dear mom

an email i wrote this morning to a couple friends of my mom's, who travel quite extensively around the world, and who i know are keen to hear about my wee adventures here in europe...

dear shelley and marion,

not sure if mom has shared my blog with you.

in my mind, i was starting it as a way to keep in touch with family and friends, since i was writing to so many people all the time, it was starting to not be manageable.

so i thought, oh right, a blog. that way i can write to many people, still make it at least sort of personal, and cut down on the time i spend on email.

well, last week, after reading the first few posts, mom mentioned that she doesn't really understand some (much?) of what i am writing.

she said it sounded like i was drunk.

well, what about that?!

what do i do now?

i find i can really only write one way.

i write how i write.

and now the blog has taken over: when i sit down to spit it out, sometimes it does flow smoothly right out, but sometimes it just sputters.... so takes me a LONG time to write the measlely 250-300 words (and upload the photos).

well, i guess i've answered my own question: i write how i write. so i'll blog how i blog, and i'll have to keep writing email to mom.

love ya, mom.

when the levee breaks

so lest i be completely engulfed in my own little world, i read the news today. and like every fricking day: oh boy.

katrina
rita
george
dick

it's like the worst double blind date you could imagine.

it's like going to a birthday party at Molotov's, and having to drink rounds of his incendiary cocktails.

death, flooding.
anti-war protests around the white house
of course bush was away.
and dickie's in the hospital getting his arteries fixed up again. that man will soon be the first human to have a completely artificial vascular system!

people ask me: as an american, what do i make of the situation in new orleans. and now, have i heard the latest on rita. what about all the deaths, coffins floating in streets. (i surely cried when i saw the pictures of the animals needing to be rescued.) or Bush's absence; aren't americans upset (YES) and what do they make of the unbelievable delay in the federal government responding to the biggest humanitarian crisis to hit america in years.

it almost seems like they expect me to have the answer to why the US federal government couldn't get its act together sooner.

people also ask me "is oxfam doing anything about the crisis?" and usually, "are they delivering food?" Oxfam is well known here (uk) for delivering food and water sanitation in response to natural disasters (tsunami) or to persistent food crises (ethiopia, sudan).

usually oxfam responds to such situations in countries that don't have the resources, infrastructure, money, etc that the US has. all well and good. but the communication breakdown that seems to have happened at various levels of the US government response, on top of a variety of other things, surely did not show the US in a positive light.

as far as oxfam goes, within just a couple days after katrina, oxfam america had staff on the ground, meeting with partner organizations there, and as of the end of last week had made cash grants of some $300,000 to local organizations. (at least i remember reading that somewhere, maybe in a press release, but i am not official spokesperson; the point is they responded quickly).

then, related to this, of course i get questions about the terrible way minorities are treated in america. and specifically in new orleans, and how they got shafted the hardest during these storms.

i was searching for this photo on Google Images...


...when i came across an article by Vijay Prashad (who teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, USA) that really tied many of all these strands together in a very articulate and no-bones-about-it sort of way. apparently the city of new orleans sees $5B/year in tourist revenue, with 98 per cent of that coming from its world famous French Quarter. yet as Mr. Prashad notes, "the city has spent a generation to move the mainly black poor away from the tourist hub."

The esteemed Professor Cornel West of Princeton University (who i almost had as a thesis advisor) wrote in London Observer (Sept 11):

"New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane... . People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on the rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black. From slave ships to the Superdome was not that big a journey."

in any case, in amongst the flood of bad, i did manage to find some good news from this weekend: the International Monetary Fund agreed to wipe out debts it is owed by 18 of the world's poorest nations (with the World Bank expected to follow suit). apparently $52B of debt to these institutions will be written off. that is a boat load of cash. which should help those countries... hopefully they'll spend it on education, health care, etc.

basically a lot has happened from the time i went to see Sol Samba play last night (a 30-piece mad drumming, percussioning, dancing troupe):


sol samba at the zodiac, 24 sept 2005







...to the Iffley Village Harvest Festival Dinner and Barn Dance tonight.

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

It's a crazy world out, there. Be safe, kiddies.

go sox, go cms

i learned last night that my colleague, the editor of the french version of our site, has been imprisoned.

he's not still there, thankfully. (otherwise, how would he be able to update the site!)

i'm too tired to tell the story of how it happened.... another night. i promise.

we're preparing both our public and intranet sites for migration into CMS, so the french and spanish editors of our site are in town... and so the days have been filled to the brim with meetings: migration matrix planning, content strategies, stakeholder evaluations, and today basically an 8-hr demo of the new system (open source, an enterprise version of zope/plone). and of course we have to host our colleagues from brussels and barcelona properly, so evenings this week consist of dinner and drinks:


i enojyed a way hearty steak & ale pie last night at head of the river pub, oxford

tonight my boss had us all over for a relaxing meal at home....

julia's yummy carrot & coriander soup. served w/fresh breads, soft & hard cheeses, marinated artichokes and peppers, vine tomatos, and crisp bib "salad" (how my belgian co-worker refers to lettuce).

it's SO great to have colleagues that you can be friends with. i feel very lucky about that.

instead of the usual fare, tonight i'd like to serve up some content from other websites....

in fact, since i've got CMS on the brain tonight, and because the pennant race is heating up between the Red Sox and the Yankees, i shall simply highlight Seth Gottlieb's blogs. i've lost track of how i first found them/him but i discovered one of them in my list of "Favorites / Blog links". i don't know seth, but i am drawn to both his adoration of the Red Sox (and his comcomitant repudiation of all things Yankees), and his robust interest in CMS. he's in deep.

without further ado:

Enter Content Here

Seth Gottlieb's Web Log


is this post too esoteric? please let me know ("comments" link below!)

day trip

[ed. note: you can click on photo to launch new window with full size image.]

last saturday i took the bus into london and met up with my long-time friend steve ginsberg and his wife ingrid. it was very interesting since they sort of left it to me to determine how, when, where we would meet up. so, where should you meet
someone in a foreign city which neither party knows that well? in the easiest to find, most popular, and most centrally located spot: in london, i figured that'd be trafalgar square. (yes, there are still pigeons there). i knew they could look on any map and find it, or worst case, ask most anyone and get decent directions. and i knew they could find St Martin in the Fields church from there, so i directed them to meet me on that church's steps.


well, sure enough, i was totally on time, and they were late. yes! fine by me, as it was a stunning late summer afternoon; so i snapped away at the scene and passersby while i waited...

god speaking to trafalgar square


st martin in the fields church, london

i took them to the only pub i've been to in that area - which fortunately i really like - the sherlock holmes pub, a classic english pub, with all sorts of s.holmes related memorabilia affixed to the dark-paneled walls. it has that feeling, as steve joked, where you could probably walk into the back room and find sir arthur conan doyle smoking opium. i made the mistake of not checking the map (though i'd brought 2!) when we set off to find the pub, so what should have been a 6 minute jaunt around the corner became a 40 minute circle through the theater district, squeezing through the primped and powdered crowds at charing cross. (london's weird: it seems to have like 4 theater districts.)

fortunately steve and ingrid were very easy going about it. having just spent a week in antwerp and amsterdam, they were just glad to be able to read the street signs! (i could relate: during my 2 days in amsterdam last easter, i must have gotten lost at least a dozen times.) they live in san francisco, and i've seen them approximately once in the last 10 years. but i grew up with steve, so it was really great to catch up, break bread, share laughs, and swap stories.

for example, he told how he'd recently started surfing on a trip to san diego, and had been bitten by a stingray just a few weeks before their vacation... and how 3 shots of morphine had hardly dulled his pain at all! both he and ingrid described how the blood was spurting out of his ankle just like in a monty python movie. apparently, when you're getting out to where you're going to hop on your board, you're supposed to shuffle your feet along the bottom through the sand, which scatters all the sting rays. steve didn't shuffle.

after a couple warm, flat pints of bitter (ingrid opted for guinness), we headed to dinner. it being london, we had agreed to go for indian. i had duly checked my guide books (Lonely Planet/London, and Zagats/London 2005) on the bus ride into town, and both had sung the praises of Cafe Spice Namaste, located in a big, old, converted library, just a couple blocks west of the Tower of London (Tower Hill tube stop). though a little pricey ($20-28 entrees), the food was delicious and smartly presented, the service attentive and professional, and the atmosphere clean and upscale without being stilted -- walls painted in rich, cheerful tones, white tablecloths, the waiter gliding by after each course to sweep the crumbs away. indeed, there was an overall sense of meticulousness about the place. (yes: clean loo too.)

it is one of those restaurants where if i am in the neighborhood again i would certainly revisit, but given that there are SO many restaurants in london to try, i'll probably not be back soon.

nicely, steve and ingrid treated!

it was nearly 11 by the time we walked out of there, so too late to try to make it to a pub for a nightcap. it was such a clear and beautiful evening, we strolled over the impressive Tower Bridge and then east along the south bank, where we had spectacular views of the Bridge and of the Tower of London itself (which for the life of me i cannot figure out why they call it a tower, since it is the shortest building around for miles. i guess it was considered tall when it was build some 1000 years ago!).

tower bridge

homage

tonight i pay homage.

to two people really.

it seems like a bit convoluted, plus i have been at the pub, so please bear with me.

it can be amazing when your worlds collide: like when your work friends meet your band friends, or just two different sets of friends meet... and then they frickin hit it off like you'd never have imagined! (maybe even get married.... um, and then of course split several years later. oh well.) it can expand your world view; shatter preconceived notions; help you to grow. it can leave you wanting more.

well, my worlds smashed hard tonight and i am loving it. i'll try to explain...

the first person i pay homage to tonight is my sister, shari. she felt that my reference to "freaks and hairies, dykes and fairies" (12 sept) could too easily be taken negatively, for instance a put down of homosexual men and/or women as 'odd,' and that moreover some of our gay friends and family might be offended. as they say in this country, fair dues. (i think in the US they'd say 'fair enough.')

anyone who knows me knows that obviously that was not the intended meaning. (maddening the frustration one can feel with the ease with which words can be discontextualized). those words are lyrics from a classic rock song. but, try as i might, wracking my brain, i could not for the damn life kicking around in me REMEMBER WHO WROTE THOSE LYRICS!?!?!

as soon as i got shari's email i knew i had to respond. she prevailed on me to remove the potentially offending words.

i knew i couldn't. they were a record. you don't make a record, press it, sell it, and then go into everyone's home and erase the drum track. (well, of course, except for those instructional tapes with the one instrument removed) i mean, could dan rather fly like superman and visit every single home and pull out his fuzzily authored/sourced story from every American's ears? nope. they're out there. i wrote 'em. done deal.

but i also knew i had to do something. it plagued me... WHO WROTE THOSE LYRICS?? i could hear, feel them... they would roll smoothly through my head as i biked to work.... but the lyrics that followed them, those precious gems that would reveal to my memory the remainder of the song, though right there, at the tip of my tongue, they would simply not come. then it occurred to me: i needed help.

so, i delegated.

i wrote to the Living God of All Things Music, the second person i bow to tonight: Alan Kennedy. i met him the first week "at uni" (college), watching the band set up in the dorm's courtyard, and we were fast friends from then.

hi alan,

my sister suggested i might offend people by saying, in my blog, "dykes
and fairies" ... in the phrase "freaks and hairies, dykes and fairies".

but i assume you know, that was not meant to be slanderous in any way, but
was in fact a reference to a song that uses those words as lyrics.

i have searched for a bit some of the song lyric websites, but none seem
to have a good search functionality... so i am at a loss.

do you know what song that lyric is from?
or do you know a good song lyric database?

i thought it was either CSN or maybe jimi hendrix??

many thanks!

- joel

Totally.
That's the psychedelic classic "I'd Love to Change the World" by Ten Years After (1971), a British
blues-rock band led by guitar virtuoso Alvin Lee.

Lyrics are here:

http://ten-years-after-lyrics.wonderlyrics.com/I'D-LOVE-TO-CHANGE-THE-WORLD.html

in the back of my mind all day today was that sort of feeling like you get before chanukah or xmas, when you know deep down that you might be about to get a gorgeous gift. as i rode home tonight, i knew i wanted to write, and i knew i had to address shari's concerns in some way. but i knew i couldn't remove the post. then it hit me: write about it directly. once i saw alan's reply, i knew that would be possible.

i went to the URL to confirm Alan's lead, and voila! there they were, in the first line. as i read the words, i began to weep. my worlds were colliding hard...

i work for an organization dedicated to fighting poverty. and injustice. that's what i do for a living. it's amazing. but it's hard. it's big. it's long-term. it's complicated. it's, as you may say, fairly ambitious. but i am passionate about it. and i am passionate about music. and i am dedicated to tolerance, and to loving everyone. and i am glad for the diversity of sexual preferences in this world. helps keep life spicy, no?

shari, thanks for giving me something solid to write about tonight, and for caring enough to say something, and for standing up for your beliefs. speaking out is hard, and i applaud you. and alan, thanks for being such a friend, and fount of musical knowledge and joy. you both are inspirational.


last night i played bongos at an open mike night at the Flowing Well, a pub in a nearby village. favorite jam of the night was 'babylon' by david gray - a fabulous groove for bongos. no time for sit-down dinner: PB&J, glass of milk, 2 pints of guinness (at pub). dinner tonight was out with friends/colleagues, at a thai/chinese place called of all things "Red Star" (there is a dive bar in my hometown, Framingham, called the Red Star... which proves wherever you go there you are). one of our party was a young woman from Northampton (GB), who was getting ready to graduate with a combo degree in youth social work and applied theology. i'd never heard of 'applied' theology, though thought wasn't that what you sort of strived for in life anyway, to be a bodhisattva, share the love. how very interesting to get a degree in it.

music: food of the gods

it has been a mad week, following all the events in NYC and covering the UN World Summit on the web. been working wacked hours. boss is not happy about that. but when it comes down to it, i'd do it whether i got paid or not. i probably won't (get paid, that is), as there are various hoops to go through to make that happen, which i just don't have time jump through. bottom line is i love what i do, so that's why i do it.

i left the office around 10:45pm tonight (i think just a tad earlier than last). i used to work in a music store where the whole last shift would always leave together -- you'd never leave just 1 or 2 guys to close. there were stories about people jumping the last man out, and ripping off the shop big time. well, i locked up the Oxfam Int'l office without incident, and cycled homeward, going my usual route through Oxford city center....

...when i heard the drumming...

not having eaten dinner, i was famished. of course my mind started roiling: to eat, to drum, to eat, to...

i stopped. there were 4 of them, 3 on various sized djembes, and one hippish-looking dude carrying one of those biggish, metalish-looking bass drum type jobs slung around his shoulder, like in a samba band or something. perhaps what sealed the deal for me, and made me stop, was the decent sized crowd. i am a sucker for an audience. plus i knew i looked like a foppish (foolish?) Oxford professor, with my dress pants tucked into my socks (hey, small price to pay to keep the nice trousers from the bike chain -- at least it saves on dry cleaning, which is usuriously expensive here in the UK).

of the 4, the youngest, Ryan, was the best: a decent leader, he tried somewhat successfully to call out tempo changes and stops; plus he had chops. he had a very sweet sounding high pitched djembe, its plastic head giving it a nice crisp high end. we traded licks and fills, pleasing the crowd. i was playing a smallish metal drum also with tight plastic heads, but using sticks, so i could easily ride on top, cut through the other drums, and make the enclosed building space snap, crackle and pop.

the crowd grew. and cheered. then the one female drummer got up and started dancing. and soon some passersby followed on. by this time the pubs had let out, so several folks were clearly quite buzzed.

in all, a short, delicious evening out.

got home, made grilled cod (little oil, lemon, green onion) with yellow and red peppers and quartered zucchini (italian olive oil, fresh from Frascati); plus, in keeping with the wacked nature of this week: a top-of-the-head, spur-of-the-moment, clean-out-the-frig pasta dish: shells with broccoli, cherry tomatos, crumbled Danish blue and a healthy dusting of hungarian paprika. yum.

the kebab kid

monday, sept 12 - day after the 4 yr anniversary of 9-11.

yesterday's anniversary seemed to go by mostly unnoticed here. nevertheless, it is a day that i'll never forget as long as i live.

i have to decide soon whether to stay on another year here in lovely Oxford, England or not. seeing as i love my job, as well as living in a foreign land, and don't really feel like looking for another job right now - well, it seems to me i should stay! (should = want)

on my cycle ride home from work tonight, i left my bike just outside the arabic fast food joint, The Kebab Kid, in East Oxford, and went in -- for like the 10th time -- to try to buy one of their t-shirts. they've got this great logo, of sort of an Elvis character silohuette. i have been wanting to get my brother-in-law, Scott - the biggest Elvis fan i know - this t-shirt since january, when i first saw that kebab restaurant. well, tonight, as long last, i scored!

as i stood there calmly waiting for some time while the clerk fetched my great new giftie t-shirt, i was of course approached by this very drunk and very smelly street-seeming man. he was slightly bigger than me, and not necessarily clean. i had just seen him out on the sidewalk verbally acosting this non-descript middle-age woman out on the side walk just a minute before.

the drunk man sort of ambled over to the kebab shop and slunk in behind me in line at the counter. as i patiently waited for my prized 'T', drunkman launched into a slightly convoluted story about how he had to go confront someone in the morning. his ex-girlfriend? his ex-girlfriend's lover? i only half-paid him attention, as i was kinda watching my bike out in front of the entrance, and looking for the counter guy to return with my shirt. but he clearly conveyed there was a distinct element of danger to his task. then, looking right at me with fully blood-shot eyes and stanky breath, drunkman asked earnestly if i would back him up. would i support him, stand for him, or against him, in his anticipated morning adventure to avenge his manhood. returning his gaze directly, without a moment's pause, i said bluntly, how could i answer that without knowing any of the details.

he was completely defused. he smiled, becoming sort of happy, and blurted that that was the most clever thing he'd ever heard. he acknowledged, repeating several times, 'how could i choose either way without knowing any of the details' and 'respect, man, you have my respect.' i returned his wide-eyed gaze and tapped my fist firmly to my chest then raised it in solidarity to him, 'right on.' he wandered off toward what seemed to be some other rather potted lads milling about in front of the oxfam shop, looking rather in search of someone else to harangue.

for some inexplicable reason, i seem to attract the oddest people wherever i go. freaks and hairies (or is it 'hairys'?), dykes and fairies. must be the look in my eye. makes me think sometimes i think i am just a mirror, and people want to talk into me, through me, to find out what they want to hear/see. or more likely they think they can take advantage of my ingenuous nature.

i rode on, secured my greasy friied cod from my local fish & chips guy, got home, made a huge salad, and enjoyed a delicious dinner, listening to a slamming mix tape that my friend Ted Driscoll made for 1 Jan '03.

peace.