Yesterday was a fairly good day for sentences. I was told,


"green is your flavor"

and

"the chances of being a pop star is one in a million."


I think the best one from today was from Alex (4), who told me I'm fat. I said, o.k.

My brother's both unmaterialistic and crackles of this world. Not an easy guy to buy a birthday present for. Circumstances beyond our control put us at odds with each other from the start, too. They evolved, but some years were lost in our friendship, during which I might've gotten to know him better.

Anyway, he always fascinates me, but is a little hard to decipher at times.

Now. I'm not a big sciencehead and can't say I check his website, Science Blog, daily. I did this morning, though, and realized two of my favorite things about him: his will to be optimistic for creaturekind (including humans); and his translation of that into physical reality.

Science Blog's a daily online magazine: science articles from journals, institutes and occasional newspapers, under subject headings like "Aerospace," "Geoscience," "Nanotech & Materials," and "Physics & Numbers." My brother chooses the articles, writes their headlines and posts texts beneath headlines. He also oversees advertising and reader-blogs. (It's a real-thing kind of a thing: by 5:44 p.m. PST today, 888 people had read one of today's front-page articles, 612 another.)

I was struck, today, by his generally positive editorial decisions, and how those seemingly small choices affected my mood. For example, headlines usually include an encouraging word (today's front page includes "readies," "boosts," "better" and "saves"). Headlines for "negative" stories, which could easily be tweaked for drama's sake (he's a clever guy), are moderately crafted (for example, today's "Energy Drinks Take Toll on Teeth" and "Tropics Are Next Emerging Disease Hotspot").

The positive headlines aren't misleading, either; articles generally imply faith in a...future. In no way is this part of the Armageddon machinery.

He's been quietly running this for years. For some reason only today did I notice his choices, though, and how they affected my outlook. I guess, also, what a volatile place the news in general has in my psyche.

On some level I believe everything I read, and from what I've heard, most people are built like that. How to deliver news seems to me like a pretty serious question, and "generally optimistically" seems to me the best answer. The possibility -- well, reality -- of a psychically safe place to get information about the state of us-and-our-environs (from a scientific angle, in this case) feeds my own faith in our future.

Thank you, brother! The more I know you, the better I like you!



P.S. A particularly fabulous story from today's front page.

In other news, go buy this today. You can probably get it at your nearest health food store (but you might want to call and ask them first so you don't waste a trip).

It is called Ciao Bella Blackberry Cabernet Sorbetto.

I don't care if it makes you feel like a yuppy. You probably are one, anyway.


This is your assignment for today, with a half-page response paper by Monday.

Dear MoveOn,

I want to thank you for two things: changing American politics in the direction I want it to be changed; and renewing my faith that there was still room for it to change.

I've been on your side 100%, until today.

Today's email, the ad for an ad contest for Obama (MoveOn's way of endorsing him?), really bothers me.

It seems so un-MoveOn to endorse one candidate over another -- when there are only two -- without explaining why.

Or did you send an explanatory email earlier, and I didn't receive it? (If so, could you please resend it?)

If not, though...MoveOn's all about ethicality and clarity and upfrontness, right? All the facts so people can make informed decisions, right?

So, what's the deal?

I assume there are others like me: folks who don't know which Democratic candidate to choose, but are slightly suspicious of the media's neutrality/coldness toward Clinton, in the face of its extreme hype of Obama.

For us, MoveOn's endorsement-without-explanation seems disturbingly in step with that very message: go with Obama because we want you to. Not, go with Obama for reasons x,y, and z.

Please explain the logic behind MoveOn's decision to endorse one candidate over the other without explaining why.

Thank you.

Maggie Sullivan
Costa Mesa, CA




Okay, I just had to say that. I'll get off my soapbox now.

My car was stolen a few weeks ago, and then found, the morning after I reported it to the police. I'd been telling myself this is Newport Beach, it's an '84 Camry, no one'll care enough to find it; getting it back, and so fast, was surprising. Kind of a relief, too, that it hadn't been misplaced; I was still very spacy from surgery a couple weeks before, and only about 80% sure where I'd parked it last.

But it was stolen, and was found, intact in its blanched crustiness on modest Bimini near Baker in Costa Mesa (the 2006 engine was somehow still there).

Either way would've been okay -- I miss the bus -- but the delivery-back of the car was touching for me. Not the car itself, so much, but parts like Officer Navarro, who picked me up from Enrique's and drove me to where it was, rather than my having to pay to get it out of the impound lot (he didn't think that was fair to victims).

He said now that the rain had stopped things would be warming up. He referred to me as "the victim" several times, which I enjoyed. He and I were about the same age, I could tell by how he talked about K-Earth (which was playing in his car). People younger and older than me may be okay being cops, but not people roughly the same age, we're not cut out for it. He said he used to listen to jazz and I decided before he could explain that he'd stopped because it kept him out of cop mood.

He was extremely thorough and polite in his dispatches to "Beth" on the other end (that was when most of the "victim" stuff came up), and then later with everyone else. When I saw him toward the end of the whole thing, patiently waiting in his car for word back from headquarters that I was clear to take my car home, he looked sort of small, and sort of old. And I suddenly felt like part of this place. For the first time, I think.

It was a random, liberal-looking grayhaired householder, Sue, on Bimini who thought to call the police about the car in front of her place. She and a stocky female detective were chatting beside it when Officer Navarro and I got there. I felt so grateful to Sue. She and the detective talked about the beautiful "forest" in front of Sue's place, and how Sue sometimes even naps out in her yard, the trees protect her so well. The detective warned her about people hiding in her bushes and Sue said she has a guard dog. This turned into a conversation about geese, the detective suggested she get geese because they take no nonsense from anyone. I suddenly felt like with a couple of costume changes, we could be in an illustration in a children's nursery rhyme book, like in Low German, from like the 1800s or something.

Sue eventually ducked out and I talked more with the detective lady. The glove compartment was open and receipts in little balls on the floor below it. Though she never said it, I began to understand that she'd carefully examined every single thing in my car. Like the affirmations sheet in the back seat about fertility and children; cheapshit movie magaines; Spanish flashcards; and the dust. She'd tried unsuccessfully to get fingerprints off the "contents of the bag" (a small brown paper bag holding a few cassettes). Toward the end she complimented the broom in my back window, calling it a "bezom," which I believe may have been Wiccan sign language.

Eventually word came that I was free to take the car. We all waved to each other as I drove out. As I left I wondered if -- while getting the crapster back was definitely a good and convenient thing for me -- it might have even been like 1% better for them. An entirely positive thing, I mean. As I thought about that possibility, I felt a lot of love for them.

The rest of the day was a rainbow. I spent way too much time and money at RiteAid (they sell these gorgeous Indian skirts and blouses now, which of course took forever to consider). It seemed like only women were working there that day, all easy and funny. Finally tore myself away and home...continued the post-fumigation (oh, we'd also just been fumigated) put-back...and then, got my first period since the surgery.

I was so proud. Not of myself, exactly, but of bodies. They try.