Dove's Eye View

A New Hope for Dreams Suspended by Segregation

From the New York Times: A New Hope for Dreams Suspended by Segregation.

Five decades after Virginia ignored the actions of Prince Edward County and other locales that shut down their public schools in support of segregation, the state is making a rare effort to confront its racist past, in effect apologizing and offering reparations in the form of scholarships.

With a $1 million donation from the billionaire media investor John Kluge and a matching amount from the state, Virginia is providing up to $5,500 a year for any state resident... who was denied a proper education when public schools shut down. So far, more than 80 people have been approved for the scholarships, and the number is expected to rise. Several thousand are potentially eligible, many of them now well into their 60's.

I'm glad to see this. It's personal for me, since my mother's people settled this part of Virginia. She tried to redeem their sins by going to jail in 1961 (criminal trespass at a drugstore lunch counter - first integrated sit-in in the South -Lynchburg, VA, 50 miles from the NY Times article's location).

Gestures such as this one are part of the effort to heal the past. The actual wrongs may not be righted, but the acknowledgment of those wrongs and their effects helps heal problems of the present day.

Lebanese Government Policy Statement: A Historical Document Fleshed Out

This link is for policy wonks and Lebanon lovers: The Lebanese bloggers: The Government Policy Statement: A Historical Document Fleshed Out.

In it, an exuberant young Lebanese blogger translates the huge policy document just put out by the newly formed government. Some of it is vague bureaucratic jargon but if the leaders actually did what this document says they want to do, Lebanon would be a wonderful place.

Birthday Dinner

I rarely blog my personal life. But I'm feeling bored with my same old Dove routine. After posting about my birthday dinner to a food newsgroup I thought - this is a blog post. Why not add it to Dove's Eye View?

We wandered down College Avenue in Oakland in search of dinner, ended up going to A Coté, a small plates restaurant that's been around for 5 years now. Sat in the back patio next to a walled in garden framed by velvet curtains, with grape vines growing over the wall, and brilliant yellow-green acacia tree soaring above. Blue sky, setting sun turning the acacia gold, a fabulous Negroni, multiple small plates - it was lovely.

We ate: corn soup; halibut roasted in fig leaves in a woodburning oven, served with skordalia (Greek garlic sauce) and mixed shell beans and zucchini with tomatoes; Moroccan chicken with grilled peaches and couscous; fried squash blossoms filled with ricotta cheese & pesto; red lentils with fresh spinach and caramelized onions (they shoulda used green Puy lentils, the red lentils didn't work, too granular/chewy and had an off flavor as if stale); house marinated olives; mascarpone and berries; and a cardamom/plum clafoutis. Everything save the red lentils was exquisite. Menu here.

Oddly enough, out of all the style choices at the restaurant, the one that gave me the most pleasure was the cold water service - the waiter brought a clear, label free wine bottle to the table filled with chilled water. Our Bay Area water is among the finest in the country and I enjoy its flavor out of the tap; having it in a recycled wine bottle reminded me of my Mediterranean childhood. In those days people chilled water in mineral water or wine bottles. I'm sure I'll hear from somebody about why this is terrible, unsanitary, unAmerican or wrong, but I loved it. Even more than the velvet curtains, the outdoor fountain, and the halibut in fig leaf, which was darned good.

We then indulged in a book crawl, beginning with Diesel, where I ogled Daniel Alarcon's list for the Mills class I hope to take this fall, and ending with Pendragon where I perused a volume of Dorothea Lange photos, and bought a book of Arab gastronomy.

In all, a delightful birthday dinner. I had a good day, mostly taking care of the kids until the babysitter came. Considering how much time they were away from me this past year while I went through cancer treatment, that was a great way to celebrate.

What You Can Do

Jared Diamond suggests what you can do to stave off Collapse:

1) Vote

2) Reconsider what you, as a consumer, do or don't buy.

3) Draw attention to companies' policies and products in three ways -
- embarrass wrongdoers
- praise good behavior (he gives examples - Chevron/Texaco and Boise Cascade)
- talk to others who also vote and buy - communal pressure can make a difference.

4) If you're religious, develop support within your faith community.

5) Invest time and effort into improving your local environment. It benefits you, and also sets examples to others - around the world as well as in your neighborhood.

6) Donate to organizations promoting policies of your choice.

(beginning page 556, hardcover edition)

Reasons for Hope

My own mortality is too much in my face these days. I feel good, look normal after completing chemotherapy, but I'm a breast cancer survivor and as such am treated as if I have a sword hanging over my head. Just when I think I'm dealing with it fine, some new squiggle on a read-out makes some doctor nervous, and my fear of dying too soon rears again. I've had a couple of these rather minor scares this summer, no fun. All remains well but my mental state can go negative.

Meanwhile, there's the state of the political world, and worse yet, the health of the planet on which we live. The more I read, the worse my fears. Dying before my time would be bad enough, but to die young (or old) in the shadow of the eminent collapse of human society due to environmental degradation - this would be far, far worse. Civilizations come and go - I'm a Lebanese, I grew up scrambling amongst Roman and Phoenician ruins. Alexander, Ramses II, and Jesus all passed through my hometown - where are they now? Great cultures fall, but the birds and fish live on. Our society is the first in history that may be able to exterminate species on a massive scale. If our culture dies out, will there be any forests or wild creatures left in our wake?

So when Jared Diamond's Collapse came up in my library queue last week, I wondered whether I should get it. Maybe the book would only fuel my apocalyptic musings, making me cranky and depressed. I got it anyway.

In the last chapter and the "Further Reading" section of Collapse, Diamond tells us why he sees reasons for hope, and what individuals can do. In this post I'll summarize the reasons for hope, splitting the action items into a separate entry.

Young Egyptians Demonstrate

Some young bloggers in Cairo stood on the 6th of October bridge downtown today in an unauthorized demonstration against terrorism. The Big Pharaoh and the Sandmonkey report. Pictures here. Karim al-Sahy organized the protest from his One Arab World blog.

Seems that it was a very small effort, but bless them for trying. They may have also gotten some international press coverage.

Hat tip to Ustaz Abu-Aardvark.

BloggingBeirut.com

Looking for blog comment on the Rue Monot bombing, I found this Beirut blog devoted to food, the environment and Lebanon: BloggingBeirut.com.

Go there for photos of somebody's mom making mulberry juice, map of pollution conditions at Lebanese beaches, and info on environmental activism in Lebanon.

Indigenous environmentalists in Lebanon - there's something that gives me hope.

Almost ready to close up shop

The Dove is losing heart.

Beirut, Sharm-al-Sheikh, London, Iraq.

Continuing to post flimsy bits of hope in the face of this destruction feels like a betrayal of the dead and their survivors.

During the long Lebanese civil war, my father's people endured. Cousins married, had children, got them educated somehow. People made new lives for themselves in exile. The war eventually ended and some of us returned to our village; the rest of us rejoiced, flourished where we had landed, and made pilgrimages to visit our restored homes. No matter how bad the horrors, life does go on, for some people.

I may have to change the focus of this blog to reflect my daily life: literature, food, child-rearing, city life, culture. Is it a sign of hope that my life goes on, while so many places in the world are torn asunder by violence? This seems selfish, self-regarding. But I'm running out of hope.

Just got my hands on Collapse, by Jared Diamond, and turned immediately to the back where he writes his own signs of hope. Retyping it here may be my next blog post.

America's Truth Deficit

William Greider writes: America's Truth Deficit - New York Times.

The possibility that the United States can no longer afford globalization, at least not as it now functions, is what opinion leaders do not wish to discuss. A few brave dissenters have stated the matter plainly and called for significant policy shifts to stop the hemorrhaging. Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, says the United States is destined to become not an "ownership society," but a "sharecropper society." But his analysis, and others like it, are brushed aside.

An authentic debate might start by asking heretical questions: Why is the United States one of the few advanced economies that suffers from perennial trade deficits? Why do new trade agreements, despite official promises, always leave the United States with a deeper deficit hole, with another wave of jobs moving overseas? How do the authorities explain the 30-year stagnation of working-class wages that is peculiar to America? Are we supposed to believe that everyone else is simply more competitive or slyly breaking the rules? In the last three decades, American policymakers have succeeded in closing the trade gap with only one event - a recession.

This is not a hopeful article. However this dose of bad news tells a story the Dove thinks is being buried. We need to listen, reflect, and act.

Rice in Lebanon

The Dove is no patsy for Bush administration pronouncements on foreign policy. But images of our Secretary of State jetting around the Middle East do stir faint glimmers of hope in this bruised heart: Rice pledges support to Lebanon on surprise visit - Yahoo! News.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon under heavy security on Friday to show U.S. support for the new government, the first to be formed since Syrian forces withdrew in April.
... "You'll not find a more supportive partner than the United States for what Lebanon is trying to achieve because this is a wonderful breakthrough for the Lebanese people to have control of their own future," Rice told a news conference after talks with Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora during the six-hour trip.

Rice, on her third visit to the Middle East this year, flew back to Israel to continue her mission to press Israeli and Palestinian officials to coordinate a mid-August Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Gaza strip, which Washington hopes will help revive stalled peace moves.