Washington: Sore feet and overpriced beer

(Previous disclaimer still applies.)

It’s 6:00 and I’m back in Brasserie Beck, enjoying another absurdly overpriced Belgian beer. Even more expensive than yesterday’s, but rather better tasting. Tired and footsore after my political sojourn, I nonetheless did a 4-block circuit looking for a source of cheap alcohol and/or food and/or a bottle of ibuprofen, to no avail. So here I am again. However, I found a $1.50 hotdog at a little wagon on the corner of 12th and K, run by a Pakistani couple. And for tomorrow I have located a purveyer of cheap beer—to be atoned for by the suffrance of ear-splitting hiphop—that I can stop in at on the way home from the Capitol. The joys of addiction.

After I got out of the Senate and House galleries, I stopped to rest my feet, which were feeling worn, and talk to Steve. It is a wonderful world, and we’re very spoiled, to be able to talk to each other at no cost all the way across the country. One thinks about how just 150 years ago, communication across that distance might take months in both directions, with its arrival uncertain.

Somewhat rested, I headed for the Smithsonian, but stopped at the first obstacle I came to, namely the Botanical Gardens. These are enclosed in a 3-story glass house like the hall of flowers in SF. You enter, and suddenly you’re in a quiet forested paradise with Renaissance-era music soothing your way. Raindrops fall here and there. There’s a rainforest area that you can walk around both at ground level and at canopy level. I bet this place is a big hit in the dead of winter.

After exploring the garden and its various sections, I continued on my way, and next encountered the American Indian Museum. The building is reminiscent of an Anasazi cliff dwelling and stunningly decorated but rather sparse inside. The center “rotunda” area has four different indigenous watercraft, a kayak, Hawaiian outrigger, Lake Titicaca reed boat and one other that I can’t remember--and that, plus a pricey gift shop and cafe, is about all. I visited the café in hope of coffee, but the only option was 16 ounces for $3.55—four times as much as I needed at three times the price. The menu was interesting though, from pulled buffalo on frybread to roasted elk with blueberries.

I hauled myself to the second floor, but there was nothing there but an overpriced gift shop. Apparently it started getting real on the third floor. But by then I noticed I was on the edge of exhaustion. My eyes were not focusing. My feet were seriously hurting and I suddenly remembered it was a long way back to the hostel--about a mile and a half of concrete away.

I managed to go part of the way on the “Circulator,” though the trip included an unexpected 10-minute lapse two blocks before my stop, while the driver took a break. I would have gotten out and walked, but the neighborhood looked dicey. When he got started I pushed the button near my appointed stop and moved to the front to chat with him—while he passed my stop and the next one. “Will I be able to get off anytime soon?” I finally ventured, and he said, “Oh, did you want to get off? I’m sorry.” He stopped in mid-block and let me off. It was only another three blocks to the hostel, but by then my feet had gotten a little rest.

More Washington

(If you’ve navigated here for any reason except that you’re a friend of mine, you might want to move on. The details here are excessively trivial and verbose, of little interest to the wider world. There here largely for the time when I will no longer be able to remember any of this on my own.)

You are not allowed to read OR write in the House Gallery! On the way to the Gallery, there’s a rack of brochures, so I picked one up. Things were a little slow on the floor, so I pulled out my brochure to study. A plainclothes security guy was there in seconds, telling me to put that away. I asked him why, and he said he didn’t know—it seemed odd to him, and the rule doesn’t apply to the Senate gallery. The People’s House, and the people aren’t allowed to take notes. The security guy, who was very nice, said the rule had been in place at least as long as he had been there, six years.

There were approximately a dozen people on the House floor, equally distributed between Dems and Repugs, plus the stand-in for the speaker, the stenographer, and various other officials on the podium. I didn’t recognize any of them. It’s kind of sad that there wouldn’t be more of the people’s lawmakers there, but it was during the lunch hour. I gather that the House is pretty much deserted except when there’s a vote. A vote was about to happen when I got my gallery pass from Woolsey’s office, but by the time I found my way to the right entrance, waited in line, got my bags checked, dropped off my backpack, then went back to drop off my cell phone, the vote was long over. I tagged along with a staff member from the Kucinich office and a couple from Belgium who were there on some sort of business. There was a slight delay as the information guy proudly regaled the couple in fluent Flemish, something I’ll admit the average tour guide can’t do.

Starving for food and caffeine, I found my way to the Capitol basement—and it really is a basement, with water and heating pipes on the ceiling of the narrow brick halls—where the cafeteria is. I hesitated at the entrance, where a sign said, “For Congressional staff only, 11:15-1:00. A cafeteria employee asked me if she could help me, young lady? I told her only people older than me were allowed to call me young lady and she laughed and said age was nothing but a number. She invited me to get some food.

This cafeteria is for the hoi polloi—security guards and food and maintenance workers. There’s a dining room on the main floor, but it’s only for elected politicians.

On my way to Woolsey’s office in the Rayburn building, I saw a crew of some 50 guys in khaki uniforms and blue baseball caps running down the path from the Capitol building. They headed toward the mall, amid lights and sirens of various emergency vehicles. I don’t know what it was all about—maybe a drill or something. Later I saw them in the Capitol building, and they had the word, “Challenge” stitched over their breast pockets. They were all young and most were black. Some sort of paramilitary youth group, I guess. It’s happened before.

In the Rayburn Building, what sounded like a fire alarm went off for several minutes. Nobody seemed to be running for exits, though. This happened again before I left the building. Maybe it meant that there was about to be a vote, and lawmakers better get their ass over to the Capitol.
I wonder if there’s a secret underground passageway between the two buildings? It’s actually kind of a hassle to get from the Rayburn building to the Capitol, because it’s in the middle of the block across a busy street, and you have to walk to a corner and wait for a light, then cross and walk back to the middle of the block. Or you can just take your life in your hands and scoot across, which is what I did.

Later, wandering around in the basement, I found out that there is a secret passageway, and I almost went on it, but decided better and tried to find the floor where the rotunda was. I was stopped by a security guard, who said I shouldn't be in the Capitol unless I was with a tour, and told me to leave.

However, as I was on the way out, another guard asked me if I’d like to go to the Senate gallery, and gave me a pass, so back I went. There was no one in the Senate, however, and no prospects for anyone returning before 2:30 pm, so I left and went back to the House gallery, because I had heard that there was a vote there.

You have to understand that both galleries are a three-story walkup from the ground floor, and that you have to start from the ground for each one. So by the time I had retrieved my bag, gone downstairs, across the Capitol building and back up the stairs, checked my bags in and submitted to the search, the vote was over, and the last of the Reps were on their way out the door. A skeleton crew was left to take turns posturing over some amendment or other.

Washington, continued

Got up this morning at 6:30 and staggered (literally) down the narrow, winding stairs four floors to the kitchen to grope for some coffee. There's a big--two gallon!--coffee machine there with lights flashing and knobs and everything.

But no coffee.

I sat down and tried to focus on my email. A lady, Mary Jean from Louisville, offered me some tea and told me that breakfast was at 7:30. So I waited; 7:30 came and went. No coffee. But the dining room was filling up. I talked with a pastor from Alberta about Canadian healthcare (he likes it, and was able to be pretty specific about its strengths and weaknesses), and a German woman who's studying Chinese history at the Library of Congress who was astonished that you could get free wireless in the dining room.

I queried the room on what was the best thing to see in DC.

"Everything!" said Mary Jean, and, being the gregarious sort, "Especially the company." I found her recommendation a little too all-encompassing to be helpful. A man at the next table went into a long dissertation about how with careful planning I could see everything in my four days--enumerating all the sights to be seen. But I'd have to commit to a strict timetable: 30 minutes in the Museum of Natural History, 15 at the Jefferson Memorial, and so forth.

You can do the art museums pretty fast, he said, because all you have to do is glance at each painting. He confessed he wasn't an art connoisseur.

Instead, I'm sitting here writing about what he said, as the minutes tick by. The breakfast lady finally shows up at 8:30, and Mary Jean pitches in and makes the coffee. I have lent my laptop to a young woman from New Delhi who wants to email her husband and tell him about her first trip to the U.S. She's here as a medical student at a conference.

She has a lot to tell him. I excuse myself and call Lynn Woolsey's office. Ordinarily, the staff person says, we ask for a week's notice for a tour. She said to drop by and they'd see if they could arrange something. When? Well, Congress is in session in the evening (!), so any other time. No wonder they don't get anything done.

The hostel's air conditioning system makes a particularly annoying sound--a fluctuating drone that waxes and wanes on about a 5-second interval. I was given a room on the third floor that was quite nice--I had an alcove with a two-bed bunk and it seemed reasonable that I would have it to myself. But the bed was right next to the air conditioner. After 20 minutes, I asked to be moved, and I'm now on the 6th floor in a big open room with a half-dozen other women. The air conditioner has the same problem, but at least it's on the other side of the room. I went to sleep listening to the "Mellow" playlist on my Ipod.

Okay, I'm off to go traipsing around on the Capitol Mall.

My Trip to DC

I'm sitting in the lounge of the DC hostel after just having the most expensive, most insipid beer in my life.

The fancy restaurant across the street has a bar, and I figured, how expensive could a beer be? What I didn't count on was the beers were all unpronounceable Belgian imports served in tiny glasses for the price of a fine sherry in reality land. For all their descriptive overload ("blonde with a white head and hints of citrus and coriander"), they are flavorless compared to the earthy California microbrews.

Otherwise, things are great at the hostel. The photo above shows the front desk, and the other one the lounge. The hostel is quiet--there is Wi-Fi in the lounge, as well as pay-per-minute desktops for the less fortunate, and there's a certain camaraderie missing as people stare at their bluish screens or write in notebooks or plug into their Ipods. No international confessions or courtships are going on. Did it use to be like this? A very tall man comes in, sits in a corner and reads a dog-eared Bible for ten minutes, then leaves. I saw him on the airporter earlier, so he must be from out of town like me. A middle aged woman sits down beside me and reads Charlie Brown's Cyclopedia. She too leaves ten minutes later.

Here is what I wrote on the plane from SF:

Ah, the thrills of the flying stand-by! On the bus trip to the airport, I was unexpectedly tranquil, compared to my usual unreasoning anxiety at the beginning of every trip. I guess I'm mellowing out. (Or maybe the meds are finally kicking in.) The bus arrived early and I had a whole hour to relax, drink coffee and read the newspaper.

But as the flight approaches the end of loading, I find myself beginning to fidget, my eyes riveted on the desk, as names are called out that aren't mine. Finally the suspense drags me out of my seat to edge ever closer to the desk and fix whichever attendant glances my way with a fierce stare, as if to force them by brute concentration to call out my name. This always happens. Finally one asks me what I want, and I say I’m just waiting for my name to be called. He smiles and says, “You’ll get on,” and I relax and observe the other passengers.

The man sitting next to me wears a dark blue suit and white shirt. He has a distinguished shock of white hair. Clearly, a government official or lobbyist.

Well, maybe not. It turns out he too is flying standby. He gets called just before I do.
I was hoping for first class, since there were five seats open. Instead I get one of the four economy seats that are, inexplicably, in the business cabin. I was warned that business class services were not included. But apparently the attendants didn’t get the message, and I am offered a parade of free food and drink, hot towels and linen napkins. I had a fruit plate with a croissant for breakfast and I’m now sipping a tomato juice. So I haven’t touched my hoard of food. But I think I will before we land.

You know those little bags of party mix they give out instead of real food? They give the same stuff to the privileged classes. Except that here the mix also contains almonds, and is known as “Supreme Mix.”

They gave me noise-canceling headphones, which turned out not to work with my economy seat. I asked to keep them anyway, because they do cut down on the noise a little. I’m wearing them over my Ipod earbuds; I’ve so far listened to “This American Life,” Rachel Madow and Thom Hartmann. Friday’s news, but since I didn’t read the news on Friday, who cares? While listening, I work the Sudoku puzzles in the airplane magazine—not the easy ones like I usually do, so I was only able to complete one without botching it up beyond repair.

An 82-year-old Filipina lady is sitting by me. When awake, she talks incessantly; but mostly she is asleep, except when the attendant wakes her up every 15 minutes to ply her with more food and drink.

I’ve got a window seat, but precious little good it is. The window is almost behind me, and looks out over the engines and the wing. Still, I did see a little. It’s been mostly clear across the country.

We’re about an hour and a half from landing. With my laptop on its lowest light setting, I still have four and a half hours left on my battery. I think I’ll break out the yogurt and listen to some more Thom Hartmann. He talks to the Code Pink lady who got arrested the other day, and she gives a Web site and pleads for people to come to DC to replace the people who have been arrested and given "stay away" orders. I write down the URL and later, at the hostel, sign up to help out if needed.

We land uneventfully, and it's an easy and fast trip on the Washington Flyer to the nearest underground station, and then on to the Metro station in the heart of DC. A true tourist, I light out on the three block walk to my hostel in the wrong direction. It takes a block and a half for me to get that the sequence of lettered streets is going the wrong way, when I could have simply looked up and noticed which way the sun was setting.

A minor problem with the computer--it wouldn't do anything, despite several reboots!--turned out to be nothing more than a particle from the "Supreme Mix" lodged under my left mouse key.

Now, though my computer refuses so far to acknowledge the time change, I actually feel like it's 8:30 instead of 5:30, and moreover, having slept four and a half hours last night, am just about ready for bed.

Tomorrow I'll call Lynn Woolsey's office and see what I can get for my political contributions!

Cheney Beats the Drums of War - washingtonpost.com

Even Fareed Zakaria thinks Cheney is off the deep end about Iran:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on? . . .
...
We're on a path to irreversible confrontation with a country we know almost nothing about. The United States government has had no diplomats in Iran for almost 30 years. American officials have barely met with any senior Iranian politicians or officials. We have no contact with the country's vibrant civil society. Iran is a black hole to us—just as Iraq had become in 2003.

The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, in order to create a new political order in the country. Bush's representative to the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that "the Iranians were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance to make the final concessions that we asked for." Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better relations with the United States through him and others in 2001 and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan. Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence. The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, "looked down and rustled his papers." No reply was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They're mad.

Zakaria was quoted in Dan Froomkin's article in the Washington Post about Cheney's latest bellicosity toward Iran: Dan Froomkin - Cheney Beats the Drums of War - washingtonpost.com. It includes a link to Cheney's speech.

U.K.: CRAGS make a personal commitment to reduce carbon footprint

Groups’ Aim: The Greening of Britain - New York Times

October 21, 2007

Groups’ Aim: The Greening of Britain

By JAMES KANTER

LONDON — Jacqueline Sheedy has turned the former coal barge where she lives into a shrine to energy efficiency: she reads by candlelight in midwinter, converts the waste from her toilet into fertilizer, and hauls fresh water home on a trailer attached to her bicycle.

Now Ms. Sheedy has set herself a new goal: to stop burning coal for heat and instead use wood from renewable sources.

“I’m scared of the cold this winter,” said Ms. Sheedy, 42, who earns her living teaching urban gardeners to grow food. “But it’s going to be difficult for everyone else to cut their carbon footprints, so I should also keep on setting myself personal challenges.”

Ms. Sheedy is in a CRAG, or a Carbon Rationing Action Group, based in Islington, in North London, whose members have pledged to live low-carbon lives.

Like-minded groups are slowly springing up across Britain, with about 160 people active in some 20 CRAGs. While that is not a large number, the craggers, as they are known, are an example of how the phenomenon of low-carbon living is spreading in Britain, where politicians, companies and communities are competing to be the greenest.

Craggers calculate their personal emissions from things like natural gas and electricity bills, car emissions and airplane travel. The Islington CRAG has imposed a yearly limit of nearly 9,000 pounds of carbon emissions on each member.

As an example of the constraints that imposes, a round-trip flight between London and Hong Kong would burn up more than half that allowance, generating 4,800 pounds of carbon emissions, according to an online calculator available through the British Airways Web site.

The group holds its members to account by imposing fines on those who fail to keep their emissions under the yearly limit. Those who emit progressively less each year can earn money from more profligate members, who pay into the system.

The members say they are willing to make personal sacrifices, from turning down the heat to giving up driving to work, to prove that emissions cuts are feasible without expensive new technologies.

“The public perception is that you’ve got to be rich to be green,” said Andy Ross, 39, an engineer in Glasgow, who helped to found one of the first CRAGs last year. “But it’s not the amount of money you’ve got to spend on fancy micro-renewable energy kits,” he said. “It’s identifying the size of your footprint and adjusting your lifestyle accordingly.”

Read the rest...

Don't run, Al!

I'm probably the lone naysayer in my crowd, but I just don't see Al Gore as a viable candidate. Here's what I wrote to Thom Hartmann about it:

Am I the only progressive in America who thinks an Al Gore nomination would be a disaster?

Gore is doing so much good as a spokesperson on global warming. Why should he shift to a role he neither wants nor is good at? Gore is a terrible public speaker and even worse politician. He comes across as a know-it-all. The press hates him. He loses his bearings in an atmosphere that requires compromise and accommodation--remember the clothing makeovers and all the other attempts to fit the mold?

Many middle of the road voters still see him as a figure of ridicule, the guy who invented the Internet and rolls his eyes in debates.

Yes, "An Inconvenient Truth" is brilliant, but we haven't seen the out-takes. There are no out-takes and no script in a presidential contest.

The fact that no one mentions this makes me wonder if we progressives are the ones living in a bubble. To run Al Gore for president would be to squander a priceless resource. (How ironic.)

Photo from PoliticsOnline

Okay, the stuff in the "drafts" folder is piling up...

First, my very own article about flu season and precautions:

How to stay healthy during flu season - Get a flu shot, wash your hands frequently, avoid crowds and be careful what you touch

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Iraqis to Pay China $100 Million for Weapons for Police - washingtonpost.com

Those eternally ungrateful Iraqis are now buying weapons from the Chinese! Don't they know we're the number one weapons merchants in the world?

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Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII - washingtonpost.com

How we used to "extract information" from detainees back before the War on Terror, when the only threat to the civilized world was Hitler's genocidal marauders.

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5 Myths About Sick Old Europe

You may be surprised to learn how our estranged transatlantic partner has been faring during these roller-coaster times -- and how successfully it has been knocking down the Europessimist myths about it.

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Last, and with sorrow, two links on Burma that my friend Gail of Thinking Out Loud emailed to me:

Burma fades from view
Heart of Darkness

Interesting, I wrote back. This morning I searched the entire New York Times Web site and found not a word on Burma.

I was outraged, but Steve pointed out that if no news is allowed out of Burma, it's pretty hard to write an article on it. Still, I think there are a number of issues that ought to keep Burma in the headlines, such as the implications of the Burmese government's total information blackout, and the role other countries and corporations play in the Burmese government's grip on power there.

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(Does anyone know how to insert a divider in a blog post, so I don't have to use these stupid asterisks? I thought that used to be one of the formatting options, but can't find it.)

This is way too cool

A laptop you can drop in the lake or use to contact your friends without an Internet!

Auto industry's slow suicide

In 1985 there were no Ipods, no cell phones, no laptops, no Web sites, very few home computers.

But one thing hasn't changed since 1985.

Auto industry's slow suicide | Santa Rosa Press Democrat // News for California's North Bay and Redwood Empire: "U.S. mileage standards for passenger car fleets have been frozen at 27.5 miles per gallon since 1985. Light trucks are even worse. The Senate energy bill calls for U.S. automakers to achieve a corporate average fuel economy of 35 mpg by 2020."

Think of it! For over 20 years of technological revolution and growing consensus about global warming, our fuel-efficiency standards are stuck in 1985.

Free Burma!

Petaluma's hometown heroes

Wherever you live, I hope you have people like Bill and Lucy Kortum working to make your community a better place to live. This is an article I wrote for our local paper, the Petaluma Argus Courier. It was because of Bill's efforts to save the Sonoma County coast for the public that every inch of California's coastline is now accessible to you and me.

Kortums honored for a lifetime of service - Conservation group honors couple for their service to community and environment

Bill and Lucy Kortum met while painting fences at the Kortum family ranch on Ely Road. It was an apt beginning for 53 years of hard work together to make the world a better place, on the way imbuing their three children with the same activist drive.

Family connections brought them together. Lucy’s best friend Jean had married Bill’s brother Karl, founder of the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Bill and Lucy cemented the relationship by spending the rest of the summer repairing a sailboat and sailing together.

Today, the couple maintains a finish-each-other’s-sentences kind of intimacy and shared purpose. On Saturday Oct. 6, Sonoma County Conservation Action, which Bill founded in 1991, will honor the two with a special dinner.

The Kortums’ imprint on Sonoma County history is everywhere. Bill has been involved in choosing the location for Sonoma State University, purchasing the land for Salt Point State Park, incorporating the City of Cotati, securing Petaluma’s urban growth boundary and numerous other achievements.

Bill was born and raised in Petaluma, at that time a town of 6,000.

“We had free run of town and the hills around,” said Kortum. “You just felt you owned the place. That sense of freedom has kind of driven me all these years — the sense of ownership, and sense of responsibility to conserve that great resource.”

He was 8 or 9 when his family moved from Western Avenue to the ranch on Ely Road, where Bill and Lucy live today, surrounded by abundant vegetable and fruit gardens. Within sight of the house they helped design is the barn Bill built himself as a high school project. The barn is now the family winery.

Activism was a family tradition. Bill’s grandfather had been a founding member of the Calistoga City Council, and his father and older brother Karl fought to keep Highway 101 from being rerouted through the family ranch. His mother was active in the PTA.

“It was a demonstration that you did not have to accept the status quo,” said Bill.

After a stint in the Merchant Marine during World War II, Bill earned a degree from the University of California School of Veterinary Medicine at Davis and established the Cotati Veterinary Hospital.

Lucy, born to a Navy family in Coronado, went to Pomona College and later Sonoma State University, where she got her master’s degree in history. Through her efforts, both the Sunset Line and Twine building and Petaluma’s Carnegie Library (now the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum) are on the National Historic Buildings Registry.

Later, a government grant enabled her to survey and research Carnegie Libraries all over the state for her master’s thesis. This project sent Bill and Lucy on a series of visits to the small towns of California.

For her work as a historian, Lucy received the Petaluma Good Egg Award in 2006, and in 2005, the Jeanne Thurlow Miller Individual Award from the Sonoma County Historical Society. She still works one day a week each at the Petaluma Museum and the history room of the Petaluma Library.

In 1960, Bill’s veterinary expertise played a significant role in fighting the establishment of a nuclear power plant on Bodega Head. He garnered the support of the conservative Sonoma County dairy industry by showing them tissue samples from cows contaminated with radioactive iodine near the Humboldt reactor and convincing them that no one would want to buy contaminated milk.

Sharing a love of the California coast with his brother Karl, Bill responded to the privatization of Sea Ranch beaches by spearheading an effort to keep Sonoma County’s beaches public. He chaired the California Coastal Alliance of 110 groups that in 1972 sponsored Proposition 20, the initiative that mandated open beaches in California.

The Kortum Trail along the coast near Shell Beach is a tribute to his efforts.

Following the family tradition of politics, Bill served as a Sonoma County Supervisor and as a member of the Petaluma School Board and the Democratic Central Committee. He is founder and current board member of the Sonoma County Conservation Action, and is still arguably its most active member, said fellow boardmember John Kramer.

Bill Kortum achieved his successes by going directly to the people, knocking on doors to ask in simple language if they really wanted their waste water dumped into the Russian River or a nuclear power plant on their doorstep. Thanks to his efforts, SCCA has reached 70,000 households a year, said Kramer.

“Even more than all the great organizations he and Lucy have helped create and build, I think Bill’s great gift to the region has been the legions of younger activists he has patiently mentored,” said Larry Modell, past chair of Petaluma Tomorrow, which gave Bill the Greening of Petaluma Award in 2006 in recognition of his work on Petaluma’s Urban Growth Boundary. “Through all these decades, the hundreds of us who have had the good fortune to work with him have learned volumes about how government works, how to change it, and how to have fun doing so.”

Along the way, Bill said, Lucy’s partnership has been essential. Not much for meetings, she has shaped Bill’s writing, organized papers and photos and maintained computer files.

“He runs around and she organizes it,” said SCCA board member Fran Tanti.

According to Kramer, it was Lucy who, on her Underwood typewriter, typed the telegram to the state commission that brought SSU to where it is.

The Kortum influence has reached far beyond Sonoma County, somewhat to their surprise. As he said, “We protected our coast and the whole coast of California was protected.”

Now, urban growth boundaries are taking shape in California cities.

Israeli military aid to Burmese regime: Jane's | World War 4 Report

From World War 4 Report
Submitted by David Bloom on Sat, 09/29/2007 - 20:14.

Israeli military aid to Burmese regime: Jane's | World War 4 Report: "The Burmese junta currently shooting unarmed protestors received a cynical plea for restraint from the Israel government on Sept. 29. According to the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, the Israeli foreign ministry announced 'Israel is concerned by the situation in Myanmar, and urges the government to demonstrate restraint and refrain from harming demonstrators.' The article ended by pointing out that 'Israel denies selling weapons to Burma or Myanmar.' (Ha'aretz, Sept. 29)

Not true, according to a March 1, 2000 report in the authoritative British publication Jane's Intelligence Review by William Ashton. The article, titled 'Myanmar and Israel develop military pact,' details how Israeli companies and the Israeli government have been supplying and developing weapons for the Burmese regime, and sharing intelligence..."

Read it all...