is that the over 25% of the state wasn't even born in this country, meaning a much higher percentage were born even out-of-state. And those foreign born are here making it what it is today. Thus California is every bit as American as Texas. No better, no worse.

And when I am abroad, even though as an American I necessarily think I come from a country that is objectively more *important* on the world's stage than where I happen to be at the moment, this is not something that I feel the need to spell out to people. Instead, I believe Americans abroad should take an intense interest in the place they are in be it Poland, Berlin, Europe, Lazio, Ostfreisland, or Ponza, and in doing so recognize greatness in others. Likewise, Californians would do well to leave unstated the obvious great things about themselves, and inspect the urge to state them.

Then again, if anyone needs to improve their etiquette, it's me who over-reacted and ruined a perfectly nice dinner conversation. My aunt and uncle (to whom I related the incident later) made me feel better by telling me stories of getting asked to leave dinner parties due to heated arguments they got themselves in. I took heart in knowing that my situation could have been worse, and that perhaps it runs in the family.

summer begins in earnest

2009-08-08T15:33:00.000-07:00

So my internship ended Thursday, and therein began my summer. I type this in a bathing suit in the shade in Lodi, a community in the San Joaquin Valley 2 hours inland from San Francisco. I do not plan to take off my bathing suit for the next two days. Upon my return to SF, I will sport a uniform of my summer dress and flip-flops for the remainder of my time in California, only to be taken off to sleep and wash. Occasionally.

My exit interview was kept to 15 minutes because I had to leave early to get to a Madeleine Peyroux concert. My super supervisor had only nice things to say and made me feel like the next job I should apply for should be President of the United here States. Even her token constructive criticism was framed in such a tactful and nice way as to not be recognizable as criticism. She suggested that in other offices there MAY be some problem with the amount I use my personal cell phone at my desk. Also, I shouldn't take criticism personally. Ha! Can you tell I don't take criticism well? Please leave me in my cocoon of encouragement and above-averageness.

I wish that all jobs came in nice little 10 week packages, tied with a bow. I gave my supervisor some chocolate and a borderline obnoxious-but-cute Hoops and Yo-Yo talking card that said Thank You in six or seven different languages. I begged her not to open it until she got home. I already had had to suffer the embarrassment of keeping it open long enough in the office kitchen to write something in it as Hoops and Yo-Yo (the only thing Hallmark has ever created that I approve of) screamed Danke schön!, Merci beaucoup!, Muchas gracias!, etc. But the sweet finality of saying good-bye on a good note, hugging everyone, pretending that you are irreplaceable and unforgettable: it's priceless and something that will undoubtedly motivate me in my next position. The last person I hugged good-bye was the office manager who had been working at Bay Legal for 30 years. My god.

Law school is set up so that there is never really downtime, and when there is it is ruined by thinking that others are using it more constructively than you are. Now, a lot of the go-getters in the class are probably securing their positions for next summer, interviewing at firms, networking. I, on the other hand, am languishing in East Jesus on a vineyard owned by friends of the family, and happy as a clam. If the internship taught me anything, it's that I can learn enough of an area of the law in 10 weeks to be effective. And what I can't learn, I know now how to ask. Do I really need to go back and do two more years?... Oh hush, the pinot beckons.

crossing over

2009-08-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

We should be so lucky to be an attractive nation to immigrants. The second we stop being a destination country, Americans will be working as housekeepers for the Canadians.

In the backseat of a car driving to 80s night at the Cat Club, my Mexican girlfriend related to us how she crossed the border. She was 8 at the time, also in the backseat. The woman driving the car was not her mother but a coyote. Her 4-year-old brother was next to her. They had been dressed in American clothes, white sneakers, and my friend had been told to take off her rosary. This was their first attempt crossing the border to be reunited with her father who was already here legally thanks to Reagan's amnesty program for undocumented workers. The border agent asked her little brother what his name was, and he balked. He couldn't remember the English name he's been told to memorize (Michael). He started crying. My friend came to his rescue and said her name in Spanish so he wouldn't feel bad. They were sent back.

The second time the coyote told them to pretend to be asleep. It worked. It was a lot easier then at the border. The whole immediate family is now documented thanks to the father successfully petitioning for them. It's far from an automatic status change, but luckily it worked out for them. My friend is starting her second year of law school this fall.

Crossing the border (entry without inspection) is technically illegal. But one arm of Homeland Security is busy approving waivers for this behavior while the other is enforcing the letter of the law. One such waiver we were filling out for a client who crossed the border on foot once to come to the U.S. and then again to bring her two children, 1 and 4, to the U.S. once she'd found a home, good job and better life. She walked 10 hours through the desert holding the one-year-old. The older child still to this day bears scars from the scratches of the cacti that cut up her legs and arms.

The client got licensed to take care of children and works to support her own. She will hopefully get legalized status once her U-visa gets approved. (She and her children were victims of a violent crime in the U.S. and she cooperated with the authorities in their investigation.)

This summer has been very important for my career plans for a number of reasons, not the least of which strengthening my conviction that legalized status benefits everyone involved. Living in NY state where Hispanic farmers are largely kept on site on the farms that utilize them, and where most of the workers (my impression) do have H-2A (temp) visas, I didn't want to feel like a hypocrite if I came here and felt that the influx of immigrants from Mexico was too much of a stress on the system. On the contrary, these workers are keeping the system going. And I'm not smart enough to figure out how erase the need for a wall between us and Mexico in the minds of Americans, but I am smart enough to realize that the wall (in certain places there is a literal wall/fence) and the patrolled border make up part of a mixed message we are sending to the rest of the world. Like a sign reading:

Don't come in.
And please wipe your feet.

all roads lead to Facebook

2009-07-27T20:10:00.001-07:00

An established attorney in our office lured all the interns to lunch so she could offer us life and career advice. Once of her suggestions was to network on Facebook and the like. Has anyone noticed what a fixture Facebook has become in the lives of people who use it? Of course I am already on Facebook, as of 2 years ago. But to have the public interest equivalent of a Partner at The Firm, urging us to use it was something out of the twilight zone, to be sure.

Everything leads back to Facebook. Watch This.

So via Facebook I get a message from an old friend of mine from college. Not just an old friend but an old boyfriend, who actually lives in San Francisco now. He noticed I was here in the city thanks to Facebook. We finally synch our schedules enough (he found time between business trips to Japan and I found time between garage sale trips with my grandmother) to get together this past Sunday at a neighborhood coffee shop, Java Beach Cafe. Since he very obviously is making 6 figures, I ordered the most expensive coffee drink on the menu. How shameful of me.

Turns out, this old flame of mine now WORKS for Facebook as some sort of intermediary between the sales department and engineers. He also runs a business on the side that manufactures and imports things from China. Under his own brand label, apparently. I wonder if he is responsible for the headphones I bought on eBay from some seller in China two weeks ago which finally arrived today, and they arrived BROKEN. I HATE THINGS MANUFACTURED IN CHINA. And why did I need headphones? Because I had to return my other headphones because they belong to my most recent EX. And what did I do with my most recent EX? I de-friended him on Facebook. Back to Facebook. Being defriended is the ultimate period at the end of a the sentence.

Facebook, on which I recently discovered a Lexulous application that allows me to play Scrabble endlessly and unabashedly with whom ever I want. The Ex who works for Facebook, by the way, recently met the guys who developed this application on a business trip to India. When he told me this I tried to act casual although I felt like he had just told me he'd been with Michael Jackson the morning of his death. Be still my heart. I heart Scrabble. I play Scrabble with my grandmother - it's one of the few things she still enjoys. She can't see and she never went to college, but I'll be damned - she honest to goodness beat me. By a lot. 306 to 224. 306! I'd like to say I wasn't trying or that I had bad tiles, but no. This grandmother of mine likes three things: going to garage sales, Scrabble, and anything that has to do with Poland. And she really likes the fact that I learned Polish. When did I learn Polish? Well, among other occasions was the year I spent in Warsaw on a Fulbright. You know who just friended me on Facebook? The director of the Warsaw Fulbright Commission. I kid you not.

into the fog

2009-07-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

My father's mother was born in 1926 in East Marion on the North Fork of Long Island. She had four brothers. Her father was hit by a train or something when she was 11 (the details are shady, I think he was drunk on the tracks) and since that time her mother had to support the family with the animals on their farm and by renting out a room to another family. It was the Depression. She was married to my grandfather for 60 years before he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2005. She and my grandfather are second cousins. They asked the priest before they got engaged if it would be OK.

She was a housewife her whole life save a short stint as a laundress between high school and her nursing certification which she completed in the City. At the launderer's, she remembers being the most chatty and wondering if she would get fired for talking so much. But actually the owner liked her a lot, because she was able to talk and work at the same time. She loves babies, and wishes she had great-grandchildren. Her youngest grandchild is now 14. Her oldest is 27.

Of all her grandchildren perhaps she is the closest with me because my parents lived with my grandparents for the first 3 years of my life. After that, Bachie would visit us in upstate NY fairly often. She used to dress me in Polish girl dresses which I did not understand were anything but dress-up costumes. I also did not understand until much later that 'Bachie' was a bastardized way of pronouncing 'Babcia' or 'grandmother' in Polish, the language that she and my grandfather grew up speaking at home. I was a Polish girl every Halloween of my life until 4th grade when the dress finally didn't fit anymore.

If I ever hurt myself and got a cut, which happened rather often, Bachie would say I shouldn't cry because by the time I got married it would be all gone. Since I pick at my scabs, thereby turning them to scars, I hope that she wasn't being prophetic.

I also remember her making Ants On A Log with cream cheese instead of peanut butter. When she visited she brought with her all sorts of confections like white bread, cookies, danishes, and American cheese that children appreciate. As a housewife in the forties and fifties I don't think she ever properly learned to cook. My dad to this day will not eat peas because he only ever got peas from a can. Canned food: an innovation and a blessing.

She tells me she lived a very good life. From the potato farm to the suburbs. After the war when my grandfather had a bit of money, he flew my grandmother down to New Orleans to meet him as when he was at port there. It was her first time on a plane, her first time in a restaurant. When the waiter brought over the wine and poured some for my grandmother, she looked at my grandfather (not yet her husband) and asked if it was whiskey or beer. She was really quite embarrassed. They of course slept in separate hotels during her visit.

My grandfather supported the family by working first in the navy as a machinist and then for Shell Oil as a machine shop manager. When my father was 5 they lived in Venezuela for 2 1/2 years until she got pregnant again and she wanted to have the baby in the U.S. So they moved to Wappinger Falls near Poughkeepsie, NY. They traveled to Europe a few times, to Poland to visit their relatives. About 20 years ago they moved from NY to NC because the winters were too harsh: they moved to a community that was basically displaced elderly Northeasterners over the age of 65. My grandfather's younger sister also moved there. They all joined the Hendersonville Polish Club. There was one thrift store for every 5 residents of the town, and going thrift store shopping was the town's favorite past time. Often one would find clothing at one thrift store with the tags on it still from another.

Bachie got along with my grandfather's sister Mary really well, but there was probably a fair amount of subconscious jealousy at how successful Mary's children were. I don't know personally, but terms like 'regional VP of East Asia Shipping' were used to describe their income. Mary told Bachie that her son wanted to learn to play the accordion. Bachie then came across an accordion at a garage sale and BOUGHT it, but for HER son (my father) even though my dad never wanted to play the accordion.

When I worked for admissions at UR I recruited in Knoxville, KY. Bachie found out how close I would be to NC she begged me to come over to pick up the accordion, it was too big to send in the mail. It was almost too big to fly with, but I made it. I drove it back from Hendersonville in the rental, flew it back to Rochester, and drove it out to my father's house in a long, back-breaking trek of frustration, stares from strangers and suspicious looks from airline security. She wouldn't tell me how much she paid, but she said it was 'too much', but she really wanted my father to have the accordion. Also, I was not to ever mention this to her sister-in-law, Mary.

I have never spoken to my great Aunt Mary in my life, but I agreed.

When I presented the 30-lb instrument to my father, he put it on his lap and within 5 seconds determined that his fingers (stubby Polish-fingers good for digging potatoes out of the ground)couldn't press individual buttons on the left side. He gave it back to me. This is the story of how I came to own an accordion. Later it was determined that the accordion was rotted on the inside and not worth very much. But it illustrates that my grandmother was just a little competitive, just a little too much faith in the ability inherent in Polish genes, and just a little apt to overstate how much she has paid for something.

Bachie is getting old. She was old before but now she is dependent. My aunt told me just this evening that she had expected her mom to come out here an live a separate life in the downstairs apartment. However, Bachie can't see anymore (she can still spot a dime on the side walk), she has trouble walking (unless we are going garage sale-ing), and the worst thing is her MEMORY (although she will always remember anything bad you you've ever said) . Not Alzheimer's necessarily, some sort of dementia.

Bachie's a good sport. When you ask her how she's doing she responds 'I'm still alive.' She complains about her health but no moreso than I would in her position. And in her position, I hope that I have someone listen to me complain.

California, in a nutshell

2009-07-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

an ant among the grasshoppers

2009-07-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

A common topic of conversation in public interest law is talking about how crappy it is to work in the private sector. Sort of like those of us in upstate NY who love to exchange stories of how terrible it would be to live in a place with no snow in the winter. A friend of mine at work had an epiphany of sorts this weekend that came up around the lunch table out on the patio. She realized that she didn't quite like her job at the public interest firm enough to justify NOT making $3000 per week, which is what she could be getting (according to whom, I don't know) working in at a big firm.

During other lunch hours and in the course of normal office chit chat everyone who has worked in big law firms is sure to speak of it very disparagingly in loud voices when interns are around. As if to assure us that we made the right decision to come work for Bay Legal. Truth is, I hadn't given it much thought, knowing instinctively that I would be miserable at a large corporate firm - as much due to the work I would be doing as the people I'd likely be working with. One lawyer in our office described the atmosphere at a big firm as a school of sharks that are all swimming in the same direction just as long as it behooves the individual. But god help any beast that gets between one of the sharks and its prey, including other sharks.

My friend, who like me has a lamentable level of disposable income, said that she dreamt she had enough money to just walk into J Crew and buy whatever she fancied. As opposed to, of course, what we do for unpaid internships: which is wear thrift store and deeply discounted department store drab. I don't mind the drab, but for some people it is almost as much effort to live respectably off little as it would be to just work longer hours and live off more. I can see that. By goodness I love getting off everyday at 5PM.

All of this is to say that there is deadline fast approaching that the Buffalo Career Services Office is not letting us slackers forget about: the resume upload for the August interviews on campus by the big name firm recruiters. For NEXT summer. For PAY. For EXPERIENCE. For LIFE. Or whatever. I somehow doubt that my lackluster resume will have a shot (I know, my modesty could be taken as disingenuous) but the real reservation is that in the interview - if I even got one - I'd say "well, I'm trying for this to see what all the fuss is about - to see if it's really as bad as everyone says it is." Do you think that would fly? I'd be sure to wear something nice from JC Penny and the Goodwill to impress them.

Two-dollar Tuesdays

2009-07-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

Strike one.

And the sun streamed down
And the grass glared green
And the catcher kept crouched
And the crowd turned mean.

Ball one.

And the hotdogs cost a dollar
And the entrance cost two
And the kids waved their mitts
And the moms yelled Boo

Ball two.

And the runner on first
Edged away from the plate
We were already down three
And resigned to our fate

Strike two.

What’s a pitcher to do?
When the bullpen’s quiet
And the offense fuck useless
Like a model on a diet?

Swing and a miss.

And the arm’s getting tired,
The fast ball is slow.
The curve ball is straight.
And the high ball is low.

Ball three.

And the manager watches
As you struggle on the mound
The pitching coach restlessly
Pacing the ground

Swing and a miss.

And your concentration breaks
As the runner steals second
And your teammates huddle round
For mid-game check in

It’s up to you, they say
To hold it together
To hold them at bay
To hold fast the tether

And it’s maddening this game
That gives control of the ball
to one lonely person
Six feet seven inches tall

And from that great height
One can survey the field
In the midst of the battle
And know when to yield

Know when it’s over
When the fat lady sings
When the buzzer goes off
And the closing bell rings

There’s some grace in losing
But it’s sure hard to spy,
To go down fighting or
Roll over and die?

The Athletics will win this,
The Tigers will fail
The fans will be sour
And the commentators stale

But it’s only the sixth,
three innings left to play
The war may be lost but
This at bat: make my day

There’s a dignity in losing,
In ceding with grace,
The grace of the ball game
Means defending your space

In the case of the pitcher
The space is the mound
The territory sacred
The holy, higher ground

And so help me God
If this guy gets on base
Over my dead body
To the bottom, let’s race

When you’re already losing
There’s nothing to lose
The catcher calls the pitch
And you light the fuse

The wind up is long
The leg kick is high
The runner on second
Gives third base a try

And the sun streams down
And the grass glares green
And the catcher keeps crouched
And the crowd stays mean

And you give it your all
And then you give more
And the ball sails through
And settles the score.

Strike three.

straight minority

2009-06-28T21:34:00.001-07:00

So had I not contracted swine flu I would have been at the huge gay pride parade today. Think Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade but run by people who are wearing less clothing but succeed in being more colorful than East coast marching bands (not hard.)

Before the Alarmists out there live up to their titles, let me say that 1. no, swine flu has not diagnosed - it's just a hunch my uncle has based on my symptoms and the fact that it's out of season and going around SF, and 2. if i die, I leave my accordion to my brother, my violin to my sister, and my Italian computer shall be buried with me switched on as a showing of its devozione eterna.

Last night I went out to the Castro, a neighborhood made famous again to a younger generation thanks to the recent Hollywood gem 'Milk' about the first openly gay man elected to public office. I went first to a pre-party which consisted of gay men who were glowing like it was their joint birthday and their entourage of fawning straight women. There's a not so nice term for these women which I both dislike and hope doesn't get applied to me. My gay friend next door (FND) couldn't come to the party because he is halfway through his bout of the Swine. Which is good because it forced me to meet new people.

I met a girl who gets paid to run a blog for law students but has never been to law school, a boy who fell five stories off a fire escape onto pavement while climbing up a ladder with his elbows and lived to tell, a guy who has his pilot license who takes flights around SF for fun, and a girl who could have been albino save a lazy blue eye who was a social worker and liked to dance. Like me.

Of course I met and saw slews of happy, gay people. A group of us left the party and wandered down to the Castro to people-watch and revel at the disco ball the size of a hummer suspended over the street. Thousands were out and about. And for once discovered what it must feel like to be a sexual orientation minority. Most around me were either not attracted to me or could guess that I wasn't going to be attracted to them. Attraction though was the name of the game since the dominant males were strutting around like peacocks - some quite literally - grooming each other and displaying their goods for the world to see.

My FND, whose privacy I shall start respecting by not using his name, lamented once that it was easier to find a boyfriend in Italy than in San Francisco, simply because, as a native gay person to the city, he was usually turned off by the over-the-top, cliche gay persona that was adopted by all those who - as he put it - flocked here from Middle America where they were probably in the closet. When they get here they become overly gay, I guess, to compensate.

This vein of native snobbery displayed by FND was quite amusing. Being from upstate NY cities where I feel ever so slightly deprived of fresh faces, "outsiders" as it were to me are usually more interesting and attractive than those who've grown up in NYS their whole lives. Here in the gay community, perhaps the native gays and lesbians feel a bit more authentic. And therefore better.

Counterpoint: what could possibly be inauthentic about fluffy angel wings? (seen on numerous a shirtless, and well-greased men last night.)

Once FND recovers from this unfortunate malady, he's going to work for some local politician in the fight against Prop 8, the ballot prop that defined marriage in the constitution as being only between opposite sexes that passed by a hair last year. The fight goes on. FND's father and grandfather turned out to be gay later in life, and he knows my cousin because he was best friends with my cousin's boyfriend growing up who also turned out to be gay once he broke up with my cousin. If only FND would sell the rights to his life story to Lifetime.

Gay couples already are equal under the law in California because about 5 years ago the legislature changed all the statutes that pertained to married couples to include domestic partners as well. So it's all semantics - a fine point that cuts both ways. If it's just a title, then it's no big deal to preserve it for hetero-relationships. Then again, if it's just a title, then it's no big deal to give it to homosexual partnerships. Of course, the stronger argument is the latter, because there's something inherently second class about 'separate, but equal'.

So it's an exciting time to be in CA for these reasons, among others. Exciting to have the swine flu. Exciting to be surrounded by people at the front lines of the next civil rights victory within sight. And exciting to be reminded what a great country this is:-)

Sonoma

2009-06-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

Very exciting times. A couple days ago I went to see an intimate presentation by Marjorie Cohn, perhaps the most influential and well-known progressive lawyer out there, president of the National Lawyers Guild. Bought a couple of her new books enumerating how the Bush administration broke the law, and upon what grounds one has be a conscientious objector to a war.

Interesting tidbit: as I was driving7being driven across the Bay Bridge from Oakland, I remarked at how much the gigantic cranes from the Oakland port reminded me of the AT-AT walkers in Star Wars (I had to look up what they were called just now, you know the ones in the snow scene?). Well, apparently I'm not the first to have made the comparison! Because George Lucas is from Marin County somewhere, it's a well developed myth that he was inspired by these vistas.

Anyway, my friend Brian from law school is visiting for the weekend, as one can do with enough frequent flyer miles. We took my truck to Sonoma for the day. It was grand.

someone's gotta do it

2009-06-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

So what do I DO at work? I'm there 8 hours a day. Outside of work I bike and play piano and chess and see concerts and movies and meet interesting people. But what do I DO? Good question. Although I am bound by the confidentiality of our clients, I can speak in general terms. So, low-income people call a general legal assistance line and tell the lawyer on call what their problem is. If (1) they make less than 200% of the federal poverty line, and (2) their problem has to do with being evicted, being kicked off or denied public benefits, getting a divorce or custody from an abusive husband, or being swallowed in debt from lack of health care, then we can possibly help them. They get referred to the office nearest them in the bay area for an intake where they come and spill their lives on the table in the form of correspondences from their landlord, the county, the state, the federal government, the police and child protection agency, or the collection agencies on the table, and talk - usually in Spanish - about their problems while we try to get them to give us the mundane details we need - like the birthdays of their kids or the date they missed their mandatory substance abuse meeting so that we can best prepare a position statement when and if they get a hearing. The clients who are not legal permanent residents may have children born in the U.S., so technically the case is in the child's name.

I feel incredibly sorry for these people because if I have such trouble understanding why they are being denied this or that and I speak English and have 1/3 a legal education, what chance do they have? Once in a while we get a pretty savvy client who knows the system and knows that the only way they can prevail is to have a lawyer frame their story for them. This I am good at. Like when I blog, of course I don't talk about everything, just the things that make a coherent story. Tomorrow I am going to prepare a position statement for a client who has been applying for a public benefit for years on the basis that he is disabled. Which he is. But not in a way that the state recognizes (alcoholism). And if you meet him in person, he seems quite normal. But his life is wreck and he's depressed. So... we'll just be concentrating on the depression, not the advanced cirrhosis.

At a dinner party I went to this evening with my aunt and uncle a guy was tooting his own horn that he had successfully applied for a patent without the help of a lawyer. Look out world, the 'club' theft deterrent for cars is going to be replaced in the future by a brake lock which will be 100% theft proof. He was very proud of himself, and was especially excited to find out I used a club for my vehicle (the adjustable bar the secures to the steering wheel that prevents the wheel from being turned more than 90 degrees) and he told me that one could drill through a club in a mere 5 minutes 30 seconds, or else one could simply saw through the steering wheel. He was less excited when I told him that one wouldn't even need to do that with my club since I didn't lock it. I only use it as a visual deterrent through the window since if they break into my truck having the means to deal with a club, then there's no stopping them. I pointed out that with a brake lock, no one would know it was on the brake and by the time the thief found it, the car would already be broken into. I wished him luck with his marketing.

So yes, one doesn't always need a lawyer. What I do, anyone with half a brain could do. But most people with half a brain are too worried about keeping up with full-brain people to help those who need legal help: those don't generally have the resources or the education to figure things out themselves. Doing so is rather satisfying. The director of our office told me Friday that I already look like and talk like a lawyer. A law office is one of the few settings where this can be taken as a compliment. But she followed it up with some advice - that I should try doing something out of my comfort zone.

Damn, they're on to me.

all sunshine and rainbows, figuratively

2009-06-06T18:44:00.000-07:00

San Francisco is heaven for beautiful people. And for me too.

So, I'm having a really good time. It's hard to write about good times because they are generally more boring than when things go slightly amiss. But as warm as the afternoon sun shining through my glass of homemade white wine, as revitalizing as as a brackish ocean breeze, and as friendly as the Indonesian guy nicknamed 'China' in high school who adjusted my cell phone contract today, my joy of life is being focused through the magnifying glass of the present.

By some incredible stroke of luck, I ran into Corey (music grad, pianist, Italian-speaker, funny, intelligent and with a personality complimentary to mine) at a BART transfer platform downtown about a week after I'd met him the first time. My cousin Georgina had been in town for few days at the start of my visit and had invited Corey and another old high school friend of hers over one evening. Unfortunately my usual sparking personality (tongue in cheek) was further inhibited by their incessent reminiscences of old times. I made a very aloof first impression and probably wouldn't have heard from either of them again had I not seen Corey coming down the escalator during my commute home. He was coming back from a piano lesson at SFU. It pays to be aware of your surroundings. We INSTANTLY hit it off and have become fast friends on a weirdly sped up schedule that accounts for my time in SF being rather limited.

The coolest thing is that he and Georgina became friends BEFORE he moved next door. Then he moved next door with his mom. Now I have a friend right next door. Did I mention he lives next door? Hopefully the variations of the Heading Home Joke 'well, you can have a ride to my house but then you'll have to walk from there,' and 'let's not take a cab, the calculation to split the fare equitably would be too complicated,' won't wear out by August.

In other positive relationships, I just hung out with my SUPERVISOR last night. She's young, cool, and perhaps the most kind-hearted person I've ever met. I invited her to come with me and Corey to a free, live video streaming of Puccini's Tosca at the Giants' baseball stadium. A fellow intern and I graced the 5 o'clock Friday happy hour and I asked her if she'd be interested since I suspected as a trained pianist and violinist and Italian pop music aficionado (in addition to being a very competent lawyer) she would appreciate opera. She hesitated as is appropriate for a workplace superior to make sure I wasn't just being polite, and I assured her that I really wanted her to come.

Rohen, another friend of mine knows the SF music scene like the back of his hand, having just finished a year of law at Hastings and having come to SF specifically for its music is also an amazing person to have around. Besides being a wealth of knowledge and a fine conversationalist he is ALWAYS doing something. One of those friends who saves you the trouble of looking in the paper for something to do that evening. I turned him down today for the first time when he invited me to come with him and his friends to a street festival downtown. I decided to ride my bike up the coast to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Good decision.

I just made a Thai basil squash coconut soup with all fresh ingredients (save the coconut milk which can be had for 88 cents two blocks down) that were all already on hand in my A&U's kitchen. This is my petty offering to them for having had dinner prepared every evening this week that I happened to be home (50% chance). I mostly hope they like it, but I hope they don't so that there will be more for me to bring for lunch this coming week since it's a favorite of mine. The other 50% of the time I've been out. On the town.

At work I just went to a training on the various types of public benefits CA offers (General Assistance, CalWORKS, Medi-Cal, foster care, SSI, SSDI, food stamps, IHSS, to name a few) and found that I had done a fairly good job teaching myself their initial intricacies this past week and was a able to ask more in depth questions instead of being totally overwhelmed by a 5 hour power point squeezed into three.

Are you bored yet with my happy life?

Well, there was a slight issue with my mother, a licensed nurse practitioner, whom I made the mistake of asking for help writing a dialogue for an outreach that my Super and I were doing at a local high school. We were raising awareness of patient rights with at-risk teens by performing some basic skits that would raise issues of relationship abuse and doctor neglect, so one of my skits included a young Latina who was being emotionally abused by her boyfriend and having trouble sleeping and goes to the MD but the MD doesn't listen to her problems and just quickly diagnoses and prescribes a drug for a condition she doesn't even have. I wanted my mom to give me a complicated diagnosis of a sleep disorder that a lay person would have trouble understanding (which my mom is eminently capable of doing). However, she declined to help me stating that she was on the other side of the issue and didn't agree with me and my supervisor instigating unnecessary litigation against the already overburdened medical profession.

At first I was taken aback that she wouldn't help me, her daughter, who was just doing what she was asked at her unpaid summer job. But then again, I should get used to people having a bone to pick with what I'm doing. Lawyers are not a well-liked profession. Even the ones trying to do good. The nature of the beast is confrontation.

But I'm not a lawyer yet, so hakuna-matata.

You know you're in San Francisco when...

2009-06-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

1. the trash bins are labeled 'landfill'.

2. you ask the girl you're talking to if that boy is her boyfriend, only to realize it's her girlfriend.

3. your otherwise normal-looking plastic disposable cup says it's made out of corn and is compostable.

4. you see a restaurant called "Cello: pizza and kabobs".

5. you meet two people in the same day who both are gay and whose fathers are gay.

6. Asians serve you Mexican food.

7. Mexicans serve you Chinese food.

8. a homeless man offers you a muffin.

9. your cousin (SF native) talks to her mom about the time she made out with a stranger/cowboy.

10. you are told by your aunt and uncle not to buy vegetables that are out of season under penalty of being cut off from the homemade organic wine supply.

welcome to my world

2009-05-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

I live in one world and work in another. And the time it takes to get between the two? One hour forty minutes. This not only seems like a lot but it is a lot. It could be twenty minutes shorter if I drove instead of taking public transport, but at that length, I'll gladly give twenty more minutes to not have to deal with traffic, parking, gas, bridges, etc.

Richmond is a city in Contra Costa county north of Berkeley and thus across the bay in the part of California that actually gets a summer. The BART (subway) emerges from the tunnel to 80 degrees and sun going to work and on the way home it emerges from the tunnel into 50 degrees and fog. Even though I've only been here a few days, from what I'm told and what I remember from visit as a child, this is how it will remain.

I work at the largest legal aid society here in the bay area (specifically NOT mentioned by name so that this blog does not come up in google searches). There is an office in each county in the metropolitan area and Contra Costa happens to be one of the largest offices (11 lawyers) in the organization and THE largest law office in the city of Richmond, proportional to the percentage of the population living at or below the poverty line.

Legal aid organizations get some of their money from Congress but not all and not enough. Though it is a constitutional right to have legal representation when you face criminal charges, it is NOT a right to have legal counsel for civil matters. And people in poverty have a LOT of need for civil litigation which they cannot afford. As an aside, I remember a case from Civil Procedure in which I believe the highest court in NYS decided against a petitioner who wanted to file bankruptcy but didn't have the funds to pay the bankruptcy fee. In essence he was too poor to file for bankruptcy. Can you imagine?

My uncle, with whom I am staying, warned me about Richmond, giving some vague murder rate statistic. Also during orientation they warned us not to walk across the street to Walgreens by ourselves. Especially the females. I don't say this to alarm you, but only to make the observation that after being in BUFFALO, ROCHESTER, SICILY and WARSAW, the area where the office is located in Richmond is like Beverly Hills. I kid you not. Yes, I'm sure there is crime. But there are also beautiful flower beds and thriving businesses and chain restaurants and road construction and street lamps and benches and the pan handlers are polite... and I'm like, geez, I guess I can take off my bullet proof vest.

Plus I will be coming and going at the peak commuter hours. No late nights for interns working for free!

The interns I work with seem pretty cool - most are from California or go to school in the area or both. Luckliy we each have separate supervisor assignments so there won't be any dreaded (by me) group projects or unnecessary competition. My supervisor also happens to be the intern coordinator for the whole office and so I am strategically situated at a desk by the window outside of her office. Some interns have desks, some have windows, but NONE has both. So we're off to a good start. She is young, one year past the bar, chipper, full of energy, Indian-American, ex-elementary school teacher, fluent in Spanish, loves Italian pop music (!?), and hates inequality of status. She is already treating me like an equal, which I really appreciate. I really couldn't have asked for a better situation.

If I could do one thing differently, I would change my answers to this ice-breaker game we played this morning at the in-house orientation. We were supposed to write down two truths and a lie to read out loud. We were encouraged to make them interesting, so I thought of two of the most exotic things I've done in my life that hadn't already been mentioned in my bio I'd sent them before the summer started. When people started reading theirs - like 'I have five sisters' and 'I like chocolate' I thought - SHOOT! now I'm going to seem like I'm showing off. But it was too late. What I wrote is so embarrassing I can't even mention it here. Let's just say people did NOT have any questions and politely guessed that the lie was the one about me falling in the Niagara river and almost being swept over the falls.

My first assignment has been to research medical legal partnerships, which my super is trying to spearhead in Contra Costa. Basically they are official relationships between doctors and lawyers wherein doctors who see that health problems are linked to problems in the environment (slumlords) or school (failure to address disabilities) or family (domestic violence) or nutrition (could qualify for food stamps?) then the doctors refer the patients directly to a lawyer to try to get at the roots of the problems. It was presented to me as being in the best interest of the (usually indigent) patients by my enthusiastic super. Then as I researched it online I found that these relationships exist as a way for hospitals to get lawyers to fight for more medicaid so that the hospitals can recover part of the loss they accrue every time they see a medicaid patient. This is a lot less idealistic than it appeared at first and it only took one afternoon to become disillusioned. Not bad!

But look on the bright side: in California, they sell wine in grocery stores.

images of my surroundings

2009-05-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

Since this is my one day of vacation before my internship starts, I am going to choose NOT to recount for you the events of the last week (two finals, two doctor appointments, 6 X-rays, zero broken bones, one accordion performance, one uHaul, 50 boxes, 500 lbs of furniture, 5 good friends, 4 bottles of wine, three flights, one 1980 Ford Courier, 10 hours, five wrong turns, one ocean, one cousin, one uncle, one house for the summer, you do the math.)

On the drive up from San Diego to San Francisco in a toy matchbox truck mascarading as a vehicle for humans, I stopped at Best Buy. This was the most expensive bathroom break I've ever taken on a trip. My camera broke last fall and I had been in denial for a long time that it just needed new batteries. But the result is that I can just post some photos now and don't have to type anymore. It's no secret that pictures are more interesting than anything I could write. Enjoy!

The Answers

2009-05-25T20:19:00.000-07:00

drum roll pleaz

1. Tedious But Boring

2. Not Quite Here

3. Out-Of-Style

4. Hispanic Or Female

5. California Or Bust

6. Pretty Damn Soon

7. Over The Top

8. Too Much Caffeine

9. Slow and Steady

10. Very Discerning Readers*

11. Admiration of all

*after not having participated in this interactive exercise I am changing this one to Very DISAPPOINTING Readers;-)

TLA FYE

2009-05-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

1. TBB
(Law school finals)

2. NQH
(Buffalo spring)

3. OOS
(Meg Ryan's wardrobe in SIS)

4. HOF
(Obama's likely Supreme Court nomination)

5. COB
(Sara's summer plans)

6. PDS
(when the the end of semester is)

7. OTT
(country's reaction to swine flu)

8. TMC
(what Sara's diet has these days)

9. SAS
(Sara's approach to studying)

10. VDR
(those who follow my blog)

11. AOA
(what you get if you guess the highest number correctly)

Day of all days

2009-05-11T04:26:00.004-07:00

My younger brother called my mom yesterday for Mother's Day. He had missed her note on the door saying she'd left for my house, so he came with fresh flowers to an empty house. The flowers he bought her are waiting for her in a crock pot; she sold all her vases at the moving sale. My sister almost didn't call my mom because of some tiff they had last week, but upon my text-message prompting, she too called and made my mom very happy.

I on the other hand, had the luxury of having her here with me for Mother's Day, day of all days. For the umpteenth time she is helping me prepare to move out of an apartment. While I dicked around on the computer all day, trying to study for finals, she packed up my clothes, curtains, sheets, towels, paintings, shoes, etc., into boxes. I'm a bad host. I gave her her Mother's Day present on Saturday in desperation because I was at a loss for how to entertain her, I needed the crutch of talking about the book I bought her on the Woman and Shamanism. Thus on Mother's Day proper being present-less, I made her a carrot cake while she slaved away with all my things.

Even for those of us who still have mothers who are not only alive, but young, healthy, and have a fair amount of life ahead of them, Mother's Day is bittersweet at best. It's actually quite a sad day once the children become aware of it.
My roommate's two younger sisters (19, 21?) are already mothers of a one and a two year old respectively. Her nieces are happily oblivious to Mother's Day because they haven't been trained by elementary school teachers yet, and the fathers aren't in the picture to observe the day on their behalf.

On the other side of the coin, a good friend of mine has an elderly mother who is officially senile. She is also oblivious to Mother's Day but I won't say 'happily'. The duty of son-to-mother has long eclipsed that of mother-to-son in that case, and neither of them is happy anymore. Moreso than a spouse, the mother is here til death do us part.

My first host mother in Poland, Gosia, was very chic, owned her own business, and only had her hair done in Warsaw. As I learned basic Polish I found myself inadvertently mimicking her manner of speaking: deliberate, and always with heavy skepticism of others. She had parties in the downstairs of their house when her husband was on business trips. Her only son came back from the U.S. with anorexia.

Irene, my second host mother in Poland, was a concert violinist married to a urologist. She had chronic illnesses her husband didn’t know how to cure, and talked to me about her travels with the Philharmonic, the untimely death of her own mother, the suicide of her brother, and her daughter who was struggling abroad in the U.S. I was struggling then too in the midst of a Polish winter with no friends. Then I got a mysterious illness – they thought shingles at first but no. The I got an eye infection. And she doted on me.

Halina, the third host mother in Poland, married a man 24 yrs her senior to secure a place for herself in the Polish elite business class. She climbed out of then lower class with her looks and her brain, and she followed with great interest the involvement of my own parents in my life as her only son was away as an exchange student and her husband was sickly and watched TV all day. Very critical of my father, kind but gently critical of me. I was clumsy, messy and generally irresponsible in her eyes. But because I listened to her and went on walks with her, she liked me a lot. The day their dog had to be put to sleep, I lay with it on the floor as the vet administered the fatal shot. Two years later I learned her had husband died of old age complications.

Senora Hoffman of Barcelona, had five children, all over the age of 30. I lived with her, her aged husband and her 40-year-old son who was in the jewelry business. The son would have a beer with me when I got home from school and took me to a soccer game in Barcelona. Not surprisingly, Senora Hoffman let me slip in and out at crazy hours of the night, never saying a word. She was long past caring about curfews. Though she was at a loss for what to feed me, so pan integral and cheese it was.

Jackie – an avid reader of this blog - bears mentioning as my official not-mother in Rochester. She will never know what I would write if I didn’t know she would eventually read it, but then again, neither will I. From her I learned how to cook and prepare dinner for upwards of 12 people; how not to be afraid of a stain on clothes; how to identify and cut out extraneous adjectives in my writing [a skill not employed here] and many other things that I consider life skills. She is very sophisticated, perhaps one of the most sophisticated women I’ve ever known. But her class (in the sense of classiness) is mixed with a consciousness of class that gives her the ability to relate to anyone. That's something that cannot be taught.

My own mother has never been jealous of any of the relationships I've had with other pseudo-mothers in my life. Perhaps she is secure in her position - as secure as the french braids she used to give me before concerts and recitals.

Before I left for Poland as a Rotary exchange student, she took me to the mall and bought me my first suit – a marked down Banana Republic taupe of the season before that hung loosely on me but, as she rightly suspected, when I gained weight on pierogi, fit just fine by the end of that year. Today she headed to Lima, Ohio for a job interview and asked if she could borrow one of my black suit jackets. She is interviewing for a director position of a clinic. She doesn’t own any suits. I have five or six now (not Banana Republic quality, more like JCPenny, but nonetheless). She took a rather hip black jacket I have with ¾ length sleeves. It was snug on her but immediately made her look really professional. Then I gave her $5 for Thruway tolls and kissed her goodbye.