Left turn: next right

If you ever drive in New Jersey, remember this: if you want to turn left off of a major road, you must make a right turn. It's driving me crazy. All left turns on these streets are like freeway exits, so you have to make a right turn and loop around to the street you want to turn onto. Also, you can't turn left when there's not an intersection, so if your destination is on the left side of the road, you have to drive past it, turn right, loop around, make a left turn back onto the street you were just on in the direction you just came from, and then proceed to your destination. What is wrong with New Jersey?

I guess they make it up by not making you pump your own gas.

So my first consortium this week. It's great. Fifteen schools in the Red Bank area (about an hour south of NYC) in New Jersey get together, work out a college fair schedule all on their own, and all you have to do is show up. You get to meet more kids than a regular presentation and also you get to socialize with the other counselors.

The problem with that, however, is if you end up being, due to the alphabet, next to a really annoying counselor, you're stuck with them all week. The two counselors to the left of me have been great, but to the right of me has been an older (looks like late 50s) counselor who talks a lot and really doesn't seem to understand that what he says could be offensive. Very offensive. He's well intentioned - knowing I'm a rookie he's been giving me road tips - but still, can get annoying and uncomfortable - and racist. A few examples:

Today, my talking about living in California led to talk about Schwarzenegger, then Reagan, then Bush. This guy is as rabid of a Democrat as I am, but didn't seem to think that talking about politics might not be appropriate when trying to recruit students.

Consistently referring to some schools as "black schools." For example, saying that a school used to be good but now it has gone downhill since it has become a "black school" in a "black area." What he's trying to say, I think, is that the areas have become poorer, and generally consisting of more minorities, and thus the schools have become poorer. But how he says it just comes out as ignorant and racist.

At one of the "black schools," saying after a, shall we say, "well-endowed" and curvaceous young woman: "she's got a body."

When talking about Boston, saying it is a great city because they've kept the blacks in certain parts of the city, thus making the other areas safe to walk around it.

So needless to say, the next three days of standing next to this guy are going to be not fun at all.

After the fairs today went down to the beach for a while before it got too cold. It was the first time I had really been to the Atlantic Ocean. So I guess it's kind of cool that I've been to both oceans now. It was very nice - to the north you could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and to the south the shore disappeared in the distance. It was good to get out and see it, if not just to get out of the hotel room.

After getting my beach fix, I turned right and headed left, back to my hotel.

First travel trip almost over

Tonight is my last night in Pittsburgh. I actually enjoyed my stay in the city quite a bit. Pittsburgh I think gets kind of a bum rap (kind of like New Jersey) but it's for the most part a nice city. It's extremely scenic, because it's so hilly (almost as much as San Francisco!). I did my one touristy thing today and went up the Duquesne Incline - technically a public transit method - which is a cable car that scales Mt. Washington and gives an amazing panoramic view of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monogahela Rivers, the "Golden Triangle" downtown at the covergence of the Three Rivers, the sports comlexes along the rivers, and the hills all around the city. I'll post a picture once I get home and can upload one.

Some interesting things about Pittsburgh: 1) despite the amazing amount of bridges and tunnels, there are no tolls to cross any of them (what a thought!); 2) it is the worst city I've ever driven in (yes, worse than New York) because there is no rhyme or reason to the streets, the lights are horribly timed, and there are few if any directional signs; 3) driving is further complicated by the fact that freeway onramps have stop signs, so you have to come to a complete stop before merging onto the freeway; 4) it gets very foggy in the mornings here; 5) there is construction on basically every road.

So what did I do today? Woke up at the crack of dawn to drive to a high school about 15 miles north of the city for a presentation, then a second high school about 15 miles east of the city, and then a third school about 15 miles northwest of the city (well-planned, I know). Despite my anxieties, the presentations went well, except for the last school, at which no one showed up. Tomorrow I have two more schools to visit, and then the long, long drive home.

At dinner tonight (TGI Friday's) I was listening to a conversation between the bartender and another person about Islam and the war on terror, etc. The bartender just kept saying things like "they want to kill you and your family and so we need to just blow them up before they blow us up or we won't win." It just blew me away how uninformed he was. If I was less disiplined maybe I would have cut in and said something like:

"You can't win. You can't win the war on terror. That's not the point. It's not meant to be won, it's meant to be perpetuated so that we'll spend more money on defense. There will always be people who hate us, and there will always be people who want to destroy us. That comes with being the most powerful nation in the world. But don't say that they hate us because they hate our freedom because that's not the case. They have wants and needs and desires and we better figure them out soon because right now we're not making any new friends by blowing up their poorest countries. We can't win, so we can either keep killing civillians in Iraq and Afghanistan, or we can start working to alleviate some of the problems that cause terrorism so that terrorist is less attractive to a young, rebellious 18-year-old Musilm man."

Do you ever get the feeling that you're just more clued in than almost everyone around you? That's how I feel these days.

Five years later

It's been five years since our world changed.  Being in New York on the anniversary of September 11th is sobering, indeed.  But no, I'm not going to wax poetic with tributes to those who lost their lives that day, or resolutely declare my resolve as an American.  There will be plenty of that today.  Besides, I think that lost in all of the patriotism, ceremony and refrains of "God Bless America" is a real examination of what happened that day, why it happened, and how we've responded to it.

 

We were attacked.  We were told we were attacked by people who "hate freedom" and "despise our way of life."  We retaliated.  We were inundated with the idea that America could do no wrong.  What could we have possibly done to deserve this?  Why would anyone hate us?

 

Those who tried to examine this issue were accused of saying that 9/11 was America's fault.  How could it be our fault, they responded angrily.  We are America, and we are always right.  Instead of a true look into the causes of this tragedy (as all events in history occur in a sequence of cause and effect) we were told simply that we were in a battle of good vs. evil, and don't you dare question who is good and who is evil.

 

No where in the "debate" did anyone mention the 1953 covert action by the United States in Iran that removed a democratically-elected Prime Minister and placed the pro-U.S. Shah in power, adding to the anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East.  No where in the "debate" was it mentioned that Osama bin Laden and his Mujahideen Army was armed and trained by the United States just 20 years prior, during the Soviet-Afghanistan War.  No where was it mentioned the constant presence of U.S. troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

 

It's amazing what 20 years can do.  We armed bin Laden in the 1980s because he was fighting the "evil" Soviets.  We gave no thought of the consequences of those actions, or how our perception of who was “evil” would change.  But that's how the United States operates.  We police the world, engaging in conflicts here and there, bombing to the Stone Age the occasional tropical island or third-world country to flex our muscles, never thinking about what might actually happen to us as a result of those actions.

 

I am by no means excusing the actions of the terrorists on 9/11.  Innocent civilians did not deserve to die that day, especially not as an indirect result of actions unknown to them taken by their government.  But to say that the action was unprovoked is not entirely true.  September 11^th was part of a chain of events stretching back to the mid-twentieth century and before, a chain that continues today.  Again, cause and effect.  In fact, it is critical that we understand why we were attacked, because if we do not accept our enemy as real human beings with wants and desires, some legitimate and some not, we will not defeat him.

 

President Bush has said repeatedly - to defend his administrations actions since 9/11 - that "America has learned the lessons of September the 11th.  I don't think he could be more wrong.  I think the main lesson of September the 11th is that we live in a world that is not content to exist in the shadow of American economic, cultural and military imperialism.  The jubilant celebrations in the streets that took place across the Middle East on 9/11 are examples of this.  They were an indication that bin Laden was not just an anomaly, that there were millions of others who also were happy to see us attacked.  The lesson is that if we continue to ignore what the other 5.7 billion people in the world want, we will suffer greatly.

 

President Bush and his cabinet of neo-conservatives, bent on a world dominated by American interests, have ignored that lesson.  They ignored it first by bringing down the military might of the world's strongest nation against its weakest, Afghanistan.  Then, with Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains, they removed our troops from that country to begin their next campaign, against Iraq.  Is Iran next?  When will it stop?

 

President Bush today claimed that we are in a struggle akin to the cold war.  Again, he could not be more wrong.  The cold war was not only a struggle between two nations, but a struggle in which both sides exercised restraint, understanding that too much force would destroy them both.  Today's conflict against terrorists is not a conflict against a nation, yet it is being fought as one.  And it is certainly being fought without restraint.  It is also being fought without any real thought to cause and effect.

 

I fear that if we continue along this path, another 9/11 may soon be on the way.

 

P.S. – Interesting story by one of my favorite Newsweek columnists, Jonathan Alter: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14753927/site/newsweek/

Travel planning (almost) done

Fridays are wonderful, especially after a short week. My travel schedule is 99% done, and I've sent all the confirmation letters out. What a big relief. Now I just need to figure out how to send something out to all the students at all of the schools to let them know I'm coming, which apparently isn't done here. I'm determined to create a process for it if there isn't already. Yay ambition.

New employee orientation (followed by wine social) in about 20 minutes, then weekend. Don't know what I'm up to tonight, but some more work clothes shopping tomorrow afternoon and then hopefully drinks with Jenna and Chris.

Met my future new roomate Stephen last night too, which was awesome. He, my roomate/landlord Markus, Markus's fiance and I went to a great little restaurant down the street and got to know each other. The guy is just out of college and landed a part as a swing in the Broadway revival of Les Miz. Pretty sweet. Anyways, we're going to a Yankees game next week which I'm pretty jazzed about too.

Four days until my first MC college fair, and 9 days until the drive out to Pittsburgh that will officially start my travel.

Labor Dabor

I've always found it interesting that while the rest of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1st, we celebrate it at the end of the summer. May 1st in many other countries, mostly in Europe, is always a day for the workers. I guess we were too worried that celebrating the worker with the rest of the world would make us too "communist," so we put our Labor Day at the end of the year where, instead of celebrating the worker, we celebrate the capitalist by going shopping one more time during the summer. It's amazing how much of our modern culture is dictated by reaction to the supposed communist threat in the 50s and 60s (see: Pledge of Allegiance).

Anyways, I did have a good Labor Dabor. Woke up and moseyed (sp?) down to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue to get a case for my new iPod. The store is really cool. It's right at the border of Central Park and the Upper East Side, so it's in the midst of all these old, ornate hotels and residences. Except the Apple Store (at least at the surface) is just a big, crystal clear glass box. It just looks really cool aside all the other buildings. But all the "box" has inside are stairs to the lower level, which has the actual store that sprawls out underground. Very cool.

Oh, and Saturday I bought a very slick suit at Men's Wearhouse. I look pretty dashing in it I must say. It will be ready for pickup just in time for me to start traveling.

Anyways, back to Sunday: after the Apple Store I came home and had some lunch before heading out to New Jersey to Daryn and Kathy's place. They had a few neighbors and friends over and Daryn made a ton of food (although my margaritas were a hit). Since Daryn was trained as a chef in his younger days, it goes without saying that dinner was very, very good. It was also good to see them and of course my cousins Hailei and Lindsey again.

The only thing worse than having to come back to work after a three day weekend is having to come back to work after a three day weekend when no one makes coffee. It was literally a scene out of "Dilbert" or "The Office" in that the person who normally makes the coffee was out today, so no one made it. We all just complained about it. At least I can say I'm new and I don't know how they make the coffee there. But regardless, it was a long morning before I became frustrated (and got a headache) trying to schedule more and more high school visits. My first college fair is in a week and I'm no where close to finishing up my schedule.

Another three-day weekend, anyone? Rise up, proletariat....