A Must for the Bar on Your New, As-Is Cash-Only 737

Gun, meet tequila. Tequila, meet gun.

Made in commemoration of the children of the distillers -!?

Pimp My Wings

The US Export Import Bank has an extra Boeing 737 on its hands. As-is, cash only.

How many NGO bank-reform campaigners do you think are going to put in joke bids on this?

Just the Headlines

Daniel Handler AKA Lemony Snicket writes a play for adults, called 4 Adverbs - Young fans everywhere already cringe at the thought of Lemony without the Irony

The celebrated dyke band Nochnye Snaipery (Night Snipers) from Russia will come to San Francisco March 8th (International Women's Day, the second biggest holiday in Russia after New Year's, by the by)

Nerd Goddess Sarah Vowell is going to be on the Geek God Jon Stewart's show tonight-- will the heavens open up and all the geeks and nerds ascend into nirvana?

Hmmm, what else caught my attention today... oh yeah, the polar icecaps.

My coworker just came back from the Alaska Forum on the Environment and Climate Change - which was mostly funded and attended by EPA and other government types - i.e. it was pretty sanitized, and didn't talk about the CAUSES of climate change such as hydrocarbons and other things sacred to the Bush Administration - but people STILL managed to talk themselves into a cold sweat about climate change. And one woman apparently reported some chilling (or not, as the case may be) facts about the polar icecap retreating from being in contact with all continents to being surrounded by open water (i.e. room for tanker shipping routes and offshore drilling derricks, yippee) in the course of only FIVE OR SIX YEARS! And then apparently she said that - oh well - we won't all survive, but the human race will survive.

And to boot, someone else said that NO MATTER WHAT WE DO the climate change we've been seeing will continue (in a best case scenario) for the next 100 years based solely on the impact we have ALREADY rendered... so, go ahead and get that houseboat you were looking at, because 6-7 meters of water is headed your way in the more and more immediate future!

I really want to know, are they working out a design for a Prius that floats? I mean, the oilies are fully apprised of our soggy future-- they must be engineering for it.

Doing a casual google for "prius" and "floats" I found this... shadow of the future?

The 2005 Prius has enough air bags to float you safely across the ocean. In addition to the usual driver and passenger air bags, it has side-impact air bags in the front and rear, and “curtain” air bags that deploy from the roof supports.

More From the Lesbian Front in Croatia

Apparently, according to my friend, who is catching me up on the gossip courtesy of Google chat, these billboards are up around Zagreb. When has San Francisco ever had a widespread lesbian visibility billboard campaign? I mean, besides the Lesbian Avengers' billboard beautification campaigns? This is Zagreb's SECOND lesbian visibility billboard campaign that I KNOW of, which means they probably have them every other year.

Croatian Androgyny

Dear readers,

If you haven't had enough Croatian androgyny in your life lately, you may want to check out this blog.

Nerdgirl Heaven

Well, I found myself blessed in nerdgirl heaven tonight. I was running late from work to go see Sarah Vowell read at A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books. The crowd was just getting to the point where nobody filling in the back was going to get more of a show than the sound of her muffled voice. But I scrambled up front and found a spot on the floor (the last spot on the floor, where I would practically be sitting at Sarah's right foot), when someone in the middle of the third row stood up and called my name. I knew I'd know SOMEone there, but what luck-- the woman she was sitting by had saved two seats, and her friend wasn't coming, so I ended up sitting next to a friend in the third row. Whoever is looking out for me up there- the patron saint of literary readings- thank you!

I noticed one other person I know - not someone I'd call a friend but someone I know, a friend of a friend - Lemony Snicket aka Daniel Handler (yes he has a Wikipedia entry)! He is friends with S.V. He was scooting out of the venue just as the massive throng in the back was getting surly.

The crowd was rapt. I mean, nobody moved. When I bent down to get a cough drop from my bag I felt like I was mooning the congregation at a wedding. She read from the beginning of Assassination Vacation and then from an op-ed she's about to publish in the New York Times about the need for having an outlaw secret service on prime time and the equal need to NOT have an outlaw secret service on the evening news.

Then the questions. My friend wanted to ask if she'd ever gotten a driver's license. But that was too personal and too stigmatized, she said, to ask publicly. She asked her privately when we went up to get our books signed, and turns out S.V. hasn't gotten her license yet. I wanted to ask her if she would take me up on my proposal (already e-mailed to her some months ago) that I be her guide on a European Assassination Vacation to the sites of the assassinations that came as a prelude to World War One in the then-Kingdom of Yugoslavia. So, I decided that wasn't a good public question either. I clarified her answer later. No.

What I *did* ask was - as a volunteer at 826 Valencia having just heard that she's on the board of 826 - could she talk about her role at 826? That was fun. She even said that at a reading last night - in LA - someone asked her what would give someone hope in this day and age: 826 Valencia. Her work is at the NYC 826 - the Superhero Supply Company (as opposed to the Pirate Supply Store we have here in the Bay Area). Apparently they have a "cape tester" there where kids can put on a cape and stand with their arms out in front of a big fan. This brings the kids in, and then when they find the hidden door to the tutoring lab they start coming every day and finishing their homework when maybe they had never finished their homework before. She was fairly gushing. She ended her response by giving a little "yay!" (with jazz hands).

One of the first questions was from a guy in the grumpy pushy nerd section in the back. He said that he had heard that male writers have more groupies than female writers, and was she bothered by this. So there she was, facing a completely - to the point of fire hazard - packed book store, with people crammed in who could only hear her voice from around a corner, being asked if she felt she lacked groupies. She was kind of dumbstruck for a second, doing what all good speakers do in such a case, repeating the question, then: "Well," she said dryly, "I suppose you could be forced to stand outside on the sidewalk- that would make me happier."

Now I have to run off to stalk the book S.V. recommended I read, about the assassinations leading up to WWI, The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman.

Notes on January

I am in disbelief this is my first post in January. See, bosses? I have been working at work. I really don't just putter around on the internet.

As for work, the campaign my job supports on Sakhalin Island against a Shell gas and oil project just had a massive (300+ participant) blockade of the hugest ever LNG plant in the world.

As for school, I'm back at the math thing. I am doing "intermediate" algebra which is so far review of "elementary." The new version of the open lab course I'm taking (sans instructor, plus computer) is a breeze. I hope. Either it's a breeze or I'm failing massively.

I went into the community college (Laney) today to get my student ID, and on the way up in the elevator I noticed that listed among the departments on that floor was "Vending Machine Refunds." It's a humble college, but what customer service!

My city, Oakland, has sucky sucky thrift shopping, I just rediscovered. I can't believe how very picked over the shops are. And the prices they ask for the filthy broken crapola that's left behind! I have to go to the 'burbs to do some good thrifting.

As for my neighborhood, Lake Merritt, Oakland, I've been traumatized by all the tree removal permits (fluttering an angry red in the wind, stapled to every tree along my daily walk to BART since mid-December). There has only been one drunken crying tree-hugging incident so far. I went on a couple "tree walks" held by Oakland's Public Works Agency, and got some faith in the process as they explained it. I still wrote my protest letter asking they try to preserve the lives of the 15 (beautiful, healthy) magnolias lining the approach to the 12th Street pedestrian tunnel. I don't know what possible good it could have done, but I had to say my say-so.

As for my home life, my favorite products keep being discontinued, forcing me to new heights of creativity. Last year EO discontinued a wonderful lavender-honey body scrub and then repackaged it in a container half the size and doubled the price. So, today I put together the five ingredients (why did it take me this long?) and it makes a perfectly passable substitute for the $4-an-ounce version they are trying to sell. Honey + kaolin clay + fine-ground brown rice + lavender oil + glycerin. Try it!

My first batch was made with this recipe:

2 T kaolin clay
1 T organic brown rice meal (long grain, fine ground in a coffee grinder)
2 t organic orange blossom honey
1/2 t glycerin (a liquid skin protectant/ soap)
5-7 drops lavender (lavendula officinalis) essential oil
1 drop eucalyptus oil
1 drop rose oil

I will probably play with the mix of oils in my next batch. Maybe another kind of lavender oil.

I'll try to remember to post my recipe to deal with the disappearance of the mucho delicioso frozen ginger-butter-carrot-almond mixture from Trader Joe's shelves.

North Country Briefs

These tidbits were selected for me by my father from the past few months' Watertown Daily Times, and now I'm passing them on to you. None of them are as good as the windchime theft article (a windchime had been removed from a porch; "no suspects [had been] identified"), and no way do any of them come close to the DWI case of the guy driving his lawnmower home carrying a pizza who fell asleep stopped on an overpass on the way home. Still carrying the pizza. He had lost his license for DWI (in a car, one presumes), and also had been arrested once for trying to "direct traffic" while intoxicated. Nor do these match the item that covered a sad weekend when a woman both threatened her husband with a hammer and then later smacked him with a pair of pants, landing her in custody. But they will do.

Woman Cited in Assault In Frying Pan Incident

LAFARGEVILLE - Paula E. Snyder, 46, of 36768 Sprucedale Ave., has been summoned to town of Orleans court following a domestic fight Saturday night when she allegedly hit a man in the face with a frying pan, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. She is charged with third-degree assult of Christopher Gushlaw, 35, same address, deputies said. Mr. Gushlaw declined treatment for a black eye, deputies said.

Frying pan assaults seem to crop up in the North Country Briefs often enough that my father has a tidy collection of them, spanning years.

Man Charged in Theft Of Beer Bottle in Pants

A Watertown man was charged Friday afternoon with petit larceny after he tried to walk out of a grocery store with a bottle of beer in his pants, city police said. Earl Tooley, 59, of 653 State St., Apt. 1, attempted to steal a 22-ounce bottle of beer from the Great American supermarket, 672 State St., police said. He is to appear in City Court on Oct. 27, police said.

Part of the fun of these briefs is how very much info they pack in about a tiny, tiny incident. Quotes from the pants-slapping victims, the high school the DUI-suspect attended, the number of ounces in the beer you shoved down your pants, EVERYone's exact apartment number. I mean, this is such a small town community, when you lay out a photo montage of North Nosebleed AKA Adams Center, my (and Melvil Dewey's! our celebrity can out-librarian your town's celebrity!) home town, taken from the local grain elevator, the whole thing fits in 6 photos (handily fits). The area is full of tiny hamlets like this. Even with Fort Drum expanding now and then, the whole county only has 100,000 people, maybe. The only public transport connecting us to the world, the Greyhound route from Massena to Syracuse, has been cancelled due to lack of ridership. I used to know that bus schedule by heart, catching the bus at the end of my road to go somewhere (anywhere). Shouting over my shoulder "I've got my key, don't wait up!"


And lastly, from the very place where I went to school (the next field over from the high school):

Golf Cart Found Sunk

ADAMS - A golf cart at Tomacy's Golf Course was found submerged in a water hazard Sunday morning, according to state police. Somebody removed the cart from the area of the pro shop between 11 pm Saturday and 6 am Sunday, police said.

Part of the fun of this one is that - you may notice - it's a crime being handled by the State Police. Not the local police. Why? Because there are no local police. No professional fire fighters. A smattering of EMTs. When my horse kicked me in the head a local EMT happened by some miracle to be driving by and see me fall in the manure pile, so I got primo care and a fast ambulance ride. Otherwise, who knows when I'd have gotten help. We only get about about two dozen cars on the road all day. When my sister and I set up lemonade stands we always had to eat the costs. No customers up this way.

Speaking of my sister, she is also passing through the Nosebleed and today we went cross-country skiing, which put us in the mood to reminisce about how we had to do this for gym class throughout our school years. We skiied around the elementary school track, noses and eyes tearing-up in the wind and cold, and talked about how stinky and awful the shoes would be by the end of the day. The way they'd conduct the first couple classes every year without poles, a great hilarity for the many students with weight problems. The way the school would be pondering whether to close early because of terrible wind and blinding snow, but we'd still be out there on the ski trail, doing timed laps. One year I had a first period gym class (i.e. skiing in the dark AND the snow AND the wind), and honestly the skiing section of the year was a little more fun-- dry shoes, a clean trail (instead of a plaster-smooth sheet of skid marks) - even the chance to break the trail, which I got to do once or twice. But this time I was with my 3-years-elder big sister, and we didn't even discuss it-- she broke the trail.

She is, after all, stuck in a condo in Manhattan the rest of the year. I get California.

More News from North Nosebleed

Our local newspaper publishes the inadvertantly entertaining "North Country Briefs." One recent highlight: a woman was arrested for walking in the road. When she was arrested, she threw the chair she was cuffed to through the wall. One of her charges was then interfering with the administrative governing process, or something. I guess that's the new fangled way of saying "resisting arrest."

The paper also publishes the "news from 100 years ago."

Apparently in 1905 on this date the revolution in the Russian Empire was causing concern to local folks because New York Air Brake (our only local factory) had a componant factory in a village outside Moscow. A "platoon of dragoons" was dispatched to check on the US Americans working there. Nobody from Watertown, NY, was working there at the time.

Meanwhile, in other news, these past few days the obits have had a beautician, a farmer, a mechanic, and a slough of "homemakers." It really isn't fair to have the job you held be the first thing after your name in the obits, at least not up here, where there is so little in the way of employment. I mean, the farmer is a dying breed and it's good to know when one goes the way of the elves, but those other folks probably had other identities they were proud of, maybe prouder than the thing they did to pay the rent.

I also saw a photo spread of noteable local gingerbread houses. Someone did a trailer park in gingerbread.

In local snowman developments, there is now a huge lady snowman with a big yellow bikini up on the top of a hill on the outskirts of Watertown. A little further down the road someone has, as their only holiday decoration, a lit-up plastic palm tree stuck in their front snowbank.

Today I finally got to see a house with Tyvek insulation panels instead of siding. That is our signature dish on the Northern New York architecture menu (usually with s a side of slumped-over burned-out barn). In the sunlight (which I haven't seen yet this trip, but when it happens) these foil-wrapped insulation panels really gleam beautifully across the wind-blasted fields of snow.

Happy Christmas from North Nosebleed

I'm home in North Nosebleed (25 miles south of the Great White North, population 2,500 if you count the larger farming area, 500 if you just count "downtown"), and we just got back from our Christmas morning church service. The minister was phoning it in, so he read a story from Reader's Digest and then read this piece of shite from the internet about how each of the 12 days of Christmas has a Christian symbolism behind it (11 ladies dancing = the 11 faithul apostles... the sad ultimate conclusion of which analogy is jesus in a pear tree, as in nailed dead to a pear tree). So of course stuck in my head for the rest of the service was the Great White North Bob and Doug McKenzie's 12 Days of Christmas, which ends with a beer ...in a pear tree.

Another highlight of my Christmas morning-- seeing that one of the many local snowmen has a very straight and tall pine-branch mohawk.

Now, PRESENTS.

On Wild Gay Love in the Wild West

Well, I just saw the straight-girl slash fan-fictionoid Ang Lee movie Brokeback Mountain. After the caveat that again - again! - a feature length movie that doesn't have two women having a conversation about anything! not even two women in one screen shot! - even still I really loved this love story.

I can't believe Heath Ledger's understated intensity. Wow. The Berkeley theater I saw it in last night was full of weeping gay couples at the end, and the quartet of us were all holding eachother and crying. I mean, in a good way. Not angry sobs. Quiet leaking.

Then we went out and processed. One revelation to think about: Bound is to the noir genre what this is to the cowboy drama. Bound's elevator scene: Brokeback's dirt parkinglot scene. You had the whole movie outlined for you, the sexual tension all balled up and lobbed at you in a wad of silence.

Then you spend the movie waiting for one or both of them to die, something you know by the bleak opening sequence and the fact that you're not seeing it in a queer film festival. In "Brokeback" you don't know what will get the guys in the end, the wilderness or the people of the land. Having grown up rural, I had my money on the people, and sadly that's a bet I'll keep winning again and again...

Now, this morning, I am reading something at work - where we do Russian environmental / indigenous rights protection - about the use of the word "wilderness" - it somehow reminds me of the sadness of the movie, that sense of an undefineable good thing lost to a system that requires definition. In this quote you have the recontextualization of that word by a person whose nation was destroyed in the defining of the wilderness.

Here's the passage:

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth, as "wild." Only to the white man was nature a "wilderness" and only to him was the land "infested" with "wild" animals and "savage" people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it "wild" for us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the "Wild West" began.



- Chief Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux Nation

Now, you can't equate a population of white "hairy" cowboys with the native nations it displaced, but reading this on the heels of "Brokeback" I have a renewed sense that this system of defining the wilderness (the undefineable, be it a relationship to land or a relationship between lovers) is universally oppressive-- it instills a wilderness of fear in working-poor white people, native peoples, anyone who by chance or position is drawn to reach for wholeness over someone else's false boundaries.

Waiting for the Other Cleat to Drop

We're very sad about the canning of 1st baseman great JT Snow from the Giants. We do not have any clue about where he will go now.

"We" are the the company of the yahoogroups "Wildaboutjtsnow" - not too surprisingly, mostly women. Right now, bitter, angry, Giant-hating women. At least one other fan is considering jumping ship to become a full time Diamondbacks fan. I just can't quite get over their turquoise get-ups. That color belongs on a cabaret show stage, not a ballfield.

I sent JT a letter last week thanking him for getting me into baseball, and for his heroics at 1st base. I included a copy of a clipping I love of him in a comical post-fly-ball pose that looks like he's in wrestling match with an invisible partner and he's losing. He never let pride get in the way of his job.

May I be as diligent and honest in my office chair as JT was on the Giants' playing field.

J. T. Snow:

With the Giants:

Games...1,182

Avg.....273

HR...124

RBI...615

Gold Gloves...4

Slackerstalker Hearts...1

When did we get old?

I had dinner with some other thirty-something friends last night and almost the whole evening's conversation centered around our annoying chronic health problems. I mean, the knees, the guts, the back, the mysterious dizziness, the computer-strained wrists, the trouble sleeping/ trouble waking up... And of course after our nutritious meal we all scattered to our cozy rented corners of the East Bay by 9:30 pm. When did we get old?

And remember that show "Thirty Something"? That was an old people's show!

The one member of our party who was particularly self-conscious about her aches and pains and "oldness" was also, I have to add, the one who earlier in the day went wide-eyed sidling up to a moo-cow and her calf with a handful of dry grass. Cows. It's calming just to watch them. We decided on our hike that day that the horrors we listen to on the news should be interspersed with a minute or two of footage of cows grazing, just to recalibrate back to center between beheadings and rapes and global pandemics.

Is this why people put wooden cut-outs of cows on their lawns? The aesthetics of calm?

From the Office of Federal Obfuscation

I'm sorry I haven't blogged in -what- a month? But life has been pressing what with gall bladder removal, a couple of trips and at least one load of laundry. Just now I ran across an office in the Russian Government which I'd never heard of, but which is apparently powerful, and apparently has something to do with federalism in a big way. Learn more about it at:

The website of the Chair of the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation

The News from Home:
Sky I Grew Up Under Still As Intimidating as Ever

Sent to me by my parents-- a clipping from the Watertown Daily Times-- my parents' favorite-- the crime notes. This young man, my near-age-mate, apparently didn't escape Northern New York to a place with a friendlier sky like I did.

City Man in Public Square Accused of 'Yelling at Sky'

Corey J. Wiley, 28, of 201 Sterling St., Apt. 8, was arrested Wednesday morning on Public Square, where Watertown police said he was "yelling at the sky."

He scuffled with an officer who attempted to quiet him down, police said, and he was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

He was released following arraignment in City Court and awaits prosecution.

One never tires of the fact that in our small community they publish the entire name with middle initial and exact, complete street address of everyone who gets arrested. It's a great way to keep up with the kids from back home... and far more inspiring than my college's class news column, which is full of news of advanced degrees, exotic research trips, new family members-- it usually brings out that old yell-at-sky urge.

4,000-Year-Old Noodle Found "Sitting Proud" on Sediment

The ancestor of Top Ramen has been found in the ancient land of Chin. It was made from "domesticated grasses" and not wheat. The BBC reports:

It was in amongst the human wreckage that scientists found an upturned earthenware bowl filled with brownish-yellow, fine clay.

When they lifted the inverted container, the noodles were found sitting proud on the cone of sediment left behind.

The Earthquake Rests

I couldn't let the death of Paul "Earthquake" Pena go by unnoticed here.

His movie, Genghis Blues, was the last movie I watched with my partner Kris, on our last night together, about 30 hours before she overdosed on heroin to end her life after a long struggle with breast/ bone cancer and lymphoma. His struggle in the movie to maintain, just maintain, despite the strange circumstances, and the sudden loss of his anti-depression meds, and his despair at his disabilities and lack of language, and how it turned into beautiful music really moved us both. But it particularly moved Kris, an artist herself who had struggled to keep perspective about her growing frailty by writing about her journey and drawing cartoons (she was a somewhat famous cartoonist in her day). She was also a musician- a guitarist- who had once been in a folk/ old time band called the Tampon String Band.

She was not a big one for crying at sentimental movies, but she cried when he sang "Center of Asia". Paul sings solo, in English, accompanying himself on a lonely slide guitar.

Here I sit in the middle of Asia, I can't find the way- to tell them what I need, why I just can't stay...

It's a hard life when you're stupid, a hard life when you're blind... I ain't robbed nobody, but it feels like doin' time...

But, you see, he was a wounded warrior figure, but he was also a garden-variety widower. What the obituaries leave out that -- and how I think about Paul-- is that he wanted to end his life after his wife died. But then he got a shortwave radio, and discovered Tuvan throat singing, learned it by ear, and proceeded into history.

Sometime after Kris died I found in one of my journals a note to myself:

Start.
Stop.
Do something else.

Paul decided to die, to stop. And then he did something else. And the world was a better place for it.

I wonder what you can see now, Earthquake. You were born a year before my Kris, died four years after her. Maybe you two are hanging out over there, on that side, passing the time a little playing guitar together. Whatever you're doing, there's no more sickness and dying for you to worry about. Rest easy.

Injuries Incompatible with the Postseason

On "ER" the way they inform the people who are coming in to see their loved one who they didn't even know was injured but who is in fact very dead is by saying "they had injuries which were incompatible with life." Well, thanks to all my hours logged watching "ER" I wasn't scared to go in for some stomach pain I was having last weekend, and found out I need to have my gall bladder removed. And now, the post-season.

There's something that happens the day after the season ends (i.e. ends for the Giants and A's). I have to look at what parts of my life are incompatible with the postseason / offseason (which are the same, this year, turns out, for Giants and A's fans). And I'm not sure I can handle being on a zero fat diet and dealing with surgery and recovery and bills and all that headache while NOT looking forward to tonight's game or at least replays or at least gossip on the radio about my favorite teams. It's a funny thing, when you have to swivel all that fan-focus back on yourself.

The health problems I've had lately are the sorts of things that (my research tells me) happen to people who aren't popular or attractive. OK, that's not exactly what it says in the Kaiser Health Handbook, but, neither does it say "only caused by genetic abnormality." There is no health profile that says that x-illness tends to happens to relaxed, popular, attractive people. All this leads to even more navel gazing and nervousness.

How many days until spring training?

Russia: Hard to Go, Hard to Stay, Harder to Come Home to a Drunken Cat Sitter

Returning home from Russia yesterday I found that a 2nd cousin had died and that my cat sitter had drunk every drop of alcohol in my apartment, used up all the toilet paper, and left broken glass both in the bathroom and in the bedroom. The fact that I left Russia no longer on speaking terms with my work supervisor (who was, it turned out, a terrible person to travel with in Russia) didn't help matters. Also, my apartment being the cramped thing it is in the crummy neighborhood where it is doesn't help. One very GOOD thing is that the stripey girl cat, my own private predator, was happily stoned on cat nip when I came home, making the make-up game all too easy.

Never mind that the conference I was at was a total success, and the two major campaigns I've been working on have had great breakthroughs in the last week, my supervisor was just miserable. I was clearly working on her last nerve, being as happy as I was. Buying a bunch of Russian duck calls at a hunting store (just wait until my family gets these for Christmas-- I hope they know what to do with all the Russian ducks) and then trying them all out in the restaurant where we were having lunch on our last day probably snapped her last thread of control. So, she made sure to put me in my place before we all got in the van to go to the airport.

I can't help it that being in Russia makes me happy. I don't know why she- being dedicated as she is (to the point of being at a dead-run on the way to Burn Out City) to the country- was so miserable there! My two theories are that she was actually happy and she just shows her happiness by being miserable, or that she is actually a much more miserable person and this was her being happy.

So back to my amazing cat sitter, who must have taken all the liquor to the bathroom and drank while sitting on the toilet for ten days (how does one woman use up 4 rolls and a box of tissues in ten days!?). I asked her about one of the (full) bottles she drank and threw away-- a balzam that was a rare gift from a friend-- my last violin teacher, back in Novgorod, Russia-- and she simply said that if I hadn't wanted her to drink it I should have told her not to. I really do wonder if this woman has any idea that she even has a drinking problem, I mean, that she- who only eats organic and works as in the healing profession- drinks like a sailor, a Russian sailor, a Russian sailor with a particularly bad drinking problem. In ten days she drank a nearly full (not small) bottle of gin, whisky, two bottles of absinthe, a full bottle of Russian balzam, an unopened bottle of wine and bottle of champagne-- and some more alcohol she had bought herself when my stash was running low. I almost want to ask her-- what was wrong with the sherry? She only drank it half down. It was perfectly good sherry. And the sweet vermouth she hardly touched at all. If anyone is wondering, her name is Stacy Lininger, CMT, and she is a good cat sitter if you don't mind the massive number of empty liquor bottles and the broken glass in places where you walk barefoot.

Luckily I'm NOT a drinker (most of the bottles Stacy Lininger, CMT, emptied were gifts that I kept for special occasions), and I have a good pair of slippers to protect me from the glass, so this doesn't impair my ability to relax. I'm taking a sick day to regroup and think about my poor cousin Bill. He was a long-time sufferer of MS - but it's funny how the chronically ill surprise you when they die. You just think they can go on forever, since they've already survived so much. He was a few hours older than my father, and so they were childhood playmates and very fond of eachother. Bill made a lot of mistakes in his life, but as my father said, he didn't make these problems anyone else's. Well, unless you count his wife and son, but he really did try to do ok by them, as sick as he became. Rest in peace, Bill. Or, now that you have your legs and arms back, may you party very hearty and then rest in peace. Sleep very well.

Back to my time in Russia. This was an amazing trip where the organization where I work gathered leaders from 30 different important Far East/ Siberian environmental organizations (plus Greenpeace and WWF since they have programs out there) in the very deep woods near the Sea of Japan to discuss the coming year of projects and campaigns. It was the seventh such conference, and it met for about six days, a longer time than the conference had ever extended. Since the women's cabin (the damskaya obitel we called it - the convent) was up a muddy hilly trail we all had to try to stay sober, but the men really whooped it up. Some started the day with beer and ended the day hardly able to sing the sad songs and cry about the things Russians like to drunkenly cry about. But other than the partying, the working groups really gained common ground, and the new people seemed to really connect with the older members of the coalition, and the slimy WWF guy left early. A success all around.

And then there were the tigers. The area where we were-- Lazovsky reserve in the Primorye region- is one of the preserves where about 450 Siberian tigers still roam. The head organizer of the camp where we were staying was a miraculous survivor of a tiger attack - two short years ago- where he nearly lost his leg and then all but died lying in the snow for two days while they tried to organize a rescue using a private helicopter (the emergency ones could only be used at decree of the administration heads who were off drinking with some Japanese businessmen). He had a lovely singing voice. And he seemed to stay sober enough to use it. And to keep an eye out for tigers.

Now, keep in mind the fact that we ladies had to cross a couple of streams (hopping on rocks and thin planks) and climb a steep hill at night to get to our cabin. Through an unlit stretch of woods. Then we had as our protector the young shepherd Jack (Russian: "Djeck") who was on a fairly short and fairly stout chain, i.e. a nice appetizer before hitting the damskaya obitel for lunch.

Also keep in mind that the young men running the place were unable to design the cabin to make sure heat circulated to the upstairs room. The men apparently don't need heat. So the ladies upstairs in the obitel were freezing the first few nights until they got loud enough to get the men to stoke the fire in the bottom floor early enough and hot enough to * heat the bricks that made up one part of one wall in their room *. That was all they had for heat. So, that done, the ladies (including me) on the bottom floor had to leave ALL the doors and ALL the windows as WIDE open as possible ALL night in order to breathe let alone fitfully sleep. So, warm sweaty ladies in a blanket, all ready for the evening tiger buffet. One had to just not think about it. Some of us simply didn't go to the outhouse after dark. I relied on my good luck, and managed to see more stars in one sky than modern humans almost ever see. I liked to imagine the tigers were too distracted by the brightness of the stars, making up tiger constellations, to pay attention to the little fleshy lady-niblets running around.

Then there was the banya. The banya. Ah the banya. It was three days old and the sap was still seeping out of the fresh pine boards. The men built it specifically for us. Such gentlemen. I've never bathed in a three-day-old banya-- the pine scent mixing with the birch switches (used to slough off old skin) will be with me for a while. Then there is the matter of handsome Sergei the tiger-mauling-survivor taking one of our handsomest Slavic beauties into the banya one afternoon for a little R&R. It honestly made the banya seem more magic-- like a healing house and a bathing house and a pleasure house all at once. A place of solace in a terribly broad swath of taiga.

One late afternoon we went to the beach. It was our last evening out in the taiga by the Sea of Japan. We saw the fog rolling in just like it does here in California. Just like a Californian I jumped into the surf. The beach was soft with small pebbles and the undertow was like a big paw pulling me down-- I had to call out to get pulled out by my arms. Not long after I'd recovered, someone cried out and we all grabbed our digital cameras and came running. Tiger tracks. The tracks couldn't have been more than a matter of hours old. A set of just-as-fresh wild goat tracks were next to the tiger's. After that I kept one eye on the ferocious undertow in the deep bay to my one side and the other eye on the steep forested hill on my other side... at that point some ladies just went and waited in the cars. One particularly drunken activist man-- from Chukotka, that Russian side of the Bering land bridge-- went and taunted the surf by trying to stand in the waves. I just found a rocky perch and amused myself wondering how we could get him out if he finally went under. He went down on his knees with almost every wave but he never got tired of the game. So it is with our activists, and why they might just succeed in protecting that good water and those wild tigers...