The world we live in

I don't think that the world we live in today is really all that worse than it has been throughout the ages. It seems in relation to the amount of devastation we are currently experiencing that things are worse than they were 6-8 years ago but I think it's a question of perspective. The past always seems less-so in hindsight. However, it does seem like we are getting more than a fair share, in such a short time, of catastrophies that effect not just one region but have a rippling effect worldwide. I'm thinking about the Iraq war, of course, but I'm also thinking about global terrorism. I'm thinking about natural disasters like the Tsunami and the more recent destruction of hurricane Katrina. I'm in shock about the flooding in New Orleans. I've seen pictures of places my friend Kelley and I walked through that today we'd need a boat to get through. All that wonderful history just washed away. I'm also thinking about the disasters that are in our control to avoid versus the ones that aren't, or that we have less control over. When I think about the misuses of power propagated by the Bush administration, the lies, and the manipulation of Americans, it makes me angry first, then it makes me sad. What will governments do for power? What won't they do? It's interesting how when the earth shakes us up with its fury through natural disasters, we band together across political lines to aid one another but we can't effectually do the same to prevent man-made disasters. I'm not denying the work that individuals, groups, and, at times, nations have tried to bring us all closer together but it's not lasting enough. We forget too easily. The past always seems less-so in hindsight.

Take part in the anti-war movement

A.N.S.W.E.R. Chicago now has tickets ready for the September 24 March
in Washington. If you want to purchase a ticket the cost is $80 round
trip. The buses will be leaving from Columbus Drive between Jackson
and Adams behind the Art Institute. We will begin boarding between
5:00 and 5:30 pm on Friday, September 23. The buses will leave at
6:00 pm. The buses will arrive in DC between 9:00 and 10:00 am,
Saturday, September 24. They will leave DC to come back to Chicago
around 6:00 pm on the 24th and will arrive back at the Art Institute
around 9:00 am, Sunday, September 25.

We might possibly have buses leaving from other locations but for
right now the only buses that are for sure are the one's leaving from
behind the Art Institute in downtown Chicago. I will send out an
additional email to all those who have requested information if and
when we have additional pick-up points.

There will be no need for a hotel or any overnight accomodations
because the bus drops you off at the demonstration and you get back on
the bus shortly after the demonstration is over. There is no need to
bring anything since the bus will be making rest stops along the route
where food and beverages may be purchased. However, if you don't like
or eat fast food, you will probably want to bring along your own food
and drink. Please no alcohol, no smoking and no dairy (bus company
rules). The no dairy rule doesn't apply to cheese but just liquids
that can get into the upholstery. A pillow or small blanket might
make your journey more comfortable

To purchase a ticket make your $80.00 check or money order payable to
"8th Day Center for Justice". Write "Sept 24 bus" in the memo section
of your check or money order. Please make sure you include your name,
your phone number and your email address (if you have one) with your
check or money order. If you are buying tickets for more than one
person, please make sure we know the names of all the people you are
buying tickets for. When we receive your check we will email or phone
you with the ticket number/s we have assigned you. We will have a
master list of everyone going and what ticket number was assigned to
them. Once at the bus on September 23, you will be able to pick-up
your ticket from the will call table and board any bus by handing your
ticket to the bus captain.

Mail you check or money order to A.N.S.W.E.R. Chicago, 27 N Wacker
Driver, Box #199, Chicago, IL 60606. If you have not received either
a call or email within 10 days of mailing your check or money order
letting you know your ticket number/s, please call 773 920-7545 or
email answerchicago@gmail.com.

The only way we can accomodate requests for people to travel together
is to get to the bus early. The earlier you get there the faster we
can give you your ticket and you can be first in line when the buses
start boarding.

If you are unable to go to DC for the March but would like to
contribute money so someone who can not afford the full cost of a
ticket can go please make your check or money order payable to "8th
Day Center for Justice", write "Sept 24 bus scholarship" in the memo
section and mail to A.N.S.W.E.R Chicago at the above address.

If you would like to be considered for a scholarship please email
answerchicago@gmail.com or phone 773 920-7545 with your request and we
will put you a list. You don't have to tell us your life story but a
little bit about your circumstances will help and if you are able to
afford anything toward the cost. We will only be able to accomodate
you if we are able to raise the funds. In the past we have always
been able to give scholarships due to people's generosity. Do put
your name on the list.

Please forward this email widely to spread the word about the buses
from Chicago to DC for September 24.

Beth Massey

A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) Chicago
AnswerChicago@gmail.com

A storm is brewing

By Joseph L. Galloway, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Wed Aug 24,12:44 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Old-timers could be forgiven this week if they hummed a few bars of "For What It's Worth," Buffalo Springfield's 1966 anti-war tune. The one that begins, "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. ..."

The air of unreality only seemed to thicken as George W. Bush, dogged by opponents of his war in Iraq at the gates of his beloved Texas ranch, hit the road for a pair of speeches aimed at bolstering support for that war and shoring up his sagging poll numbers.

There was a time when August brought a blissful if hot and humid peace to the nation and its capital. Congress stayed home until after Labor Day, and the republic was safe for a brief spell. Presidents went golfing or drove their speedboats off Maine or even walked around Key West in coat and tie and Panama hat.

Not this week. Not during these Dog Days. A heretofore confident if not cocky White House is on the defensive and the spin patrol has been deployed in force to tell America that this is no time to think about quitting the fight against the evildoers in Iraq. No time to think about getting our troops out of the quicksand that's taken the lives of 1,873 young Americans.

Bush stopped in Salt Lake City to speak to a friendly VFW convention, but he sounded for all the world as if he were talking directly to Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war mother whose son was killed in Iraq whom he refuses to see and whom some of his acolytes on talk radio and cable TV have trashed. Bush did meet Sheehan once soon after her son was killed.

The president expressed sympathy for the families of those killed in the two and a half years of a war that the majority of Americans no longer think he's managing well.

For those who wonder how much longer the war might continue, Army chief of staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker said he's now planning rotations of soldiers and Marines four years out - 2007 to 2009, should they still be needed then.

Even amateur practitioners of the art of public relations said that if the president had just invited Sheehan in for a sympathetic talk, a cup of coffee and a hug all of this might have been postponed, at least for a while.

Where was his spinmeister Karl Rove? What were they thinking? When the White House did react, it was to set in motion a counter-demonstration of pro-war Republicans assigned to show the flag in Crawford and the ranch, and another group to patrol Sheehan's home state of California.

After a Republican maverick, Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska, said it was time to begin thinking about how to get out of Iraq, Bush counselor Dan Bartlett was dispatched to make the rounds of network and cable talk shows to say that Bush did, too, have a strategy, and it was a sound one. Even Fox News was skeptical.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pooh-poohed any thought that civil war was imminent in Iraq while Iraqi Shiite Muslims and Kurds drafted a new constitution over the objections of the Sunni minority who've fueled and manned the insurgency from the beginning.

The defense czar, who earlier was caught using a machine to sign his name to letters of condolence to the families of service members who died in Iraq, declared that anyone in his position "has to feel a great deal of empathy" for those who've lost loved ones in the war.

Those of us who are old enough have seen this movie before were reminded of other presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, who were haunted by another war and dogged by war protesters and a nation that lost confidence in their leadership and wound up divided against itself.

Will history remember this week as the tipping point for George W. Bush and the Republicans who control Congress? Can they stay the course as they head into mid-term elections next year?

One more question: Will our children and grandchildren and their children harvest a bitter crop of budget deficits, higher oil prices, Islamic militancy and a broken Army and Marine Corps that was seeded in Iraq by this president, his vice president and his secretary of defense?

Will that bitter harvest, not a cakewalk, a mission accomplished and a Mesopotamian march of democracy, be Bush's legacy?

---

ABOUT THE WRITER

Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 12th St. N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-3994.

Copyright © 2005 KnightRidder.com

An excellent turn of events

Oh my gods, my life has been a bit traumatic of late and I haven't felt like writing a word for weeks. However, things are looking up. Where should I begin? Hm. Well, the biggest issue that's been on my mind since I completed my thesis was that the Registrar's Office managed to screw me royally by registering me for the wrong thesis unit. See, in my program, one has to complete 6 credit hours of thesis work but in most programs one only has to complete 3. You can take additional time, up to a year in some cases, but you have to pay the regualr rate for the initial 3-6 credit hours. That's anywhere from 2-4k. So, I was supposed to have registered for 6. 3 in the spring and 3 in the summer. Well, when I registered for summer, the registrar insisted that my advisor had written the wrong code on my form and they registered me for the thesis completion course, not the regular 3 credit hours I needed. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this at the time. Even though the tuition was reduced, I believed everything was in order. It wasn't until I was on the verge of turning in my completed thesis that I received a call from my department coordinator. She told me about the discrepancy and that I would owe more money as a result. Oh, I was so P.O.'d at her and took it out on her undeservedly. Bad me. However, once I cooled and got my thesis in on time, I decided I wasn't going to just accept that what I thought was paid for, I actually had a balance on of $2036.00!

First, I went right to the source. I complained to the Registrar's Office and they had me fill out a tutition petition form. I outlined the situation and submitted it to some unknown committee to review. This was to take two weeks. In the mean time, my thesis came back from the Graduate Dean's office who said it was spectacular! The Registrar's Office, on the other hand, were not so gracious. My petition was rejected. They wouldn't completely own up to the mistake and they based their decision on the basis that this scenario had never happened before. In other words, they had never removed a tuition expense because of a university mistake. Hard to believe but I think most people just accept it and don't try to do anything about it. However, the head registrar had a scheme that he thought could help me. He suggested they move my 3 hours from spring over to summer, which would give me 6 in summer and make me elligible for financial aid for summer. However, this didn't seem too savory to me. It felt like fraud. He did it anyway but managed to screw it up. He not only moved my credit hours but the charge for them as well, which I had already paid in the spring! Now I owed $4027.00! Can you believe this? At this point I'd had it with the Registrar's and decided I needed to go to the next level. The Provost.

I contacted the very person who said my thesis was "spectacular" and told her my story. This woman totally went to bat for me. Over a two-day period, she made calls to the Registrar, the Senior Provost, maybe the University President, Financial Aid, etc. In the end, she vindicated me and totally rocked my world! Because of her intercession on my behalf, I no longer owed a cent! I have my full thesis hours requirement. And, this awesome woman, recommened me for Honors. This last point is especially poignant because graduate students do not normally receive honors recommendations. We're expected to do honors level work because we are grad students. So the only way to get the recommendation is by "special circumstance."

I can now yell "whoo-hoo" and have it mean something! I feel much better about this degree now than I did a few weeks ago. Life is good. AH!

Also, the problem I had been having with my AC making me sick has been resolved. I was such a bozo about this. I didn't realize AC units had filters in them that you had to clean periodically. Also, the unit in question had mold inside. After cleaning the thing up, it now works better than ever. HA!

This one, no one will believe! Work is better. It's true. A circumstance arose recently where one of the Acquisition Editors left the company and she was managing a very large project. I was her sole assistant and she actually recommended me to fully take it over. So I did and almost completely stressed out in the first three days. HA! I wasn't used to so much responsibility at this job. Anyway, once I adjusted, I've found that I'm beginning to enjoy my work more. This is so wierd because, as you all know, I've hated this place forever. The question is, if this project ends well, will they offer me the editor position?

Master of Fine Arts -- Whoo Hoo!

As of Friday, July, 29th 2005 I became a card carrying member of the graduate educated no one can take it away class of over educated under employed people. It's weird, I've wanted that degree for a long time. I thought it would be a vindication or validation for my choice to pursue poetry as an art and as a way to make my voice creatively heard. I suppose it accomplished the former. However, the latter is a work in progress. The question is. What now?

Over the past two years, my debts have accumulated to catastrophic amounts. Okay, maybe they're not that bad but for what I've been living on they might as well be. I guess that's where I have to start. My job. We all know I hate it. I've bitched about it since almost day one. My problem is, and I fear this may always be a problem (my manager even suggested it might always be an issue), that I may never find any job that satisfies me.

Although, I'll tell you what continually dissatisfies me. It's dead end jobs. I continually find myself in dead end jobs. No where to go. Boredom sets in early and there's no escape. I work my ass off and I watch as people around me settle into the muck of it and somehow stay in those hells for years. I suppose they have reasons but I can't find one to sentence myself to such an end. Hell no!