caravia/lifestyle

Nice about the Nobelprize Saul Bellows biography, when he was Solomon Belo.

"Solomon Belo moved from Lachine, Quebec, to the Humboldt Park neighborhood when he was 9. About a decade later, shortly after publishing a short story called "The Hell It Can't" about a savage, unexplained beating, he changed his first name to Saul and his last to Bellow. If the rest isn't quite history, by now it's certainly biography.

Late in his life, Bellow reflected on spending summer nights in Humboldt Park, "on the back porch, your neighbors on their back porches all down the line, the graceless cottonwoods reaching toward you and you listened to the accordions and player pianos and harmonicas below, across the way, down the street, playing mazurkas ... One of the children was sent to the corner to bring home a pitcherful of soda pop (the druggist called it a phosphate). Over every drugstore in Chicago there swung a large mortar and pestle outlined in electric bulbs and every summer the sandflies with green light transparent wings covered the windows."

Though you get the classic Bellovian sense of motion at the end of the passage, with the children running, sandflies beating their wings against the drugstore window, the tone is calm, quiet, almost pastoral. It lacks Augie March's antic good humor, Herzog's generative sense of woundedness, Charlie Citrine's obsessing over his friend Humboldt eating a pretzel while already covered with "the dust of the grave." But it retains (to my eye and ear, at least) an essential Chicagoness -- or at least it evokes the Chicago I knew through my grandparents: a city of immigrants and first-generation Americans living close together, with an ear cocked toward the old country (accordions, mazurkas) while running toward the new (phosphates, electric bulbs)"

The homosexual singer Melisa Etheridge raises her voice against the ban to homosexual marriages. She is going to boycott the state not paying taxes. Highly effective weapon against the bigotry. Well done, Melisa!

"Okay. So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am a second class citizen. Alright then. So my wife, uh I mean, roommate? Girlfriend? Special lady friend? You are gonna have to help me here because I am not sure what to call her now. Anyways, she and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books.

Okay, cool I don't mean to get too personal here but there is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California. Oh, and I am sure Ellen will be a little excited to keep her bazillion bucks that she pays in taxes too. Wow, come to think of it, there are quite a few of us fortunate gay folks that will be having some extra cash this year. What recession? We're gay! I am sure there will be a little box on the tax forms now single, married, divorced, gay, check here if you are gay, yeah, that's not so bad. Of course all of the waiters and hairdressers and UPS workers and gym teachers and such, they won't have to pay their taxes either."

Cool idea! It's important to educate the consumers in paying some more dollars but be sure that the money is going back directly to the producers.

What everyone of us were eagerly waiting!! Such a energy saving!! :)

"Sensing a business opportunity as well as a chance to reduce the number of plastic bottles in landfills, J. Eric Barnes, a Southern California entrepreneur, set out in 2005 to develop a reusable bottle with the same cachet as single-use bottles sold by brands like Voss and SmartWater. After three years of work by RKS Design, the Kor One will be available for purchase starting Thursday. Bloggers who got an early look have been atwitter for months over innovations like the small release button that allows easy one-hand opening and closing, the hinged cap that stays open while you drink and the extra-wide mouth. While certain aspects of the product may strike some as ridiculous (the company refers to the bottle as a "personal hydration vessel" and the cap has a place for users to insert an inspirational message), its shape makes it an object of interest even if you never put anything inside. The 750-milliliter bottle is $29.95 at korwater.com."

A guide to hotels where Black americans were welcomed, places without riots and lynching mobs, places where hotelowners and restaurants saw money and not skin.
A weird time document.

The Fader is for me a new discovery, excellent addition to the urban mags born in the counterculture.

""Ghetto palms" is what we used to call those little bamboo-ish looking trees that sprout up in empty lots and the cracks between sidewalk blocks. Sometime last year my Mom sent me clipping from the papers in Detroit that broke down how they're actually a species from China spread here by container ships. Fact: in China it's called Tree of Heaven. Fact: city planners can accurately calculate the length of time a house or city block has been abandoned by the size of the ghetto palms. Ever since then, ailanthus altissima has been taking over the back-lot of my brain like an invasive tree in Brooklyn, too crazy not to be a metaphor for something deep. Some kind of underground ecology--a science of things that grow where they're not supposed to--is about as good a mission statement as any for what I'm trying to do with this column, plus it just had a ring to it. I had a mess of funny but too-literal ones like "Things That Make You Say `Forward'" and "There Will Be Dubs," but abstract and slightly pretentious just felt more, you know, me.

Appropriately the 1st time out is entirely dedicated to 45s from Kingston, which has its share of both ghetto and actual, factual palm trees. This column, like my DJ sets (hell, my life) will be heavily dancehall-influenced, but will dip into other international waters with UK bhangra, Angolan kuduro and whatever fits.
-Edwin "Stats" Houghton "

A change in the Americans relation to their cars?

"News of wrenching dislocations in the car industry arrive daily: automobile sales are at a 10-year low. Ford is converting factories from making high-profit trucks to subcompacts like the unlovely Fiesta. General Motors is trying to convince investors that it is not at the precipice of bankruptcy.

Beyond the bad economic news may lurk a less remarked shift in Americans' psyches: a change in the role the automobile occupies in people's emotional lives and self-image. For decades, automakers pitched cars as sex symbols, as extensions of drivers' freedom or affluence or eye for beauty. Even if that pitch is inverted -- if hybrids or minicars become the most desirable wheels, bespeaking a driver's thriftiness or environmental sensitivity -- is it really possible to be passionate about a compromise?

Can you love your Prius the way you once gave your heart to a 4Runner or a luxury sedan?

Increasingly, for many, the question is moot.

"I'm willing to not love it," said Justin McCarthy, 43, a public relations executive from Long Beach, Calif., who is considering replacing his 10-year-old Volvo with a hybrid.

Mr. McCarthy said he bought his Volvo for aesthetics and comfort. It was good for impressing and pampering clients and roomy for his growing family.

But as he mulls a possible new purchase, he is keeping his emotions in check. "Before it was, Is it a cool car?" he said. "Now it's, Is it going to be efficient and reliable transportation? Maybe it's also a function of age, but it doesn't have to fulfill anything in me, it just needs to be what it is: a mode of transportation."

Such attitudes are a far cry from the way Americans have approached their car buying in the past, researchers say. Buyers have put a high value on reliability, durability and fuel efficiency, of course, but just as important have been looks and luxury.

"What are the neighbors going to think when they see the car? Is it going to impress them?" said Geoff Wardle, director of advanced mobility research at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., which is known for its auto design program. "When it comes to buying a car, people take leave of their senses."

For many drivers, their cars are an extension of themselves, displayed as fashion or an accessory."

From the page: "The State Council (China's top executive agency) launched an online mouring campaign: as part of three day mourning period related to the Sichuan earthquake, ALL websites were ordered to take down entertainment and game sections and to redirect to ones dedicated to commemorating earthquake victims. Some of the largest portals (Sina, Netease) immediately followed, re-directing frontpage entertainement.

In a sense, this reflects what is happening in other broadcasting media. For instance all TV stations suspended normal programming and only broadcast CCTV programs. Public entertainment will not be allowed either for the next 3 days."