Paperless Office? Mine?

It's 3:33 in the morning, and I'm facing two see-through bins, an Ottoman, and an article my son Joathan sent me, "Everything Old Is New Again," which is about scanning our papers and photographs so we can do away with paper.  What I do, of course, is getting my photos on line and then print them out.  I work against the stystem of the "paperless office."  Single handedly, I destroy forests, but I cherish what I do with what I get through my destruction--the papers and pictures I can look at closely in the comfort of my living room as I lie back in my recliner.  I hate to read at the computer screen.

But on my to-do list is to spend an hour going through this stuff and either putting it in an appropriate place of throwing it out.  Right now I have two see-through bins, and my goal of rht day is to create one.

So here goes:  News cliping:  Oct. 27, 2010 "Warming called threat to glory of state's parks" by Kelly Zito, November 13, 2010 "Majority of students now Latino"
"Getting naked to board an airplane" from Nov. 18, 2010
"Opposition to trial keeps 9/11 planner in detention" by Kornblut and Finn in Washignton Post--about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and with that picture of him after his capture in Pakistan in 2003
"Terror trials" and "Islamic center set albaze after bomb plot arrest" from Nov. 29,2010
"Germans Seek Ban on Groups Espousing Islamic Principles" by David Drawford inteh Wall Street Journal--published in the Cambodia Daily, December 29, 2010 (when we were there)

I can't throw out the photos and cards that are in between these news clipping.

I see that in early January 2011, I have "Books to look into in 2011"

Finishing the Hat (which I finsihed between sessions of jury duty)
MaryAnn in Autumn (never read\Feast of the Ghost
While the Women Are Sleepling by Javier Marias (never read)
Cleopatra:  A Life by Stacy Schiff (Read and loved)
Holiday on Ice (Had already read but deserves many readings)
Growing Up Laughing by marlo Thomas (never read)

I'm getting sleepy, so I won't even proof-read until I finish.  It seems that this was my quick clean-up.  I put anything that happened to be on my desk or on the floor (sheet protectors, folders, etc.) in the bin.  Now I have only one.  To be continued

The Verdict is In

Just when I was feeling particularly disheartened by the human rights violations  at Guantanamo and the  “indefinite detainment” written into the National Defense Authorization Act, I had the chance to serve on a jury in San Francisco, and my faith in our justice system was partially restored.  I was impressed by the demeanor and tone of the judge Kathleen Kelly and by the attorneys and by my fellow jurors, who, for the most part, were articulate and respectful of the process and of one another.  A great deal of respect was given to the rights of the defendant, who definitely had his day in court.  This would be a good tradition to maintain or,  perhaps I should say, restore in all our laws and practices. 

Of course, we were probably too lenient with the defendant.  I kind of wish I hadn't read Being Wrong and The Invisible Gorilla, books that cite studies showing that witnesses are very unreliable.  I also know about "corroboration," when the police need to prove someone's guilt and agree on exactly what they're going to say.  Still, we had a good foreperson, and he really gave everyone a chance--many chances--to express their opinion.  We watched videos a second and sometimes a third time and got the court reporter to read us testimonies, which she did very well!  (I asked her out of court whether she was an actress, and she said she was a singer.  She definitely has a clear and expressive voice.)

The defendant was, in court, a very handsome young black man who looked almost like Gandhi.  In the videos of his ranting and ravings (sustained "Fucking immigrant," "Fucking faggots," "fucking bitches") filmed at Best Buy and at the Superior Court at 855 Bryant--and as witnesses described him going into Rosa Parks School--he looked like someone who was trying to incite a riot--an offender in search of an over-reaction.  

We had to reach consensus--12 among 12--and we did on all but 4 counts.  We tried to convince the dissenter on three of those four, but he had made up his mind. Later, when we met with the D.A./Prosecuter Christopher Ulrich and the Defense Attorney Phoenix Streets, they asked whether the dissenter would identify herself or himself, and he wouldn't.  They said they'd like to hear his reasons for dissenting.  He didn't speak up.  I wish he'd had enough conviction to speak up.  That was disappointing.

But I really was impressed by all the time and care that was given to this one man when other people are thrown in to prison without charges and without the chance to prove their innocence.

 

Guantanamo Bay and Other News Stories

I'm on jury duty (which I can write about later), and I plan to get back to my list of books read on Audible in 2011, but I just want to note what's in the news. 

Guantanamo, of course, including Louise Specht's Open Forum piece "Guantanamo continues to harm us all."  There was also a good letter in yesterday's Chronicle "Gitmo?  Still?" by Ralph E. Stone, who points out that we can't keep our "holier than thou" rhetoric going:  "Until the 171 prisoners at Gitmo have their day in court or are transferred or released, and Gitmo is closed, let us not hear the Obama administration or any member of Congress criticize other countries for human rights abuses."

Then there a "sheriff in trouble," Ross Mirkarimi, who just took his oath of office as a revelation about domestic fiolence came out.  (An e-mail and picture of a bruise he gave his wife?)    Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi hasn't disavowed her husband's defense of her in her shoplifting at Norstrom's--that she has a brain tumor.  I guess that explains the Tea Party.  Not that the rest of our politicians are doing a lot better. 

Audible Books

My iPod, of course, has totally changed my life, even though I was not born, as today's American babies are, with over 1,000 songs already on their iPods.  (Source:  The Onion)  Also, even though I began with songs and just this week was singing  "Sal ti Laik Siti" along with the African heroine in The Book of Mormon, I use my iPods for Audible books more than for songs.  Now I "devour" books through my ears instead of with a pen on paper, underlining and talking back in the margins.  I thought it would be interesting to see what books I got from Audible in 2011.  Here's the beginning of the end.

The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner.  Jonathan suggested this for the Jo-Mama Book Club, but it seemed so much like Being Wrong, The Invisible Gorilla, and How We Decide that we're reading Room instead. ( I also started the Spanish translation of Room with Javier yesterday.)

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained by Paramhansa Yogananda--Read for the Sufi section of the Intro to Islam class and found out that it's all spiritual...Who'd have thought?
Poems of the Orient, including those of Rumi, Sa'di, Hafiz
Rumi:  Poet of Divine Ecstasy read or talked about by Coleman Barks
Rumi discussed by Andrew Harvey
The Ecsttic Soul by Coleman Barks

So...as you can see, I made some choices for Sufism even if I didn't become a whirling dervish.  (Let it be known, though, that Teresa Fiorentini once gave me a pair of earrings with whirling dervishes because, she aid, they made her think of me.)

Then, more in the popular vein, I read 1Q34 by Haruki Murakami (as translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel)

That had more to do with Annie Billon, who was reading it, than with my sabbatical courses, but here we get back on track, with Comparative Religions:


The City of God by Saint Augustine.  (I didn't really listen to all 6 parts.)


Confessions by Saint Augustine
St. Augustine by Robert O'Connell

The Book of Mormon :  A Very Short Introduction by Terry L. Givens (not the Broadway musical)
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (because Forster has Hindus and Muslims--Mohammadans)
Hinduism by Dr. Gregory Kozlowski

Then, for Western Culture and Values:


The Aeneid by Virgil (translation by...)
Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill
Metamorphoses by Ovid (didn't listen to it all)
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
The Iliad by Homer (read by Susan Sarandon, Stanley Lombardo)
The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Robert FGagles)
Gilgamesh translated (?) by Stephen Mitchell

for my Politics and Government of the Middle East class:


Palestine:  Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter


Then, for the Jo-Mama Book Club,

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill (one of my favoirte books f the year)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (read in honor of Mom, who loved it)
(More later--I'm going in descending chronological order)



The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman/Heather Lind (I didn't listen to all of this.)

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (because Bob Milling mentioned it in context to my letters about Mom)

Swamplandia by Karen Russell (I'm coming back to this now, January 12)
Picasso by Arianna Strassinopoulos Huffington
Picasso's War (Guernica)  by Russell Martin
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (diddn't listen to it all)
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (not a recent book but one I loved)
The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason (no recollection of this at all!)
Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (need to listen again)
Bathazar, Mount Olive, Clea, and Justine by Lawrence Durrell.
Exclusive Interview Jim Atlas with Daniel Mendelsohn on Lawrence Durrell

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
The New Yorker latest Eisodes including those with Andy Borowitz and Bruce McCall
Teach Me Joyeux Noel by Judy R. Mahoney (What was that?)
The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand (no recollection)
French Lessons by Ellen Sussman (purple prose)
The Marketplace of Ideas Louis Menand
Bossypants by Tina Fey (I enjoyed this once I got past the silly title)
Room by Emma Donoghu  (One of the most gripping books; Suzy liked it, too, and Jonathan and I are making it the next focus of the Jo-Mama Book Club
 One day by David Nicholls (another book-of-the month for our club)
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach


Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky  (what I read because Jan's Significant Other, Lurline, was reading it when we were in Berlin)


A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Private Life by Jane Smiley
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (no recollection!)
Rapid German Earworms Learning (Good intentions)
Learn German--Level 2:  Absolute Beginner (Road to Hell)
Boots on the Ground by Dusk by Mary Tillman (because I thought The Tillman Story was the best movie of the last year)
Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz (I cited this when I was serving on a jury)

A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester (can't remember)
The Bostonians by Henry James
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff (I really liked this)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (I'd forgotten that 2011 was the year I took the whole thing on!)
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Postcards from 2011

My favorite collages from last year are the one of Mom's 90th birthday invitation and the enlarged pictures of her in various periods of her life and the one of the clouds in Berlin and at Aegis.  But there's another collage that happens naturally in the course of the year--one made possible by thoughtful friends who send me postcards when they travel.  This past year Jutta was the most thoughtful, but I'm grateful to all others as well!

Jutta in Bremen with Alex Capus printout, from France (4 old women), from Sanddorn,
Minako--one from Japan, another from Laos
Jonathan from San Diego (business trip in September)
Isabelle Wild (former student) from France--Fontaine
Kathy from Ireland
Linda from Iceland
Jutta from Provence
Katherine Allan from York, England
Bob from India
Bill and Tom from Paris
Annie from Lisbon, Portugal
Nicole from Chichen Itza Mexico
Sandy and Paula from the Galapagos

Jury Service

Of course, I'm sworn to secrecy, so I can't discuss the civil case we're now hearing about in court.  I actually wanted to serve because for the first time, they'd called me at a time when it wouldn't be disruptive to my semester although it might mean missing the first day of school.  (I can get a substitute to give out cards, forms, and first-day material.)  I'm glad I can be part of this at a time that I'm worried about the National Defense Authorization Act that Congress passed and Obama signed the last day of the year--with the part about the indefinite detention.  The way this case is being conducted gives me hope that there IS still a system of justice in this country!

We're allowed to take notes on a spiral pad they give us, but we have to leave it in court, which is unfortunate because I like the jargon:  "Let the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant."   "Will you identify the defendant by pointing and mentioning an item of clothing?"  (I see that what is beige to some is cream, white, tan to others.)

New Year's Reflections

Happy New Year!  I made a collage of 2011, as detailed as the end-of-year letters I get from some friends.  But I can make out the print in their letters.  I’m not sure they can make out what’s in my collage.  I hope they like the colors.

Of course, my mother is the center of the year, which began over a reflecting pool in Angker Wat and ended with the resurrection of Javier (whom I'd buried in August) and the DVDs of Vision (about Hildegard) and a picture I took of the scene in which she says, “I hear the Caliph of Cordoba  allegedly had a library of 400,000 volumes,” which fits in to my sabbatical, with its focus on the Middle East and a course in Western Cultural Values (Hildegard) thrown in. 

But aside from continuous reflections on Mom, the only two things I want to mention here are these:

When Diamond Dave turned 74, a birthday he was celebrating at the Occupation, I made him a couple of giant cookies, which he shared (crumbled, I guess) with the other students in our Demystifying the Middle East class.  He told they the cookies were made by “Tina, the other elder in the class.” 

My niece sent me a message on Facebook asking for a loan of $3000.00.  

Every year Javier and I write resolutions and/or reflections for the coming year.  Then we look at the ones we wrote last year.  This year I couldn't find the ones from last year to compare them with reality.  But let me be honest about Javier:  He's sweet, charming, and funny, as I told him yesterday and then added, "The only problem is your inability to tell the truth," and he said, "Let's not talk about the past."   I was able to use that line too, but in a different context.

In this, The Year of the Protester, (Time Magazine's Person of the Year), Javier said, "Give women a right and they want the whole Constitution."

Today I wrote a couple of year-end letters, and I also wrote to Jean Michaud, whose address I finally have.  (He returned the call Jonathan helped me make.)  I decided to tell him not about myself, but about him, and how wonderful he always was.  I also sent him pictures of him, not me.  Maybe that's how all our Christmas letters should be too.  Not about us--about our friends.

 If you wait as long as I have to send out greetings, you'll have a lot of personal data to respond to!