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Friday, November 7th, 2008
Took today off work for an excursion to the city -- Sylvia and I took my parents to the Bronx Zoo for a fun tiring afternoon. Afterwards we met Ellen at the China Institute in Manhattan, where we watched Weijun Chen's stunning new documentary, Please Vote for Me -- a chronicle of the campaign for 3rd-grade class monitor at Evergreen Primary School in Wuhan, China. Every year up until now*, class monitor has been appointed by the teacher; her innovation this year is to select  three candidates and have them campaign for the office. You get to watch the class (through the eye of the the documentarian, who manages to insinuate himself completely into the fabric of the kids' days) independently create a primitive democracy, complete with patronage, bribery, voter intimidation... The kids are just marvelous, completely unself-conscious on camera, totally engaged in being themselves. I had to sort of guard against over-interpreting what they were doing and saying -- at the beginning of the movie I was trying to read each thing said by one of the children as having special deep significance -- but when I got myself to quit that and just engage with them as children, I was really able to get into it and identify with the three candidates and watch them figure out how to campaign. I'd recommend the movie strongly to anybody interested in democracy and elections, which a lot of people seem to be interested in that nowadays. It was of course especially great timing for us to see what with Sylvia being that age -- I could recognize mannerisms and behaviors of Sylvia and her friends, from the kids in the movie -- but I think I would have loved it even without that element. It's available on Netflix. (Not only that, it's available for download on Netflix -- you can watch it right now!)
 * I'm not completely sure what year this was filmed -- maybe 2005 or 6?
posted evening of November 7th, 2008: 1 response
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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
 The latest Robyn Hitchcock tribute record is being released! You can see the track list with links to the performers at glasshotel.net, and pre-order a copy if you need the disc. Otherwise wait a bit and the files will be made available for download. -- Also see that page for links to the previous two tribute discs.
posted afternoon of November 5th, 2008: Respond
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So: I gave a little bit of time and a little bit of money to Barack Obama's presidential campaign -- not as much of either as I feel like I ought to have, and certainly not as much as I saw people around me doing. But the point is, a lot of people contributed to this victory. I think (based on my reaction to Obama's speech last night, and generalizing from myself to Americans who are longing for change) that these people would be willing and even anxious to contribute and to work towards realizing Obama's promise of a new day for America. I put myself forward as one such -- I want to volunteer to work for change. Hoping it does not involve phone banks.
posted morning of November 5th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
And it is a great day in America.
posted evening of November 4th, 2008: Respond
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The excitement was palpable at the polling place this morning. And not just excitement, but positive energy: people were looking at each other, smiling, talking about today as a historic day.
posted morning of November 4th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, November third, 2008
- 8 more hours until I will vote (at the Baird Center, in South Orange).
- 19 ½ hours until Talking Points Memo promises it will start carrying live coverage.
- (Approximately) 1,850 hours until Inauguration Day.
 Roy Edroso has the best "putting the election in perspective" post I've seen this year: If He Loses...How to Cope. And life will go on, whatever happens tomorrow. Man oh man do I hope I will be drinking tomorrow night in celebration, not in sorrow.
posted evening of November third, 2008: Respond
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Chapter 5 of The Golden Compass -- now things are starting to get really interesting. Sylvia and I are both on the edge of our seat. I really like the way Pullman drops hints about what's going on -- very graceful, they are not so cryptic you can't easily pick up on them, but they are not hammered into your ears either. A bit like reading a good whodunit. And at the end of the cocktail party scene, the transition to Lyra fleeing from Mrs. Coulter's house was handled very well. This book just feels elegant.
 (Note from an adult reading a kids' book -- it was such an eerie feeling I had, to be identifying with Mrs. Coulter as I read her cruel disciplinarian lines to Lyra before the party. I can't recall ever feeling this way though I've read many children's books with authoritarian adult figures in them.)
posted evening of November third, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, November second, 2008
Saramago posts today on the subject of politics. On the eve of the presidential elections in the United States, this brief observation does not seem out of place. Some time back, a Portuguese politician*, who at that time bore the responsibilities of prime minister, declared for whomever would like to hear it that politics is, in the first place, the art of not speaking the truth. The problem is that since he said that, there has not been, to my knowledge, a single politician, from the left to the right, who would correct him, who would say no sir, the truth is going to be the sole and ultimate objective of politics. For the simple reason that only in this manner can the two be saved: truth by politics, politics by the truth. (I'm pretty uncertain about the translation of the last sentence: I'm translating the preposition "con", which usually means "with", as "by", because I'm not sure how else to make sense of the sentence.** Please let me know in comments if you know better.)
* The politician in question is António Guterres, as near as I can tell (based on a reference in this editorial from Lusopresse). I am tentatively translating Saramago's "governo" as "prime minister", since that was Guterres' position.
** Update -- Never mind, now I looked at the Portuguese source of the post (which I had been reading in Spanish) -- the preposition translated as "con" is "pela", which is Portuguese for "by". This makes me more confident in my translation of the Spanish.
posted evening of November second, 2008: Respond
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Ever since I posted the video of Harry Gibson playing "Harry the Hipster" several months ago, I get Google hits searching for his more famous song, "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" -- frequently enough to make me curious. So I went and looked it up. Cool tune! And since today seems to be a good day for posting YouTube videos (here chez READIN), let's put another one up. Take it away, Harry!
posted afternoon of November second, 2008: Respond
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Slacktivist posted this video yesterday, with the note that there are only three more days -- well today there are only two more days; and this is the perfect version of the perfect song for this moment. I had totally forgotten about Tracy Chapman, glad to be reminded.
 Mmm... that makes me want to hear Bob singing this song. Here he is in 1964: (Dylan is 25 in this video; Chapman is 28 above.)
posted morning of November second, 2008: Respond
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