Forever A Fangirl

Flying Over The Hawaiian Islands/Deserted Hotel, Poipu Kauai

Going to the 50th state is not a cheap vacation in a couple ways but it can be made affordable and if you are like my spouse and me--many of the things we enjoy(ed) most are free. Open air markets--got a lovely pair of freshwater pearl earrings and a nifty cow-bone (stays cool) pipe. The market had artisans and their families and they were of all backgrounds from native Hawaiian to Chinese to Caucasian. A lovely young Chinese-Hawai'ian lady (spouse is well-versed in Chinese culture and knew instantly that this gal was of non-mixed blood--she was a bit taken aback then rather flattered that a tourist cared enough to comment) took a great deal of times explaining what the carved totems on the guy's necklaces symbolize--plus she explained about the cow bone pipe. We actually kissed goodbye. We just loved the non-touristy aspect of the island--gabbing with the locals--having some out of this world meals at a fraction of the cost of the upscale-type joints--which do abound near the pricey resorts. We really dig snorkeling and it is sublime in Kauai where all beaches, as in the rest of Hawai'i are open for anyone to make use of.
Beaches are the cleanest I've ever seen-- with not even natural detritus like seaweed and such--and different depending where you go--black sand, white sand, golden-- some shores "littered" with coral for shell hunters (weren't very many shells--but we didn't get up at 6am to going looking as we were advised).
Things we didn't have time or fundage to do this time that we will do next--kayaking--there's loads of nooks and crannies on the island that can only be enjoyed from the water. Kayak rental can be as low as $10 a day. Hiking--tons of trails from the beginner to advanced leads you to some very private, beautiful spots. I'm not fond of helicopters but everyone says that one must take a tour of some of the 70% of the isle which is unihabited. It's really pricey (like $120 apiece) and this time, since we dropped $500 for the plane fare/hotel to O'ahu for the day and night we went over to see our son perform at the cultural center--that was our splurge and it was worth it to see the show. I couldn't wait to get out of O'ahu though--traffic--just like any American city--tons of upscale shopping--crappy snorkeling--ergh. I found out quickly why the natives of Kauai call O'ahu "Pearl Harbor." In fairness, O'ahu serves it's purpose as an air hub in the Pacific and it looks like their are some cool places if you go looking. The difference in Kauai is you don't have to go looking for cool places--it's right there (being only 30 miles across).
Biggest way to save money when going to Hawai'i say the locals is to go in the off season--November to March--when everything is 40% less. You could even camp by the ocean for $5 a night instead of using a hotel/condo. The car rental rates are literally the lowest in the nation--gas cost was exactly the same as here on O'ahu--about 25 cents more a gallon on Kauai. So yeah it is expensive to buy property there and the airfare is pricey. You can get around everything else.

Both my spouse and I fell in love with Kauai and will most definitely return--hopefully sooner than later as we really want to see Maui and Molokai islands, too.

I'm pretty hard-headed about the you only live once rule. As I (we) did this time I'll (we'll) work my (our) tush off just to be able to go again. It'll happen--just gonna take a bit of time.    

First approach over the Hawaiian Islands (click all photos to expand)

Getting closer...

Well maybe not--onward to the next isle...

I think this is Molokai...

And if it is, this is too...

\
...as is this.

Oahu or Maui

Lihue Airport landing--finally!!!

Directly next door to the condo complex we stayed at--the beach area of an abandoned hotel.

Wonder what happened and how beach front real estate of this value can sit there without someone coming in and making a go of it like the hotels/condos on either side of it.
Very puzzling both this and the proportionally high number of shuttered, mostly cinder-block-type homes on the island of Kauai.

Still Photoblogging: the Happy Couple On Kauai

Most photos here are with the 2.1 pixel, 3X optical zoom Cool Pix 775 (in this rather crude pixelated format, it's not a large leap in picture quality between it and the Nikon D-70). This is the first time we used it after it's humble beginnings in a thrift shop. I'm satisfied with the results but then I've liked the results with all the Nikon/Nikkor lenses that I've used.

 

Another canyon shot, Kauai

On the Kauai Coastline

North shore, Kauai
A sunset described as "buttery" in the travel book.

Near Barking Sands Missile Range, North shore, Kauai~

Spouse, in pusuit of the elusive sunset. It's behind 'ya, hun.

There 'ya go. ;)

I just liked the way this rock formation looked.
It has an ancient, almost regal vibe.

Temporary (or not) Photoblog

Falls near Waimea Canyon, Western Kauai, Hawai'i
(Click photos for expanded view)

View from the 15th floor of the Pacific Ocean Hotel.
This is the east side of the city part of the Waikiki strip. The public beach begins right here--just outside the pic to the left (though legally ALL beaches in Hawai'i are public.)

Similar shot to above, different time. It's Ala Moana (Ave., I think) next to Waikiki beach from the 15th floor of the Pacific Ocean Hotel, late afternoon.

The youngest girl from a whole family of hula dancers. She was fantastic and they as a group were great--super-entertaining. My son's and 9 other children's choruses are in the background in teal-coloured shirts.
This was a stealth photo taken at the end of the show when the performers reentered and were bowing--and I got nabbed by a grumpy lady. Hello? The show's over--they're smiling and bowing and the audience is clapping enthusiastically. A few flashs are kinda expected especially when a parent/person has traveled 5000 miles to see the show. But they let me go. :/
Still unsteady with the tele-lens, especially under these circumstances.

I'm excited about several of these photos and the ones that are following because it was my very first time shooting with a tele-lens for my new-ish Nikon D-70. And hey, I was visiting Hawai'i for the very first time, too! I finally made it! Almost as exciting as my first trip to Disneyland at age 19.
 
I packed a tripod but dumb me never had it with me. I tried to use "natural" tripods like the railing in the case of the shots from the 15th floor-balcony (which all my O'ahu-Waikiki shots are from). I never had the $ before to own a telephoto lens so many of the shots are crap :DELETE:. Heh. I've gotten used to throwing away 80% of what I do.

~I wanted to say, unless captioned as such, all the photos are au naturel in that all I did was what a decent film developer would do--fix the brightness/contrast-type stuff. Most of the pics from Kauai a/k/a heaven on earth, are under cloudy to semi-dark conditions   mostly because we were trying to get shots of sunsets and everytime  clouds came in  but Kauai is almost universally (all 30% of the island that is/can be inhabited) beautiful so clouds or not, some good shots, on land and out to the beautiful huge Paciifc Ocean. Possibly quite a few more on my spouse's camera (about 400-plus taken--mostly by my spouse but maybe 100 by me). We must buy a stick that fits to be able DL the photos (it's an adoptee from the resale shop --a nifty Nikon coolpix 775. Only 2.1 pixles but a nice optical zoom lens. It's only costing me (beyond the $5 I paid for it initially) for accessories. 

~~Also, unless I'm in love with a photo, I've hacked the pixels way down using a Jasc program to save storage space.

Near the Na Poli Coast, Kauai

'Anini Beach on the North Shore of Kauai--very good snorkeling here in July.

There was no "sun" in all the Hawaiian sunsets on Kauai this past week.
You know, the glowing orange disc one sees in both moving and still pictures of Hawai'i?

Not in Waikiki either, during the one night we stayed at the Pacific Beach Hotel on the 15th floor overlooking the Pacific (the place with the built-in house-size aquarium to eat breakfast by.)  :) Clouds came in each night just before (what seemed to us) the very-early-for-July sinking of the sun (7:30 p.m. Pacific). As my husband rightly pointed out however, the sky was still quite pretty as these unaltered photographs of mine show.
 
Anyway no sunsets--though we put in our best effort every night but one, it was kind of a running joke with us.
We still both fell hopelessly in love with Kauai.
O'ahu had the big-hotels on the the strip of sandy beach vibe--plus lots of surfers of course, but OMG the traffic sucked.

And a week definitely isn't long enough, though we got a pretty good start.
Next trip: Maui & Kauai.   :)   

Between Barking Sands (Missle Range :gulp:) and the outskirts of the Na Poli coastline (no-highway zone) area on northern Kauai, Hawai'i.

This scandal didn't begin, as Watergate did, simply with dirty tricks and spying on the political opposition. It began with the sending of American men and women to war in Iraq.

<<<<-------Agreed------->>>>>

We're Not in Watergate Anymore

 

By FRANK RICH

   

WHEN John Dean published his book "Worse Than Watergate" in the spring of 2004, it seemed rank hyperbole: an election-year screed and yet another attempt by a Nixon alumnus to downgrade Watergate crimes by unearthing worse "gates" thereafter. But it's hard to be dismissive now that my colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.

To start to see why, forget all the legalistic chatter about shield laws and turn instead to "The Secret Man," Bob Woodward's new memoir about life with Deep Throat. The book arrived in stores just as Judy Miller was jailed, as if by divine intervention to help illuminate her case.

Should a journalist protect a sleazy, possibly even criminal, source? Yes, sometimes, if the public is to get news of wrongdoing. Mark Felt was a turncoat with alternately impenetrable and self-interested motives who betrayed the F.B.I. and, in Mr. Woodward's words, "lied to his colleagues, friends and even his family." (Mr. Felt even lied in his own 1979 memoir.) Should a journalist break a promise of confidentiality after, let alone before, the story is over? "It is critical that confidential sources feel they would be protected for life," Mr. Woodward writes. "There needed to be a model out there where people could come forward or speak when contacted, knowing they would be protected. It was a matter of my work, a matter of honor."

That honorable model, which has now been demolished at Time, was a given in what seems like the halcyon Watergate era of "The Secret Man." Mr. Woodward and Carl Bernstein had confidence that The Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Graham, and editor, Ben Bradlee, would back them to the hilt, even though the Nixon White House demonized their reporting as inaccurate (as did some journalistic competitors) and threatened the licenses of television stations owned by the Post Company.

At Time, Norman Pearlstine - a member of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists, no less - described his decision to turn over Matt Cooper's files to the feds as his own, made on the merits and without consulting any higher-ups at Time Warner. That's no doubt the truth, but a corporate mentality needn't be imposed by direct fiat; it's a virus that metastasizes in the bureaucratic bloodstream. I doubt anyone at Time Warner ever orders an editor to promote a schlocky Warner Brothers movie either. (Entertainment Weekly did two covers in one month on "The Matrix Reloaded.")

Time Warner seems to have far too much money on the table in Washington to exercise absolute editorial freedom when covering the government; at this moment it's awaiting an F.C.C. review of its joint acquisition (with Comcast) of the bankrupt cable company Adelphia. "Is this a journalistic company or an entertainment company?" David Halberstam asked after the Pearlstine decision. We have the answer now. What high-level source would risk talking to Time about governmental corruption after this cave-in? What top investigative reporter would choose to work there?

But the most important difference between the Bush and Nixon eras has less to do with the press than with the grave origins of the particular case that has sent Judy Miller to jail. This scandal didn't begin, as Watergate did, simply with dirty tricks and spying on the political opposition. It began with the sending of American men and women to war in Iraq.

Specifically, it began with the former ambassador Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003, account on the Times Op-Ed page (and in concurrent broadcast appearances) of his 2002 C.I.A. mission to Africa to determine whether Saddam Hussein had struck a deal in Niger for uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons. Mr. Wilson concluded that there was no such deal, as my colleague Nicholas Kristof reported, without divulging Mr. Wilson's name, that spring. But the envoy's dramatic Op-Ed piece got everyone's attention: a government insider with firsthand knowledge had stepped out of the shadows of anonymity to expose the administration's game authoritatively on the record. He had made palpable what Bush critics increasingly suspected, writing that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Up until that point, the White House had consistently stuck by the 16 incendiary words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The administration had ignored all reports, not just Mr. Wilson's, that this information might well be bogus. But it still didn't retract Mr. Bush's fiction some five weeks after the State of the Union, when Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced that the uranium claim was based on fake documents. Instead, we marched on to war in Iraq days later. It was not until Mr. Wilson's public recounting of his African mission more than five months after the State of the Union that George Tenet at long last released a hasty statement (on a Friday evening, just after the Wilson Op-Ed piece) conceding that "these 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."

The Niger uranium was hardly the only dubious evidence testifying to Saddam's supposed nuclear threat in the run-up to war. Judy Miller herself was one of two reporters responsible for a notoriously credulous front-page Times story about aluminum tubes that enabled the administration's propaganda campaign to trump up Saddam's W.M.D. arsenal. But red-hot uranium was sexy, and it was Mr. Wilson's flat refutation of it that drove administration officials to seek their revenge: they told the columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson had secured his (nonpaying) African mission through the nepotistic intervention of his wife, a covert C.I.A. officer whom they outed by name. The pettiness of this retribution shows just how successfully Mr. Wilson hit the administration's jugular: his revelation threatened the legitimacy of the war on which both the president's reputation and re-election campaign had been staked.

This was another variation on a Watergate theme. Charles Colson's hit men broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, seeking information to smear Mr. Ellsberg after he leaked the Pentagon Papers, the classified history of the Vietnam War, to The Times. But there was even greater incentive to smear Mr. Wilson than Mr. Ellsberg. Nixon compounded the Vietnam War but didn't start it. The war in Iraq, by contrast, is Mr. Bush's invention.

Again following the Watergate template, the Bush administration at first tried to bury the whole Wilson affair by investigating itself. Even when The Washington Post reported two months after Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed that "two top White House officials" had called at least six reporters, not just Mr. Novak, to destroy Mr. Wilson and his wife, the inquiry was kept safely within the John Ashcroft Justice Department, with the attorney general, according to a Times report, being briefed regularly on details of the investigation. If that rings a Watergate bell now, that's because on Thursday you may have read the obituary of L. Patrick Gray, Mark Felt's F.B.I. boss, who, in a similarly cozy conflict of interest, kept the Nixon White House abreast of the supposedly independent Watergate inquiry in its early going.

Why Do You Work So Hard?

This column really spoke to me; I don't know if Morford wrote it today--in the aftermath of the London bombings--as a sort of "seize the day" (as he does) essay, or whether he is aching for the kind of attitude that allows a person to say "I can pursue a different path in life than most people and it's okay," but I agree with almost every word.

I agree because I have been working really, really way too hard for months (so has my spouse)...to able to seize the day. To travel one day behind my son to Hawai'i. He goes to Maui on Tuesday, us to Kauai/Maui on Wednesday.
Once there, at one point we'll fly from Kauai to take him out with us after viewing one of his concert choir performances. It'll be dinner time and we're thinking a luau and since we'll be in Honolulu, the shopping mecca, maybe we can scout out a place that sells books and buy Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince for the long plane trip home.

Other than one other "free" day with our son that should start with snorkeling and end up on a volcano, my spouse and I will be on our honeymoon.

Cheers!

--Cyn

 

Why Do You Work So Hard?
        Is it maybe time to quit your safe job and follow your path and infuriate the establishment?

By Mark Morford
SF Gate Columnist
Friday, July 8, 2005

There remains this enormous and wicked sociocultural myth. It is this: Hard work is all there is.

Work hard and the world respects you. Work hard and you can have anything you want. Work really extra super hard and do nothing else but work and ignore your family and spend 14 hours a day at the office and make 300 grand a year that you never have time to spend, sublimate your soul to the corporate machine and enjoy a profound drinking problem and sporadic impotence and a nice 8BR mini-mansion you never spend any time in, and you and your shiny BMW 740i will get into heaven.

This is the American Puritan work ethos, still alive and screaming and sucking the world dry. Work is the answer. Work is also the question. Work is the one thing really worth doing and if you're not working you're either a slacker or a leech, unless you're a victim of BushCo's budget-reamed America and you've been laid off, and therefore it's OK because that means you're out there every day pounding the pavement looking for work and honing your resume and if you're not, well, what the hell is wrong with you?

Call it "the cafe question." Any given weekday you can stroll by any given coffee shop in the city and see dozens of people milling about, casually sipping and eating and reading and it's freakin' noon on a Tuesday and you're like, wait, don't these people work? Don't they have jobs? They can't all be students and trust-fund babies and cocktail waitresses and drummers in struggling rock bands who live at home with their moms.

Of course, they're not. Not all of them, anyway. Some are creative types. Some are corporate rejects. Some are recovering cube slaves now dedicated full time to working on their paintings. Some are world travelers who left their well-paying gigs months ago to cruise around Vietnam on a motorcycle before returning to start an import-export business in rare hookahs. And we look at them and go, What is wrong with these people?

It's a bitter duality: We scowl at those who decide to chuck it all and who choose to explore something radical and new and independent, something more attuned with their passions, even as we secretly envy them and even as our inner voices scream and applaud and throw confetti.

Our culture allows almost no room for creative breaks. There is little tolerance for seeking out a different kind of "work" that doesn't somehow involve cubicles and widening butts and sour middle managers monitoring your e-mail and checking your Web site logs to see if you've wasted a precious 37 seconds of company time browsing blowfish.com or reading up on the gay marriage apocalypse.

We are at once infuriated by and enamored with the idea that some people can just up and quit their jobs or take a leave of absence or take out a loan to go back to school, how they can give up certain "mandatory" lifestyle accoutrements in order to dive back into some seemingly random creative/emotional/spiritual endeavor that has nothing to do with paying taxes or the buying of products or the boosting of the GNP. It just seems so ... un-American. But it is so, so needed.

Case in point No. 1: I have this sister. She is deep in medical school right now, studying to be a naturopathic doctor at Bastyr University just outside Seattle, the toughest school of its kind in the nation, and the most difficult to get into, especially if you've had no formal medical training beforehand, as my sister hadn't.

She got in. She bucked all expectation and thwarted the temptation to quit and take a well-paying corporate job and she endured the incredibly brutal first year and rose to the top of her class. Oh and by the way, she did it all when she was over 40. With almost no money. While going through an ugly, debt-ridden divorce.

Oh you're so lucky that you have the means to do that, we think. I'd love to do that but I can't because I have too many a) bills b) babies c) doubts, we insist. We always think such lives are for others and never for ourselves, something people with huge chunks of cash reserves or huge hunks of time or huge gobs of wildly ambitious talent can do. It is never for us.

And truly, this mind-set is the national plague, a fate worse than death.

My heartfelt condolences...

I didn't know about the London bombing until this morning as I'd only read the morning edition of the NYTimes yesterday and have had my nose to grindstone working pretty much since. Until this morning. The Chicago Tribune is delivered here each day and spouse kindly brings it in and places it on the kitchen table ready for me to read (when I have the time) with my morning coffee.

The headlines screamed of the London bombing; a photo -- one I suspect is being run again and again to illustrate the awfulness of it-- ran nearly the full length of the front page. A shoeless, blood-spattered woman, one leg bare, the other with shreds of her nylons dangling, her face entirely covered by a gauze-looking mask, and a man, devoid of injury it appeared, with his arms wrapped round her shoulders leading her away from the area.

The British--Londoners especially, have many times set examples of courage in the face of adversity. I have no doubt even with this atrocity cast upon them that they'll do so again.

Need is the shield that keeps fear of attack at bay

July 8, 2005
(Column by Mary Schmich)

I went down into Chicago's subway Thursday sniffing for fear.

On the radio at home, fear had felt as acrid and palpable as smoke. London. Morning rush hour. Bombs in the subway, on a double-decker bus. The radio seethed with death, injury, fury, theory, terror.

Then in the midst of the urgency, after vowing to keep monitoring developments in London, the radio announcer promised some local news: Chicago's best lunch carts.

Life, as they say, goes on.

It was a little after 11 a.m. when I hip-bumped through the turnstile at the North and Clybourn station. I didn't see a single cop. The CTA attendant sat in her box leafing through a magazine that appeared to be O, a place in which life's greatest terrors are clutter and low self-esteem.

I sniffed my way down the stairs and onto a Red Line train. I sensed no fear. The car squealed along with its usual crowd of headphones, daypacks, thousand-yard stares and chins bouncing off the chests of dozers.

In other words, these appeared to be just regular Chicago riders in their own private worlds, minds adrift far from both London and Chicago.

If you press people, of course, they'll admit to wondering what we all wonder when something awful happens somewhere else: Could it happen here? We may feel rage and sorrow for other people--for Londoners--but it's for ourselves that we feel fear.

So could it happen here? Sure it could. But on the CTA on Thursday, riders understood that you can't live paralyzed by possibilities.

At the Grand Avenue stop, I asked Tracy Gooley, a security guard, whether people seemed nervous. She shook her head. No.

At the Chicago Avenue station, I noticed two police officers, looking aimless, but more conspicuous than usual. I asked Adele Ware, a visitor from Australia, whether the bombings or the cops made her nervous. She shook her head.

"I thought, poor buggers," she said, referring to the subway cops, "they got the short stick today."

I'd bet most riders were less worried about bombs than issues broadcast on the placards above the seats: Job training. Depression screening. Free checking. Kids falling out of windows.

That's not to say London's bombings didn't spark some worry in Chicago's underground.

"I thought twice," said Donna McCourt of Chicago, who got on the train anyway.

That remains the nature of terror in Chicago--a second thought that doesn't stop you.

Who knows, under the ongoing rat-a-tat-tat of London's news, Chicagoans might become a little more afraid. For a little while.

Fear has its own chemistry. It's a shifting compound of irrationality and practicality, timing, experience and media exposure.

From the news media we learn whether "we" are scared or not, and whether the government thinks we should be. From the media, we get replays of the London horror: A shredded double-decker bus. A victim in a ghoulish white mask. The quavering voices of the witnesses.

All of it combines to scare us. Or to numb us.

We continue to be lucky in Chicago that no matter how connected everywhere is to everywhere else now, the terror you can touch and smell has happened somewhere else. Psychologically, too, geography is on our side. The closer you are geographically--or culturally--to the terrible event, the more it scares you.

That's why--or so I've deduced from conversations--people in Chicago felt the Sept. 11 New York attacks less acutely than New Yorkers, but more acutely than West Coasters.

And one reason New Yorkers are apt to feel these London attacks more personally than we do here.

"We definitely feel vulnerable," e-mailed a New York friend on Thursday. "It's scary. I feel trapped, i.e., you've got to take the damn subway and that's all there is to it."

Londoners will be back in their subway soon too. Here, there and everywhere, it's a fact of life, even in a terrorist age: Need trumps fear.

       

   Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune    

The Road Time Magazine Has Chosen

My first thought after hearing about this story on the radio was that it's chilling to contemplate the road that Time magazine has chosen. Ironically or perhaps just coincidentally, the reporter uses a quote in the last sentence of the article that makes mention of just that thought.
I hope the reporter's use of the quote was supposed to invoke a shake of the head by the reader. In the quote the Time Mag guy says he (doesn't)" know how broad a chilling effect," his action of caving to the US gov't--handing over supposedly protected names and paperwork--will be.

It is the early 70's all over again...not a good time to be an American then, not now. --Cyn

http://tinyurl.com/c87xp

July 1, 2005

Time Inc. to Yield Files on Sources, Relenting to U.S.

 

    By ADAM LIPTAK

With one of its reporters facing an imminent jail sentence, Time magazine said yesterday that it would provide documents concerning the reporter's confidential sources to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame.

The magazine's decision to give in to the demands of federal prosecutors followed the Supreme Court's decision on Monday to reject appeals by the magazine and its reporter, Matthew Cooper, as well as a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller.

The reporters could be sent to jail as early as Wednesday, but a Time executive said he hoped Time's action would spare Mr. Cooper.

In an interview, Norman Pearlstine, Time Inc.'s editor in chief, said he had made the decision after much reflection. "I found myself really coming to the conclusion," Mr. Pearlstine said, "that once the Supreme Court has spoken in a case involving national security and a grand jury, we are not above the law and we have to behave the way ordinary citizens do." [Page A14.]

The case represents the starkest confrontation between the press and the government since 1971, when the Supreme Court refused to stop The Times and The Washington Post from publishing a classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers. And legal experts said yesterday that they knew of no other instance in modern journalistic history in which a major news organization announced that it would disclose the identities of its confidential sources in response to a government subpoena.

The press has traditionally argued that it needs to be able to protect confidential sources to ensure that the public is fully informed. Some courts have recently rejected that position outright. Other have said that the interest in the flow of information to the public in given cases was outweighed by the needs of the judicial system for evidence.

On Wednesday, Judge Thomas F. Hogan of Federal District Court in Washington said he would order the reporters jailed for up to 120 days if they did not agree to testify before the grand jury in the meantime. He also said he would impose substantial fines on the magazine.

The magazine made its decision over the objections of its reporter.

"For almost two years," Mr. Cooper said yesterday, "I've protected my confidential sources even under the threat of jail. So while I understand Time's decision to turn over papers that identify my sources, I'm obviously disappointed by what they chose."

The documents to be turned over to the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, include Mr. Cooper's notes of interviews and "the ordinary work product that is typical of the interaction that takes place between reporters and editors," Mr. Pearlstine said. He said Time had not decided how the transfer would happen but said the documents would not be made public by Time.

The move may have consequences for Mr. Cooper.

"My hope," Mr. Pearlstine said, "is that the special counsel concludes that he does not need Matt's testimony and does not need his incarceration."

It is less clear whether the magazine's decision will affect Ms. Miller, but one of her lawyers, Robert S. Bennett, said it might help her.

"I hope that Time's disclosure will eliminate the need for Judy's testimony and that this crisis can be ended," Mr. Bennett said.

Ms. Miller declined to comment yesterday, as did a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times, was critical of Time. "We are deeply disappointed by Time Inc.'s decision to deliver the subpoenaed records," Mr. Sulzberger said. "We faced similar pressures in 1978 when both our reporter Myron Farber and the Times Company were held in contempt of court for refusing to provide the names of confidential sources. Mr. Farber served 40 days in jail and we were forced to pay significant fines.

How Will You Die?

How Will You Die??
created with QuizFarm.com

Suicide 67% Gunshot 47% Natural Causes 47% Disease 40% Eaten 33% Bomb 33% Accident 27% Posion 20% Drowning 20% Suffocated 20% Disappear 0% Stabbed 0% Cut Throat 0%

Everyone wants to know, don't they?
Guess I still don't (know that is).  :D

Happy Canada Day! Happy Independence Day!

 

I feel like my life is on fast-forward. I'm barely keeping up with most of it.
I'm not a big fan of holidays--this one brings a freaked-out dog for several days due to illegal, Indiana-bought fireworks blasting off from all directions, every 15 minutes or so.

It's coolish and the windows are open and I can't say I really dig all the noise, either.  I mean it's cool on the actual holiday and maybe even the day after to finish 'em off but fireworks were going off last night. Are we celebrating Canada Day now? (It's weird enough that we both choose the same weekend this year to have our national holidays.) Somebody is stealing someone else's thunder. 

Every summer in the city we have a two week-long food-fest called Taste of Chicago--there's lots of live music and other stuff but it's mostly about consuming vast quantities. It's always very crowded and almost always very hot. And expensive. So most years my spouse and I take a pass on it, opting to spend too much money closer to home. But this year, feeling kinda bummed about not being able to any live shows whilst in the right state/country, I preused the Friday (entertainment) section of the Tribune saw that John Hiatt, who IMO put on the best live show I've ever seen (well equal to, anyway) is playing for free just across the street from the new Millennium Park--where we were trying to figure out when to go next as we dig it so much--with this nutty summer pretty well mapped out already. All this and the display of the fireworks off of Navy Pier over Lake Michigan. If we plan well enough--which I'm trying to do right now--but I'm having connectivity issues with the...connection (not sure if it's modem or router). . The day shouldn't be awful. Unfortunately a couple million other people are thinking the same thing--so it'll be a challenge to see how best to pull this off.

I have redoubled my efforts in the book-selling biz as the baby biz as great as it was, became fubar overnight due to a person I'll not make comment on other than to note that her greed brought her down. It was all fun money for me as I was always above-board and honest so never had anything to worry about. While I was at it I did let my book business just kind of float, though (I collected but didn't really post many and pulled many, "housecleaning"). For the past 6 months whilst selling all things baby--paying about half for Hawaii, and most all for the California meet-up trip (and Ontario, but in my mind since we own a place there I don't count it--the exchange is in our favour so no complaints about the cost of petrol--though I'm sure it'll seem steep on the 1500 mile round-trip).

Soooo, for the past three nights I've been writing copy for and posting books.  But I have a ton that may be collectible and I have to "chase down" info on them (they are not catagorized in a modern way using the traditional ISBN number that came to be in the US in 1974). Otherwise, I'll try to snap a few pics and throw them up on eBay--maybe--I'm kinda burned out on eBay and deeply curious what Google has up it's sleeve to counter-it in the near future.

Chris got contact lenses yesterday, came home wore them, did well. Couldn't get them in today. Confusion reigned when I offered help (I wasn't pushy--honest) and we lost one. So now we wait until Tuesday and off to the optometrist to get a spare lens. Since they are disposable (and delicate) and it's the long holiday I can't believe they didn't give him two of each...just in case. Even in this is a higher-end eye place though (it's the only place that will take our eye care semi sorta coverage from Motorola) the behind the counter people are starting to look and behave as if any moment they'll ask if we want fries with our order.
_________________

Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.

~Alan Ball

Tom Cruise: Pompous Asshat

Next Tom Cruise will be saying Shields is an unfit mother...or has he already said that?
Also no woman suffering post-partum depression should seek psychiatric treatment because he--Cruise "knows the history psychiatry" and his assessment is that the depressed new mom only needs only to get off her lazy just-finished-nine-months-of-pregnancy bum (and has graduated to the insanity of having a newborn) and pop a few vitamins. What!? Who cares what Cruise has to say? Most of his movies suck, he's a rabid scientologist, and he didn't have what it took to keep Nicole Kidman or Penelope Cruz around (loooooz-er).
I'm just waiting for the inevitable backlash....no one really liked him anyway, right? Pompous little asshat.

http://tinyurl.com/aybxm

July 1, 2005  

War of Words

 

    By BROOKE SHIELDS  

 

London

I WAS hoping it wouldn't come to this, but after Tom Cruise's interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC show "Today" last week, I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not "understand the history of psychiatry," I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression.

Postpartum depression is caused by the hormonal shifts that occur after childbirth. During pregnancy, a woman's level of estrogen and progesterone greatly increases; then, in the first 24 hours after childbirth, the amount of these hormones rapidly drops to normal, nonpregnant levels. This change in hormone levels can lead to reactions that range from restlessness and irritability to feelings of sadness and hopelessness.

I never thought I would have postpartum depression. After two years of trying to conceive and several attempts at in vitro fertilization, I thought I would be overjoyed when my daughter, Rowan Francis, was born in the spring of 2003. But instead I felt completely overwhelmed. This baby was a stranger to me. I didn't know what to do with her. I didn't feel at all joyful. I attributed feelings of doom to simple fatigue and figured that they would eventually go away. But they didn't; in fact, they got worse.

I couldn't bear the sound of Rowan crying, and I dreaded the moments my husband would bring her to me. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted to disappear. At my lowest points, I thought of swallowing a bottle of pills or jumping out the window of my apartment.

I couldn't believe it when my doctor told me that I was suffering from postpartum depression and gave me a prescription for the antidepressant Paxil. I wasn't thrilled to be taking drugs. In fact, I prematurely stopped taking them and had a relapse that almost led me to drive my car into a wall with Rowan in the backseat. But the drugs, along with weekly therapy sessions, are what saved me - and my family.

Since writing about my experiences with the disease, I have been approached by many women who have told me their stories and thanked me for opening up about a topic that is often not discussed because of fear, shame or lack of support and information. Experts estimate that one in 10 women suffer, usually in silence, with this treatable disease. We are living in an era of so-called family values, yet because almost all of the postnatal focus is on the baby, mothers are overlooked and left behind to endure what can be very dark times.

And comments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere. To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general.

If any good can come of Mr. Cruise's ridiculous rant, let's hope that it gives much-needed attention to a serious disease. Perhaps now is the time to call on doctors, particularly obstetricians and pediatricians, to screen for postpartum depression. After all, during the first three months after childbirth, you see a pediatrician at least three times. While pediatricians are trained to take care of children, it would make sense for them to talk with new mothers, ask questions and inform them of the symptoms and treatment should they show signs of postpartum depression.

In a strange way, it was comforting to me when my obstetrician told me that my feelings of extreme despair and my suicidal thoughts were directly tied to a biochemical shift in my body. Once we admit that postpartum is a serious medical condition, then the treatment becomes more available and socially acceptable. With a doctor's care, I have since tapered off the medication, but without it, I wouldn't have become the loving parent I am today.

So, there you have it. It's not the history of psychiatry, but it is my history, personal and real.

Brooke Shields, the author of "Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression," is starring in the musical "Chicago" in London.