What’s the best gift imaginable?

Attended a conference a while back. My employer is usually penurious when it comes to conferences and travel for people like me. But this one was in town and my boss thought I’d somehow benefit. I didn’t want to go; it was sponsored by a vendor and wasn’t terribly relevant to my work. Besides, I’ve got lots to do, since I keep getting new responsibilities without losing any of the old ones. But orders are orders; I went.

Turns out my boss was right, just not in the way she thought.

Towards the end of the conference I was sitting in a fairly crowded lecture hall. A late arrival found the seat next to me. I don’t much remember what the presentation was about, but I certainly remember the conversation that my neighbor and I fell into after it ended. Polite noncommittal comments on the presentation slid into professional issues and rapidly branched seamlessly into myriad topics ranging from current events to literature to baseball to history to music to electoral politics to family histories and on and on. The neighbor finally had to run to catch the train to home to a distant city. Then exploratory e-mails wondering if the conversation was a fluke, followed by more e-mails, more exchanges, more sharing over a gulf of two hundred miles that confirmed a simpatico soul.

Sometimes the origins of true friendship stretch back into a dimly remembered past, seemingly as much a part of the firmament of life the earth beneath your feet. Sometimes it grows slowly, framed in familiarity, creeping silently into your life until some anomalous event suddenly reveals the bond’s strength. Or it can be forged in compelling shared experiences. Sometimes it bursts forth with a breathtaking abruptness.

However it comes, it’s a gift almost beyond compare. Friends are good. Very good.

But then, I’m old.

Got my 16 year old a cell phone a while back. Unlimited calls within network, and a generous allotment for prime-time out of network calls. No good; it didn’t include unlimited texting.

“But you can call,” says I.

“Daaaaaaaad,” says she, clearly frustrated by my ignorance of all matters significant.

Despite exhortations to be prudent, if not miserly, texting still occurred, month after month. Recriminations.

Back to the provider; signed up for unlimited texting within network, and what looked to me to be a generous ration of texting outside of network. Kid agrees to bear the cost for any over that amount. First month’s bill with the texting service comes today. 178 messages out of network over and above that generous allotment.

“Pay up,” says I.

“Daaaaaaaad,: says she, with that exasperated, dismissive voice only teens can master.

I just don’t get it. But then, I’m old. And getting older.

I’ve been depressed for a while now, which probably helps explain my long silence here. Apologies, but depression is like that. Doing anything is difficult when you’re down. Or at least it is for me.

Took part of the day off today. Had a “good” reason — had to let a contractor into the house. But that only took a little bit; I thought it would be nice to have the afternoon off, especially with the weather good. Maybe I’d work in the garden, maybe I’d work on my the big kayak.

But most of the afternoon I just sat around, doing nothing and feeling worse for just that reason. Didn’t even notice that it was so nice outside. Depression is like that. It’s always seemed like the world is black & white; colors don’t exist during depression. Ever watch newsreels from the thirties? All black & white. No wonder they called it the Great Depression.

Finally I managed to throw some laundry into the machine. Quite an effort, huh? Funny, though, but doing something even as easy as that helps. Once I got that going, I moved the ‘yak down onto the saw horses, got the rotary sander out, and started grinding off the stray bits of fiberglass and globs of epoxy left over from ‘galssing the deck a few weeks ago. Not a huge job, but necessary for the second coat of epoxy.

Not a huge job, but it went well, and felt good to do it.

Not a huge job, and certainly not a cure. But it helps, and the afternoon sun brought out the brilliant greens of the oak, the fresh blue of the sky, and the bright white of the cumulus.

Today we learned that the Bush administration wants to let people carry loaded, concealed guns in national parks (click here for the news article). This letter is in reply.

To the editor, New York Times:

Permitting guns into National Parks is an incredibly bad idea. Poachers will be delighted. So will the deranged predators, the rapists, the thieves, the sociopaths who prey upon innocent people. But for the rest of us, it’s a recipe for tragedy.

The NRA tells us guns will make parks safer. Wrong. Department of Justice figures clearly show that the innocent are far, far more likely to be the victims of gun violence than the beneficiaries. In 2004, a fairly typical year, private citizens used their guns to kill 170 criminals. Criminals used their guns to kill 11,624 innocent victims. What makes anybody think that appalling ratio will somehow be reversed if we allow guns into our national parks?

When people come to National Parks, they’re looking for respite, for peace and quiet, for the simpler joys of our natural world. They want to get away from the violence and tension of their workaday world. Let’s not ruin it for them, for all of us.

The key to nearly the full range of conflicts in the Middle East is the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict which establishes a viable Palestinian state and leads to a secure Israel, thereby removing a casus belli within the Middle East and leading ultimately to the furtherance of regional prosperity and peace. I’ve become increasingly convinced that the political forces holding that key reside in America and shape the direction of American policy towards the region.

In that light, I recommend an opinion piece appearing in today’s New York Times by Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for The Atlantic, who argues that the long-range interests of Israel depend upon the emergence of a Palestinian state and that American supporters of Israel must come to realize what many Israelis already know, that the Israel that they value cannot continue to exist unless the emergence of such a state is encouraged.

Goldberg’s column can be found through this link to the Times.

George W. Bush is a master at redefining the bottom. Every time it’s seemed that he’s plumbed the lowest levels of leadership, he discovers ways to slide even deeper into the muck at the bottom. Today in Israel he did it again.

“Some seem to believe,” he said, “that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement.”

Like much of what he says, this has a patina of sensibility to it. But as usual, that thin patina proves to be only camouflage for demagoguery.

What’s he really saying here? That we shouldn’t negotiate with our adversaries simply because they are, well, our adversaires? How, pray tell, is it otherwise possible to resolve conflicts, save by annihilation? Should we negotiate only with our friends, with people we find agreeable? Much help that is in resolving disputes.

The real world is filled with conflict. The quality that separates civilization from barbarism isn’t the lack of conflict, but the ability to deal with conflict without resorting to violence and coercion. Negotiation is the tool for resolving conflicts. The only tool. Yes, that means talking with adversaries, even negotiating with them. But it’s infinitely better than the desolation of war.

The easy route, the cheap route, the cowardly route, the barbaric route, is the one Bush would use. Negotiation is the more difficult, the more courageous, the more honorable … but ultimately, the only successful way to resolve conflicts and still restrain the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Bush should be ashamed. But he’s not, so his misguided approach must be condemned.

The process was exhausting — a day and a half of being “on” 100% of the time t’ain’t easy for me — but I like the people, the position, the place and the institution.

Now it’s down to hoping they like me. And remembering that there are a couple of other candidates probably thinking and feeling the same thing I am.

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Funny thing is, even if they don’t want me and I end up staying where I am, there’s good reason to try to build a cooperative relationship ’cause their place and mine would both benefit.

Tomorrow and Tuesday I’ve got a job interview I really, really, really, really want to go well. On the short list; only two others hoping the exact same thing. Spent the whole weekend preparing. Wonder how it’ll go. Wonder how I’ll manage being fatalistic, waiting for the word. It would be a good job I think, but I sure do hate the process ….

Are molecules smarter than people? An argument can be made ….

Add additional molecules to a gas and they’ll quickly disperse through the gas until pressure is equalized. Add additional commuters to a subway car, and they’ll congregate near the doors, in effect establishing a higher pressure of commuters there than in the spaces between the doors. Most stand cheek to jowl by the doors, with few if any dispersing into lower pressures of the mid-car spaces.

This experiment is not only reproducible, but is reproduced every day, on almost every train.

Molecules, or people? You be the judge.

On Saturday, a horribly destructive cyclone hit Burma. Two days later, Laura Bush declared that the U.S. stands ready to send “substantial” disaster assistance to Burma provided its government plays nice. That’s about as long as it took after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast for her husband to make his famous flyover of devastated New Orleans as he flew home to Washington after vacationing in Texas. If Burma’s autocrats follow his schedule, they’re due on Wednesday to compliment the leader of their emergency response effort for doing “a heck of a job.”

The obvious question for the first lady is how well any “substantial” American aid to Burma would compare to the inadequate and dilatory assistance her husband’s administration has provided to New Orleans. Put another way, one wonders if even Burma’s autocratic government beat the Bush administration’s sorry record of succoring its stricken communities than the .