One Campaign: Check, Please!

We spent a lively Thursday evening in Santa Monica learning about One. org. This advocacy group is dedicated to getting U.S., G8, and G20 money to help with crises such as HIV-AIDS in Africa.

But, why should Americans send money abroad when there's so much need right here at home? The question is answered in an eye-opening short film. "Man" in the street Q&A's show people over-estimating the amount of aid the US gives (it's 1%, not 10 or 15 or 25%). The number of kids able to go to school now is in the tens of millions, not one million. And there are similarly impressive results for people being alive and babies not having had the virus transmitted due to the program getting appropriate meds to people.

All of which should make a taxpayer feel pretty good.   See for yourself here.ONE.org.

Bobby Shriver spoke at this event. He explained that One never asks for money (Cockatoo can attest to this, having been on the email list for years). What One wants, he said, is to be able to tell a congressman, a senator, the President, We have 500,000 people who want help for Africa.

One wants our voices.

They have mine.

Film Comment: Cairo Time...

...wherein the ordinarily ball o' energy firecracker Patricia Clarkson takes it down a dozen notches to play a wife holed up in Cairo while her U.N.-employed husband is held up in Gaza. Back in the States Juliette's a workaholic magazine editor - twelve hour days if she's on a deadline, she says. In Cairo, though, she's in a dream state, almost a sleepwalker. It's as if the director said, Remember, it's very hot here so always move v-e-r-y- s-l-o-w-l-y.

Everything she sees seems to merit a dazed, almost stoner degree of attention--cups of coffee, women, children, the Pyramids... "Your hajib is pretty," she tells the hotel worker. (It seemed odd that a ultra-modern American could separate the cloth's beauty from what it represents).

The main object of Juliette's gaze is a kindly Egyptian man, Tareq, played by Alexander Siddiq. Tareq straddles both cultures having been a former colleague of the husband.

When the two are together the film comes to life. The husband remains tangled up with some conflict so Tareq plays tour guide to Juliette. His wry humor, lovely manners and looks clearly appeal to Juliette. For Tariq, one wonders (with fear of trading in sterotypes) if she represents a combination of femininity and modernity. (e.g., the flirty dresses mixed with the sass, and her returning to his coffee shop even after finding out it's for men only).

When Tareq rescues her from an ill-advised bus trip to Gaza to see her husband, he's clearly pissed. But is he angry because it was a foolish thing to do, or because he didn't like her running away from what was developing between them?

Recommend.

James Taylor...As If We Need Reminding

Now that the elections are over and we can exhale Cockatoo has been looking at videos we were too nervous to watch when they occurred.   Exhibit A, the incomparable James Taylor at the Democratic National Convention, here.  Sixteen minutes of that most perfect voice, singing melodies that are woven into our DNA, with lyrics--snark- and irony-free lyrics--that still have the power to nudge out tears.  But wait, there's more!  Consider this audience--all races, both genders, all abilities, swaying, singing along, and just enjoying the hell out of the performance. 

Beautiful.

Travel + Leisure Subscription Lapse

Instead of harrumphing about how shallow we find T+L nowadays--how overly concerned with cool shopping and boutique hotels--we will, instead, merely remark that we apparently are not the demographic for this journal.  There's hardly a full page of prose to be found, anymore.  Perhaps to keep up with the television/smartphone age where folks have no more patience every page had garish charts and info boxes and snarky quotes in silly fonts.

EAT.  SHOP.  SEE+DO.

We won't spend time on the confluence of advertising and articles.  If memory serves a recent issue had an essay about a certain brand of watch.  Watches do in fact come in handy when travelling but we didn't see why this particular brand of timepiece needed to be singled out. 

Grumblings aside, the photographs, though, still stop one in their beauty.  There's one of Page 84 of two Indian gentlemen holding some beautiful textiles, grogeous yellow and red.  The simplicity of the shot contrasts with the richness of the hues, the craft needed to create the rugs. 

This disenchantment with T+L  is especially sad as it was our first introduction to non-family vacations.  Cockatoo used to spend part of the high school summer break  with her Godmother who had a collection of T+L.  We would pore through them excitedly, as if trying to pin down the fact that, really, one can actually get on a plane and go to another country.  

Cockatoo can never truly give up on T+L.  It--along with a college course on the Renaissance--did provide the spark that got us to Florence, a place we've visited twice and long to see again.  (Last time we stayed Oltrarno, steps away from the Piazza Santo Spirito, pictured.)

Still, one worries.  Could a working class person look at today's magazine and get that same sense of possibilities?  Or would they look at the astronomical rates of the featured hotels and decide travelling isn't for them?

Forward! The Election and Bicycle Wrap-Up

It's taken us all this time to absorb the enormity of the President's re-election. Obviously we are delighted. We are grateful that this bright, decent, hard-working and empathetic person will continue to build upon the enormous task of righting the country from the deviancies of George W. Bush's terms in office. While the progress has been slow there's no denying we're moving in the right direction.

Although we haven't gone too deeply into Gov. Romney territory we became increasingly troubled during the campaign with the idea that somehow, despite the polling numbers on Daily Kos, the Governor might somehow slip into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His flaws ran the gamut from farce (the Mitt-astrophic overseas trip during the flawlessly-run London Olympics) to mean ("No one ever asked to see our birth certificates") to the outright disdainful (being far too grand to condescend and make the case for his presidency to 47% of the public. In a democracy.) Even now he's muttering to his donors about how the President was re-elected because he gave "gifts" to people; he's dim-witted enough to think the brouhaha last summer was about "free contraceptives," not insisting that employers offer women employees all contraceptive options available under the insurance plans for which women paid premiums.

Well, we knew he drove to Canada with his dog strapped to the roof of his car, and witnesses said in high school Gov. Romney tackled a kid in high school and cut off his hair. Nice to know that $300 million in filthy Koch - Rove money couldn't obscure his essential character. Please proceed into oblivion, Governor.

As for Congressman Ryan the less said the better, unless the person doing the saying is David Letterman. Letterman Ryan Top Ten

What can we expect in President Obama's second term? (Besides, according to the defeated Teabaggers, socialism, Adam marrying Adam instead of Eve, and foodstamps?)

We don't know but there's this: We bought a new bike a couple of weeks back, a lovely Giant Escape. It's aluminum, some six pounds lighter than our previous bike, Carmella, and shaves 5-8 minutes off our commute home. The first Monday on it we felt a panic since it's a bike for a person half our age and twice our fitness level. But then we realized: This bike could make us a better rider.

May President Obama feel a lightness in his heavy, heavy tasks next term, may he slice through resistance with continued grace.