So...they've removed Michael Brown from onsite duty for Katrina. He should have resigned, or been fired from FEMA altogether...read the linked article, even Trent Lott feels that Brown was acting like a "private instead of a general." It is, however, a step in the right direction, and perhaps it will ultimately lead to an resignation if he is continually asked to account for his actions (and inactions).
Speaking of . . . well . . . nothing, I'm completely non sequiter this afternoon. I had a bunch of blood drawn to coincide with my physical this morning. John was an absolute dear and came home from work so that he could take me to the lab and drive me back home. The last thing I needed to do was get blood drawn, get in a car, and pass out while driving down Washington St. Not as unhappy an experience as the physical itself, even though the woman was sticking a needle in my arm. She was very sweet, despite the fact that I have tiny veins and she had to stick me three times. "You're very brave," she says, as I'm hiding my eyes in my other sleeve, breathing in short bursts, acting like a relative three-year-old. It's just a line.
I'm reading three books right now. This is a real problem I have - I don't know if it's obsessive multi-tasking or minor ADD, but I can't read one thing at a time. My night stand is always piled with at least two books and sometime three or four magazines. I grab a different book every time I walk out the door. I think the only books in recent history that I sat and read all by themselves were the Harry Potter books...but don't even get me started on that; that's a post in and of itself.
So, I'm reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran," by Azar Nafisi. This book is really beautiful and fascinating to me. Ms. Nafisi has such a love for her country and people and such a fear and ire for her post-revolution government. How lucky I feel when I read her story of women forced into veils and a lifestyle/role that many of them were not ready for. Images of these women, huddling together in the author's house to read pieces of literature that we take for granted, worried about being in trouble by their families, by the government. For these women, freedom and hope and future were embedded in the pages of Nabokov, Henry James, Mark Twain, Fitzgerald. That part of their story I DO understand.
I'm also reading "Merce Cunningham: Dancing in Space and Time." (see Merce's photo above from the 70's or 80's). This is a book of essays about Merce Cunningham and his development of "Chance Dance." This book is very good thus far - perhaps because I idolize Cunningham and his company. I remember watching them rehearse when I was at Jacob's Pillow in the early '90's and thinking that I could never acheive the level of technical proficiency that these dancers could do in their sleep. The last bit I read was a conversation with Remy Charlip, Marianna Simon and a composer who worked with Cunningham and Cage as Chance Dance was hitting its heydey. Everything they did was new . . . how amazing to be living and making art in a time when everything had not yet been done.
The last book I am reading is "The Complete Adoption Book." I've been thinking about the idea of having a child. This isn't an immediate thing - something I am looking at a couple of years down the line. John and I have both been seriously discussing this and think it would be a good idea as my career starts to solidify (especially if I can get a staff job at an opera company and be in the same city for huge chunks of time). I've thought about actually being pregnant and I just don't think my back problems could handle the added stress of carrying a child. Socially, I don't know if this world could handle the added stress of one more child. The more I read, the more I see how many children are out there hoping for homes in their hearts. John and I could love one of these children and my back would still be in good enough shape to pick him or her up after they're born.
Lot's of things to think about....always. Books, magazines, online news sites make it more so. What would my overactive brain do without them?
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