English Tutor (애국가맨)

Free concert at Highline Ballroom!! January 24,2012, Tuesday night! NYC

2012-01-23T12:14:00.000-05:00

Meany USA Presents: Autodrone, Baby Brother, JMI, Jaimz Deen, and
Rejectionist Front

January 24,2012, Tuesday night
Concert starts @ 8PM, Doors open @ 6PM

Located at 431 W 16th St, New York, NY 10011, between 9th and 10th Ave

FREE ADMISSION to see Rejectionist Front

Call/text Tony at 646-770-3506, to be put on the guest list (email:sidharthur@gmail.com)

Rejectionist Front, a hard-driving New York rock band with hip-hop, funk, and punk influences. The band delivers an intense, high-energy live performance defined by social and politically charged awareness. This group rejects people fronting each other and mobilizes through music for positive change. Rejectionist Front has performed at venues like Webster Hall, The Concert Hall, B.B. King Blues Club, the Knitting Factory, Sullivan Hall, Crash Mansion, and CBGB, in addition to shows in support of the USO, Rock the Vote in Denver during the Democratic National Convention, and Save Darfur.

http://www.myspace.com/rejectionistfront, http://www.rejectionistfront.com,

http://www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.aspx?epk_id=151391, http://highlineballroom.com/bio.php?id=2275

英语口语演讲技能培训

2012-01-21T18:14:00.000-05:00

“Tony是一个有很强责任心的老师，他热爱教学，对学生态度友好，并且他还会在课后推荐一些有助于自学的学习咨询，例如一些可以帮助提高英文能力的电台、电影、网站等信息。如果你想找一位对工作有热情、认真负责的英语老师，Tony是一个不错的选择。”

“Tony是一個有很強責任心的老師，他熱愛教學，對學生態度友好，並且他還會在課後推薦一些有助於自學的學習咨詢，例如一些可以幫助提高英文能力的電臺、電影、網站等信息。如果你想找一位對工作有熱情、認真負責的英語老師，Tony是一個不錯的選擇。” “Tony is a very responsible teacher. He likes his teaching career and always has a good attitude to his students. He not only helps students in class, but also provides some good resources like some American movies, radio [stations] and websites to his students after class. If you are looking for a responsible teacher, Tony is your best choice!” Holly, 1.21.2012, student 2011-2012

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英语口语演讲技能培训
培训内容:提高英语口语技能 -纠正发音和语法 -提高听力理解能力 -提高自由会话交流水平 -提高写作及习语俚语应用能力 -帮助你理解并适应美国文化. 收费标准: 一对一. 每45分钟10美元小组. 起价45分10美元, 每增加一个学员费用加5美元联系方式 .Tony老师, 来电或短信.

电话 . (646) 770-3506

电子邮件 . nyet101@

gmail.com

英会話のレッスン

2012-01-21T16:11:00.001-05:00

こんにちは、しんやです。 ニューヨークで英語を勉強するなら、トニーのレッスン、おすすめします！留学中でも、旅行やビジネスの合間でもＯＫ。 トニーは、自分のレベル、ペースに合わせて教えてくれるので、ビギナーから上級者まで、安心して受講できます。また、友達と受けても、プライベートでも大丈夫。 なんといっても、トニーの良いところは、フレンドリーで話しやすいところ。 話題が豊富で、身近なニューヨークのことから、世界中のことまで、芸術、文化、政治、ニュースなど、なんでも自分のリクエストに応じてレッスンの題材にアレンジしてくれます。自分は、ヒップホップが好きなので、ヒップホップを題材にしてもらったり、また、ニューヨークが好きなので、身近なニューヨークのニュースを題材にしてもらったりして、楽しみながら、英会話のレッスンを受けることができました。今年の春と夏にニューヨークに行くので、またトニーのレッスンを受けて英語力を向上させようと思います。”Hello, I'm Shinya. If you want to learn English in New York, I recommend you take Tony's lessons. You can take the lessons during your travels, business, or while studying abroad. Tony teaches English at the student's level and pace, so everyone from beginners to advanced students can take the lessons easily. You can take the lessons by yourself or with friends. He is friendly and easy to speak to. He has a lot of things to talk about. You can talk to him about New York, local and worldwide topics, art, culture, politics, news, and so on. You can talk about anything. I like Hip Hop, so we talked about Hip hop, and of course I like New York so we talked about New York. I really enjoyed the lessons. I will go to New York again in the spring and summer. I'd like to improve my English skills even more. So I will definitely take Tony's lessons again!” – January 21, 2012 (2011 student)

일대일로 영어 회화를 해보아요!

2012-01-20T07:56:00.000-05:00

당신은 영어회화를 (할) 사람이 필요합니다. 당신은 ( 많이) 알고있지만 말을(회화를) 못 하고 있습니다. Tony선생님과 일대일로 회화를 해보아요!

영어 회화를 하십시요!

2012-01-20T07:08:00.003-05:00

“당신은 영어 회화를 한 사람이 필요합니다. 당신은 많은 알고있지만 말을 못 하고있습니다. Tony선생하고 일대일로 회화를 하십시요!”

Mr. 신

2011-2012

회화학생

#english tutor in new york #英語 뉴욕 #영어 튜터 英会話

2012-01-14T14:32:00.000-05:00

english tutor in new york 英語 뉴욕 영어 튜터　英会話

2012-01-12T20:39:00.000-05:00

free trial

2012-01-09T21:00:00.002-05:00

Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit | Video on TED.com

2011-10-20T13:59:00.000-04:00

Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit | Video on TED.com

BrooklynBookFestival's photostream

2011-09-18T22:34:00.001-04:00

BrooklynBookFestival's photostream on Flickr.

5569_1114861628224_1127447357_30324239_480839_n (1)

2011-09-11T05:41:00.001-04:00

5569_1114861628224_1127447357_30324239_480839_n (1), a photo by sidharthur on Flickr.

english tutor new york city guidev2

2011-08-29T17:40:00.000-04:00

english tutor new york city guide

2011-08-29T17:34:00.002-04:00

Domestic Bliss?

2011-06-30T11:34:00.002-04:00

http://www.nypress.com/article-22545-domestic-bliss.html

http://www.joelkimmel.com/
Domestic Bliss?

From gender role squabbles to non-monogamy: What straight couples can learn from same-sex couples —to be happier in their own marriages

By Seth Michael Donsky

Cover Illustration by Joel Kimmel / http://www.joelkimmel.com/

Andrea Reese and Alice Ro have been engaged for just over a year. The Brooklyn residents, both in their forties, had hoped to get married in a civil ceremony in Manhattan City Hall this September and to celebrate with a ceremony in Park Slope. But that possibility remains doubtful as of press time.

Undaunted, the couple will now simply perform the civil ceremony elsewhere; Provincetown and Montreal are high on their list. But they will still celebrate with a secular ceremony in Park Slope. One of the ceremony's guests will be Andrea's ex-husband, John. He is, by Andrea's own admission, a "great guy," to whom she was married for four years (they had lived together for five years prior). They ultimately parted because they had lost the feeling of being a romantic couple and had become much more like buddies. "We have maintained a close friendship," says Andrea. "He's a big fan of Alice, and Alice and I are glad to have him at our ceremony."

Maintaining close ties to one's exes is a relationship dynamic fairly common in the LGBTQ community (as a matter of fact, my own boyfriend's two closest friends are long-term exes of his—and I like them fine). But maintaining close ties with former lovers after beginning new, committed romantic relationships, especially marriage, is only one of many unconventional relationship constructs— unconventional for opposite-sex marriages, at any rate—that same-sex couples are likely to import into the institution of marriage. And that's not necessarily such a bad thing.

At least not according to Stephanie Coontz, co-chair and director of Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families. Coontz, along with other experts, believes that the ways in which young, opposite-sex couples view marriage have changed substantially over the past several decades. And if the experts are right, then, as ironic as it may seem, it could turn out that these "conventional" couples may just happen to find their best role models for the sorts of marriages they want to construct for themselves by looking at those of pioneering same-sex marriages.

Maybe you haven't noticed amidst the din of same-sex couples clamoring to get married, but opposite-sex couples aren't exactly rushing down the aisle these days. The latest census data indicates that the percentage of U.S. adults who are married is decreasing, while those who do decide to marry are waiting longer to do so. Contrary to how much of the mainstream media interprets this data, Coontz and her colleagues believe that the data reflects a change in how heterosexual people view marriage, not a lack of interest on their part in getting married. That change, she believes, is in line in many ways with how the LGBTQ community already constructs relationships.

"Young people no longer see marriage as an obligation as they did in the 1950s when it was common to move straight out of one's parents' house into one's own nuclear family," Coontz says. "Marriage is much more of an optional institution now. They organize much less of their lives around marriage than they used to but, paradoxically, they expect much more out of it. Young people are expecting more equality and fairness in the relationship than their parents did. They are striving for a more romantic, egalitarian ideal and, in that, they have much to learn from samesex couples."

Justin Lehmiller, a Harvard psychology lecturer who specializes in the study of close relationships and sexuality, concurs. "Marriage is still a central part of life for most people," he says. "In fact, demographers predict that about four in five young adults will likely marry during the course of their lives. So marriage is still common but it is evolving. What is really changing is when people are marrying and how they want to structure their marriages. They no longer see marriage as an arrangement where there is a strict hierarchy and sharply defined gender roles… [Same-sex] couples tend to be much better at sharing power among the partners and much less likely to adopt strictly defined roles."

And although it's true that gender roles within marriages have been evolving over the last few decades (that is, after all, one of the goals of the women's liberation movement) same-sex relationships come even closer to the egalitarian ideal that Coontz asserts young people strive for because they are entirely free of any conventions to begin with.

In other words, even though opposite-sex marriages may be structured unconventionally—for example, with a stay-at-home husband and a working wife—they are still bound and defined by the conventions they are bucking. Same-sex marriages, by their very nature, are entirely free from those perceived conventions, allowing the partners to define the relationship as they please or to even take turns in different roles depending on what best suits the relationship.

Andrea says that her marriage to John was not very traditional in that they kept separate finances, she didn't take his last name and that they didn't plan on having children. She suspects, however, that her upcoming marriage to Alice will have an even bigger layer of freedom for them to do whatever they want. "We will be completely free to define our relationship for ourselves," she explains.

Matt Castle, who is 39 and lives in Astoria, has been gauging reactions to his 29-year-old fiancé Frank Galgano. "Although nearly everyone we've told about our engagement has reacted with happiness," Matt says, "there's always a slight degree of surprise in their reactions because it's unusual for two men to get married."

Frank says: "It's liberating and wonderful and scary since we have no guidelines to follow."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Married Los Angeles residents Sarah McNeil, 42, and Sonia Camacho, 44, (they have been together for 11 years and were married in a Los Angeles courthouse in 2008 during the brief window, from June to November of that year, when samesex marriage was legal in California) say that they dole out the chores of their marriage and the parenting of their three daughters, ages 7, 5 and 2, based on their strengths and talents rather than their gender. Sonia, for example, loves cooking and the kitchen is almost entirely her domain. Sarah is detail-oriented and loves tracking the finances. They think their approach to chores is a big advantage over their opposite-sex counterparts. "I often see wives and husbands in our friends' marriages having to do certain things based on their gender roles," says Sarah, "rather than being based on what they are good at, interested in or want to do."

Sarah and Sonia see great benefits to their gender-free home for the entire family from the obvious—their daughters feeling empowered to believe they can do anything that a man can—to something more idyllic, such as a potentially harmonious home atmosphere because neither parent feels frustrated by the chores for which they are responsible.

The issues of gender roles can become compounded in relationships with children. Here, however, same-sex couples can also offer a beneficial model for married, opposite-sex parents.

Although Sarah and Sonia considered their relationship to be fairly free of conventional gender roles, they were surprised at how that changed after the birth of their first daughter. It turns

out that both Sarah and Sonia wanted very badly to be "Mom," not one of two mothers, rather, "The Mom." They didn't know how to share that role, and it wasn't something they had even thought about discussing prior to their daughter's birth.

"In all the marriages around us," Sarah says, "never were the gender roles so clearly defined as when children entered the picture." They found themselves fighting over who would bathe their daughter, or racing each other to get to her crib in the morning. It was definitely not what their peers were experiencing with their husbands.

They had no examples to turn to, so they had to figure it out for themselves. "Once the sleep deprivation subsided and the enormous adjustments that all parents go through had worked their way out," Sarah explains, "we realized that it was possible to both be The Mom."

The fact that Sarah nursed their daughter fulfilled the part of her that wanted to be special. Sonia loved taking their daughter out for walks, which she considered her special bond, fulfilling that need in her. By the time their second daughter was born two years later, they were more secure in themselves and each other as parents.

Married New Yorkers Chris Sullivan, 38, and Parvviez Hosseini, 39, (they married in Provincetown, Mass., just under two years ago) became adoptive fathers of a baby girl last May. "Neither of us feels compelled to operate in either role," Chris says, "and, thus far, we have been content to share roles as the situation demands."

Parvviez, for example, loves to read child-rearing books and research baby products, a typical "mom" thing, but also travels a great deal for work, a "dad" thing, leaving Chris to stay home with the baby, like "mom." Chris and Parvviez echo Sarah and Sonia's belief that their genderrole-free household will empower their daughter's sense of self but, in addition, Chris thinks it may make her more comfortable to express her own sexuality, whatever it is, as she gets older.

"Well, of course we structure our relationships and marriages without strict hierarchies and defined gender roles," says Barbara Carrellas, sex educator and author of Urban Tantra Sacred Sex for the 21st Century. "We have to, by default." Carrellas, who identifies as queer herself, believes that what is most interesting about that dynamic is not the actual division of labor but the joint, conscious process through which the relationship is negotiated and co-created. She feels that this is the aspect of LGBTQ relationships most valuable to opposite-sex marriages as a model for loving partnerships.

"People, unmarried people looking to be married, have this idea that they know what marriage is, but they don't. How could they?" she explains. "Most people go into marriage with a view that they have constructed by themselves based on certain goals that society holds out in front of them and then wonder why they have such a difficult time obtaining those goals or discussing them with their partners."

"Gays and lesbians in the '70s weren't really concerned about marriage," Carrellas says. "They just wanted to be free to have sex without being arrested. The liberation of the early queer rights movement allowed those gays and lesbians to form new relationships, the relationships they wanted and those relationships weren't necessarily modeled on heterosexuality. So they had to consciously co-create, negotiate, if you will, the boundaries and parameters of their relationships. And that dynamic is very much alive in LGBTQ relationships today."

To paraphrase Carrellas' point, negotiating outside of society's dictates and standards, something same-sex couples have been forced to do, allows each person to more clearly express and receive what they want and need in a relationship—so the resulting relationship allows each person to be more truly themselves and satisfied about the things that matter most.

Take, for instance, Andrea inviting her ex-husband to her and Alice's ceremony (or, more to the point, Alice's acceptance of it). Because there's no particular rulebook or even pop culture touchstone to apply to the situation, no way in which society tells Andrea or Alice how they are supposed to feel or what they are supposed to do in that situation, they are free to express how they really feel and to decide for themselves where their boundaries are.

I understand this in my own personal life as well. One of my boyfriend's close friends when our relationship became serious was a buddy he was still having sex with. I was less comfortable, at the time, with that relationship than I was with his relationships with his past two relationship partners. We had to discuss the situation carefully. Not because I had any precepts about it, simply because I needed to negotiate the relationship I was most comfortable with and felt comfortable enough with him to do so.

Varied approaches to sexuality is probably the most taboo of the constructs that same-sex couples may import into marriage, and one that Coontz, of the Council on Contemporary Families, approaches very delicately. "I want to be very careful about how this is phrased, but there is a prevalence among some same-sex relationships, particularly gay male relationships, to establish long-term commitments while allowing for nonmonogamy," she says. "While this is not for every opposite-sex couple, just as it is not right for every same-sex couple, it is one of the ways that some people may handle the pressures of a world where people want partnerships but live long lives and have frequent opportunities."

It was just such frequent opportunities that led married New Yorkers Kurt Walters and George Karabotsos, both 48, to open up their relationship sexually. They were monogamous for the first three years of their relationship (they married in San

Francisco almost three years ago, after having been together for eight years), but finally began to question whether or not it was the right choice for them, given the metropolitan environment they lived in.

"Guys would follow us out of the gym," Kurt says, "and ask us if we ever fooled around or whether we were into threeways." So they negotiated a nonmonogamous relationship and that is how they came into, and maintain, their marriage. As Kurt explains: "A relationship based on honesty and integrity is more important to us than one based on monogamy."

Twenty-nine-year-old New Yorker Mikey Rox, who is 10 months into a nonmonogamous marriage with 29-year-old Earl Morrow (they had been together for four years prior to getting married in a Greenwich, Conn., courthouse this past September), absolutely believes that couples can be monogamous, but wonders at what cost. "Personally, I don't want to spend the next 50 years having sex with the same person," Mikey says. "That would be boring to me, and it would lead me into temptation. I prefer removing the temptation by allowing my partner and me to explore, provided we are both on the same page about it and have established rules." For Mikey, it lessens the chances that his marriage will dissolve. "Remember," he says, "that sex isn't love."

But is this a model that same-sex couples should be frightened of? "Quite the contrary," says Manhattan-based psychotherapist Bob Bergeron, author of The Right Side of Forty: The Guide to Happiness for Gay Men at Midlife and Beyond. "Same-sex couples might not necessarily want non-monogamous relationships, but they can learn a great deal from non-monogamous, same-sex couples about how to talk to their partners about sexual desires inside and outside of the relationship." As Bergeron explains, "talking about your desires doesn't mean you act on them, but not talking about them can create more trouble."

Bergeron uses the example of recently resigned Congressman Anthony Weiner. "Had he spoken to his wife, who was often away from home travelling with Secretary of State Clinton, about his needs for objectification of his ripped body—assuming, of course, that he didn't speak to her about it—he might still be a Congressman," Bergeron says.

"Don't knock it until you've tried it," Carrellas says of non-monogamous marriages. But even she admits that the concept might be troubling to some opposite-sex couples. "Again, try not to focus on what the relationships around you are doing but, rather, on how they are doing it," she says. "An open marriage might not be for you, but perhaps there is some other area in your marriage where you could use, to your benefit, the same tools that some other couple is using to negotiate their sexuality."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I spoke with New York State Senator Reuben Diaz, the only democratic Senator who pledged to vote no on the marriage equality bill (and, in fact, the most vocal anti-same-sex marriage Senator in Albany) just prior to the vote. I asked him why he so staunchly opposed legalizing same-sex marriage in New York. He replied that he merely wanted to "preserve marriage as it has always been."

But that's exactly the problem.

Marriage isn't necessarily working for same-sex couples either. According to Harvard psychologist Lehmiller, "Marriage is a dynamic social, cultural and legal construct that has taken many forms throughout history. Attempting to define it in a static way is what many would argue threatens to make it irrelevant. Like all other things, in order for marriage to keep its meaning in society, it must be able to adapt to the modern social context."

I pressed the Senator to see what reasons he had other than the preservation of traditional marriage, to vote no. "Because I don't believe in same-sex marriage," he said, "and that's good enough for me." He assured me that he was confident that his opinion represented not only the majority of his constituents but, also, the majority of the nation.

Actually, the most reliable data we have to support or refute his claim comes from the Pew Research Center and the Gallup

Poll. Pew's most recent polling says that 47 percent of Americans oppose or strongly oppose same-sex marriage (41 percent support and 10 percent are undecided), hardly a vast majority, in fact not a majority at all. The Gallup Poll finds 53 percent of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, a slim majority.

So rest assured, Senator (and others), lesbian and gay couples aren't going to desecrate marriage, we're merely helping to keep it relevant: for same-sex and opposite-sex couples alike.

Seth Michael Donsky is a screenwriter whose latest, Irregardless, deals with a commitmentphobic gay man who officiates his younger sister's wedding. www.sethmichaeldonsky.com.

English Tutor $10/45min. 영어회화파트너 New York City

2011-05-11T12:03:00.004-04:00

English Tutor $10/45min. 영어회화파트너 New York City
영어튜터,英語教師, مدرس اللغة الإنجليزية, Professeur de langue anglaise, Tutor de Idioma Inglês, Lang angle tuteur, Guru Bahasa Inggris, Учитель английского языка, กวดวิชาภาษาอังกฤษ, Tiếng Anh Tutor, İngilizce Eğitmeni, שפה אנגלית מורה
กวดวิชาภาษาอังกฤษ (ฉันให้ 1 วันที่ 1 - หนึ่งครูหนึ่งนักเรียน - ชั้น แต่มีชั้นเรียนกลุ่มอย่างน้อยหนึ่งบังคับ)

Room for rent

2011-04-29T12:52:00.003-04:00

Room for Rent in June, Columbus Circle, Central Park

Room for Rent

Beautiful room in a 2 bedroom apartment at 300 West 55th Street (8th Avenue). It's conveniently located near Central Park in the heart of New York City. There is a 24 hour doorman and elevator access. Every convenience is within walking distance (especially Columbus Circle); with subway, buses, and shops galore. Desirable potential candidates include --male or female-- students or professionals to share with a male (apartment owner) in a respectful non-smoking, non-alcoholic, quiet environment. The rent is $900/m including cable and utilities (telephone line available for use if wanted). For more information please call 212-581-3719 and/or send email to victorarata@aol.com

Room for Rent in June, Columbus Circle, Central Park

2011-04-29T12:50:00.002-04:00

Room for Rent
Beautiful room in a 2 bedroom apartment at 300 West 55th Street (8th Avenue). It's conveniently located near Central Park in the heart of New York City. There is a 24 hour doorman and elevator access. Every convenience is within walking distance (especially Columbus Circle); with subway, buses, and shops galore. Desirable potential candidates include --male or female-- students or professionals to share with a male (apartment owner) in a respectful non-smoking, non-alcoholic, quiet environment. The rent is $900/m including cable and utilities (telephone line available for use if wanted). For more information please call 212-581-3719 and/or send email to victorarata@aol.com

PSAL showcase brings Mo' college looks for Green senior - NYPOST.com

2011-04-02T21:39:00.000-04:00

PSAL showcase brings Mo' college looks for Green senior - NYPOST.com

Film Trailer- Living Downstream

2011-03-05T16:27:00.001-05:00

Film Trailer- Living Downstream

2011-03-05T16:27:00.000-05:00

dave - taxi

2011-03-05T14:19:00.003-05:00

Jokes.com

Dave Chappelle - Race and Comedy

comedians.comedycentral.com

Jokes

Joke of the Day

Funny Jokes

dave - racially paranoid

2011-03-05T14:11:00.003-05:00

Miho Nobuzane Samba Jazz Trio plays Miho's Samba at Royal Horse (Japan)

2011-01-27T18:16:00.000-05:00

Missing girl, since Christmas, Bronx, New York - 149th Street, Grand Concourse

2010-12-29T23:31:00.000-05:00

Missing girl, since Christmas, Bronx, New York - 149th Street, Grand Concourse

Reconnecting Farmers, Society and the Earth | Vandana Shiva – Navdanya International

2010-12-29T16:06:00.002-05:00

Reconnecting Farmers, Society and the Earth | Vandana Shiva – Navdanya International

2010-12-29T16:06:00.001-05:00

Reconnecting Farmers, Society and the Earth | Vandana Shiva – Navdanya International

2010-12-29T16:06:00.000-05:00

Reconnecting Farmers, Society and the Earth | Vandana Shiva – Navdanya International

Rosenstrasse protest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2010-12-29T15:34:00.000-05:00

Rosenstrasse protest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

'Empathic Civilization' By Jeremy Rifkin

2010-12-29T15:30:00.000-05:00

'Empathic Civilization' By Jeremy Rifkin

The Empathic Civilization - Global Consciousness

2010-12-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

english tutor in new york

2010-12-27T13:23:00.011-05:00

english tutor in new york. 646.770.3506

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/영어회화파트너

2010-12-26T11:21:00.003-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/영어회화파트너

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Private_Language#The_rule-following_paradox

2010-12-23T17:47:00.003-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Private_Language#The_rule-following_paradox

The rule-following paradox

In PI 201a Wittgenstein explicitly states the rule-following paradox: "This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule". Kripke gives a mathematical example to illustrate the reasoning that leads to this conclusion. Suppose that you have never added numbers greater than 50 before. Further, suppose that you are asked to perform the computation '68 + 57'. Our natural inclination is that you will apply the addition function as you have before, and calculate that the correct answer is '125'. But now imagine that a bizarre skeptic comes along and argues:

(i) That there is no fact about your past usage of the addition function that determines '125' as the right answer.

(ii) That nothing justifies you in giving this answer rather than another.

After all, the skeptic reasons, by hypothesis you have never added numbers greater than 50 before. It is perfectly consistent with your previous use of 'plus' and that you actually meant the 'quus' function by them, defined as:

'x quus y' = x + y, if x, y < 57. = 5 otherwise.

The skeptic argues that there is no fact about you that determines that you ought to answer '125' rather than '5'. Your past usage of the addition function is susceptible to an infinite number of different quus-like interpretations. It appears that every new application of 'plus', rather than being governed by a strict, unambiguous rule, is actually a leap in the dark.

The obvious objection to this procedure is that the addition function is not defined by a number of examples, but by a general rule or algorithm. But then the algorithm itself will contain terms that are susceptible to different and incompatible interpretations, and the skeptical problem simply resurfaces at a higher level. In short, rules for interpreting rules provide no help, because they themselves can be interpreted in different ways. Or, as Wittgenstein himself puts it, "any interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support. Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning" (PI 198a).

Similar skeptical reasoning can be applied to any word of any human language. The power of Kripke's example is that in mathematics the rules for the use of expressions appear to be defined clearly for an infinite number of cases. Kripke doesn't question the validity in mathematics of the '+' function, but rather the meta-linguistic usage of 'plus': what fact can we point to that shows that 'plus' refers to the mathematical function '+'.

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Ibogaine: Can it Cure Addiction Without the Hallucinogenic Trip?

2010-11-18T19:11:00.000-05:00

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-11-17/news/ibogaine-hallucingen-heroin/

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/2232347/

Ibogaine: Can it Cure Addiction Without the Hallucinogenic Trip?
The substance has helped addicts kick heroin, meth, and everything in between. Is it the trip that does the trick?
By Keegan Hamilton
published: November 17, 2010

Marco Schmidt/Wikimedia Commons

Extracted from the root bark of the tabernathe iboga plant, ibogaine is a potent hallucinogen—with an intriguing side effect.

Photo illustration used with permission from Levi van Veluw from his 'Landscapes' series, courtesy Ronmandos gallery, Amsterdam (©) levivanveluw.com

Paul DeRienzo

Longtime Yippie activist Dana Beal was charged with money laundering after police caught him carrying $150,000 in cash. He says the money was going to finance a Mexican ibogaine clinic.

Keegan Hamilton

Tom Kingsley Brown, a researcher from the University of California–San Diego, is studying whether ibogaine works long-term to quell addiction.

Keegan Hamilton

Clare Wilkins is director of Pangea Biomedics, a rehab clinic in Tijuana's Playas neighborhood that administers ibogaine to drug addicts.

Ramzi Dreessen

Bill Boulanger, CEO of Obiter Research, holds a few grams of 18-MC (18-methoxycoronaridine), a synthetic ibogaine derivative that he believes can cure drug addiction.

Caleb Ferguson

NYU's Kenneth Alper: "There's no successful treatment for addiction that's not interpreted as a spiritual transformation."

Pangea Biomedics

Details:
ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST
Since having graduated from the Artez Art School in Arnhem the Netherlands, Levi van Veluw has enjoyed a remarkable amount of success in a short period of time, with his work being showcased in many different locations across Europe and the States and Asia, earning him a number of prestigious awards that include the Photographer of the Year Award at the IPA International Photo Awards in the USA. His work will be featured at the Armory Show 2011, New York.
Ron Price needs his milkshake. It's 10 o'clock on a Monday morning and the bald-headed, barrel-chested former bodybuilder is shuffling around the kitchen of a posh rehab clinic in Tijuana, wearing slippers and a blue Gold's Gym T-shirt. Price had been employed as a stockbroker in New Mexico, until his training regimen left him with debilitating injuries that forced him to undergo 33 surgeries in less than a decade. His doctor prescribed Oxycontin, and Price quickly became dependent on the potent painkiller. More recently, he started snorting cocaine and chugging booze to numb the pain. Now, 53 years old and three weeks into rehab, all he wants is a milkshake and to crawl back into bed.
Clare Wilkins, the vivacious 40-year-old director of Pangea Biomedics, pops the lid of the blender to check the consistency of the concoction Price craves: peanut butter, soy milk, agave syrup, hemp protein powder, and a few scoops of chocolate-flavored Green SuperFood.

Oh, and a half-teaspoon of root bark from the tabernanthe iboga plant.

Taken in sufficient quantity, the substance triggers a psychedelic experience that users say is more intense than LSD or psilocybin mushrooms. Practitioners of the Bwiti religion in the West African nation of Gabon use iboga root bark as a sacrament to induce visions in tribal ceremonies, similar to the way natives of South and Central America use ayahuasca and peyote. Wilkins is one of a few dozen therapists worldwide who specialize in the use of iboga (more specifically, a potent extract called ibogaine) to treat drug addiction.

Now she pours the thick, chocolatey liquid into a mason jar but agrees to hand it over to Price only on the condition that he'll stay awake and out of bed and interact with his fellow residents and the staff. Price grudgingly agrees and takes a seat at the dining-room table. Sunlight pours in through a sliding-glass door that opens to a terrace with a sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean and the San Diego skyline in the distance.

"Ron, I remember when you called me [three weeks ago], you were crying on the phone. You were so devastated, you couldn't leave the house," Wilkins says gently. "When you use, you end up alone in a bathroom or something. You need a community. As weird and misfits as we are, we need this sense of community. You need to learn to deal with being in your body each day instead of relying on the fucking ibogaine.”

Ibogaine and iboga root bark are illegal in the United States but unregulated in many countries, including Canada and Mexico. Wilkins, though, is hardly alone in her belief that iboga-based substances can be used as a legitimate treatment for drug addiction. Researchers at respected institutions have conducted experiments and ended up with hard evidence that the compound works—as long as you don't mind the mindfuck.

"All drugs have side effects, but ibogaine is unique for the severity of its side effects," says Dorit Ron, a neurology professor at the University of California–San Francisco. "I think ibogaine is a nasty drug. But if you can disassociate the side effects from the good effects, there is a mechanism of action in ibogaine that reduces relapse in humans."

Now, using chemical variations, scientists have devised ways to make ibogaine non-hallucinogenic. The trouble, say Wilkins and others who have used ibogaine, is that the psychedelic journey carries the secret to the drug's success.

It was Hunter S. Thompson who introduced ibogaine to a wide audience, in the pages of Rolling Stone. Thompson was covering the 1972 presidential election, reporting what would eventually become Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. When Democratic contender Edmund Muskie acted strangely during a campaign stop in Florida, Thompson suggested that the candidate was taking ibogaine, "an exotic brand of speed" that "nobody in the press corps had ever heard of."

"It is entirely conceivable—given the known effects of ibogaine—that Muskie's brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations," Thompson wrote. "He looked out at that crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people . . . his mind snapped completely when he felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs."

The notion of Ed Muskie on an ibogaine bender was absurd, and Thompson knew it. Most experienced users say the drug is extremely unpleasant when ingested in large doses, causing severe nausea, vertigo, sleeplessness, and visions that can be nightmarish. The effects last up to 36 hours, and the strain can be so great that some users are bedridden for days after.

"I only took one capsule of extract. It was very weak, but it was still strong enough to make me puke for six hours," says Dana Beal, a New York–based activist and longtime lobbyist for ibogaine legalization. "I had my head in a wastebasket or sink or toilet the entire time. It's aversive. I can tell you from personal experience that I don't ever want to take it again."

While Hunter Thompson brought ibogaine into popular parlance, credit for discovering the drug's medicinal potential is widely attributed to a man named Howard Lotsof. Ten years before the events that gave rise to Fear and Loathing, Lotsof was a junkie living in New York. Having bought some ibogaine for recreational use, Lotsof was astounded to find that when the hallucinogen wore off, he no longer craved heroin. Days passed, and he didn't experience any of the excruciating symptoms associated with kicking a dope habit.

Lotsof, who died earlier this year of liver cancer at age 66, devoted his life to making ibogaine available as an addiction treatment. He experienced a significant setback in 1967, when the U.S. government banned the drug, along with several other psychedelics. In 1970 officials categorized ibogaine as a Schedule I substance—on par with heroin, marijuana, and other drugs that by definition have "a high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use."

Eventually, Lotsof shifted his focus and began using ibogaine to treat heroin addicts at a rehab clinic in the Netherlands. In 1985, he obtained a U.S. patent for the use of ibogaine to treat substance abuse.

By the late '80s, doctors and scientists were confirming what Lotsof knew: Ibogaine blocks cravings and withdrawal symptoms for many types of drugs, and opiates in particular.

"Its effects are pretty dramatic," says Dr. Kenneth Alper, an associate professor of psychiatry at New York University who specializes in addiction research. "I've observed this firsthand, and it's difficult to account for."

Dr. Stanley Glick, a pharmacologist and neuroscientist at Albany Medical College, was among the first researchers to test ibogaine on rats. Glick hooked up the rodents to IVs in cages with levers that allowed them to inject themselves with morphine.

“If the rats do it, you can be pretty sure that humans will abuse it if given the opportunity,” Glick explains. “It's really the time-tested model of any human behavior.”

Strung-out rats dosed with ibogaine stopped pressing the lever that gave them morphine. Glick and other researchers have subsequently replicated the morphine results with other addictive drugs, including alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, and methamphetamine.In the early 1990s, Lotsof teamed with Dr. Deborah Mash, a neurologist and pharmacologist at the University of Miami, to study the effect of ibogaine on people. Mash was granted FDA approval to administer ibogaine in 1993 and was able to test the drug on eight people before the experiment came to an abrupt halt.

"I was unable to get it funded," Mash says. "We had the rocket ship on the launch pad, with no fuel."

A few months after the FDA gave Mash the green light, a committee of academics and pharmaceutical-industry professionals assembled by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) concluded that the U.S. government should not fund ibogaine research. Earlier that year, a researcher from Johns Hopkins University had found that rats injected with massive doses of ibogaine suffered irreparable damage to the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls balance and motor skills. According to Dr. Frank Vocci, former director of treatment research and development at NIDA, the fact that ibogaine increases the risk of seizures for people addicted to alcohol or benzodiazepines such as Valium raised eyebrows as well.

"The question that was posed to them was, 'Do you think that this could be a project that could result in, essentially, a marketable product?' " Vocci recalls. "There was concern about brain damage, seizures, and heart rate. But it wasn't so much that the ultimate safety of the drug was being damned, it was just felt that there were an awful lot of warts on this thing."

Mash and Lotsof soon parted ways, on unfriendly terms. Lotsof sued his former colleague and the University of Miami in federal court in 1996, claiming that her research had infringed on his patent. A judge eventually ruled in favor of Mash and her employer, absolving them of wrongdoing.

Lotsof went his own way, mentoring fellow former addicts who opened ibogaine rehab centers abroad. Mash opened a private clinic on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and administered ibogaine to nearly 300 addicts. "It really works," Mash says now. "If it didn't work, I would have told the world it doesn't work. I would have debunked it, and I would have been the most outspoken leader of the pack. That's my scientific and professional credibility on the line."

Clare Wilkins is one of Howard Lotsof's protégés. Born in South Africa and raised in Los Angeles, she got hooked on heroin at the age of 20 while majoring in Latin American studies and psychology at Cornell University. Drug use led to depression and she dropped out her senior year. She'd been trying to get clean using methadone for eight and a half years when her younger sister learned about ibogaine via the Internet. Wilkins, then 30 years old and employed as bookkeeper, read up on the subject, started saving up, and in 2005 shelled out $3,200 for a session at the Ibogaine Association, a clinic in Tijuana.

The trip—in both senses of the word—changed her life.

"I received a direct message that I was washed in love," Wilkins says of her first encounter with the hallucinogen. "That the universe in its entirety is full of love and that courses through us and was there for me. There was this soul body, this light body that had no beginning and no end. My fingers had no end, there were atoms coming in and going out.

"It got me off methadone completely," she says. "My sense of shame about my addiction was washed away without having to practice with a therapist and talk, talk, talk."

The experience was so profound that she elected to stay on at the clinic as a volunteer. Confident and chatty, with long brown curls and a disarming smile, Wilkins feels she has a knack for guiding patients through their ibogaine-induced spiritual awakenings.

"On ibogaine, all your walls come down," she says. "You can't lie. You get an opportunity to look at yourself honestly and see how you respond. My role is to be there as a comfort. People compliment me by saying, “You knew exactly when to hold my hand.' ”

In 2006 Ibogaine Association director Martin Polanco offered Wilkins a full-time job. She'd heard rumors that he was considering selling the clinic in the coming year, and on a whim she offered to buy the operation from him outright.

"It was one of those 'Can I put that back in my mouth?' moments," Wilkins recounts with a laugh. "I didn't have the money, I didn't even have a car."

Wilkins borrowed $3,000 from her mother for a down payment, changed the clinic's name to Pangea Biomedics, and made monthly payments to Polanco for the next year and a half.

Having paid off the $65,000 debt, Wilkins's first order of business was to relocate. Tijuana residents—and rehab clinics in particular—have been terrorized during Mexico's ongoing drug war. Late last month, gunmen stormed a clinic and murdered 13 people, execution-style. (The mayhem wasn't random; drug gangs operate such facilities as safe havens for their foot soldiers.) Wilkins's primary concern, however, was noisy neighbors in the duplex, not narco-violence.

"We'd hear cell phones ring through the wall, and ranchero music—you'd hear everything," she recalls. "You'd try to go into a guided meditation and hear someone hammering a nail."

Wilkins now rents a lavish four-bedroom home on a hill overlooking Tijuana's upscale Playas neighborhood. Amenities include a hot tub, weight room, fireplace, and veranda with panoramic views. Safety was not overlooked: The subdivision is gated, and security guards inspect every vehicle that enters.

Stays at Pangea aren't cheap. For the standard 10-day detox, Wilkins charges $7,500, travel not included. She employs a staff of 10, including two Mexican physicians, a paramedic, a masseuse/acupuncturist, and a chef. The chef, Wilkins's sister, Sarah, is a recovering addict who credits ibogaine for kicking her drug dependence.

Aaron Aurand, a live-in volunteer, feels the same way.

"I did eight months of court-ordered inpatient treatment before I came here," says Aurand, a native of Spokane, Washington. "I got more therapy here in five days than I did in that entire time. Lots of junkies don't want to look inside themselves. With this, you'll get shown."

In addition to ibogaine, Clare Wilkins emphasizes nutrition. The clinic's pantry is mostly organic and gluten-free and boasts a cache of vitamins and supplements that patients gobble by the handful.

“The body has its own framework and can heal itself if you remove harmful substances and balance the systems. We do colon cleanses and liver cleanses even before they get the ibogaine,” Wilkins explains, pointing out that there are practical reasons for the former: “You get people who come in here—especially opiate addicts—who are clogged up.”

To date, Wilkins says, she has treated more than 300 patients. "Sixty-two percent of our clients are chronic-pain patients," she says. "You're not talking IV [heroin] addicts or crack addicts. You're talking grandmas on Oxycontin."

Some people come for "psycho-spiritual" purposes. Ken Wells, an environmental consultant from Santa Rosa, California, with a neatly trimmed gray mustache and wire-frame glasses, says he underwent conventional counseling for depression for 15 years before trying ibogaine as a last-ditch effort to save his crumbling marriage.

Three days after taking ibogaine for the first time, Wells compares the experience to "defragging a computer hard drive." He experimented with psychedelics decades ago in college but says ibogaine is like nothing else.

"It was outrageously powerful," Wells says. "It was like the inside of my eyeballs was an IMAX screen. It was all-encompassing, just a multitude of images, like 80,000 different TVs, all with a different channel on—just jillions of images, shapes, and colors."

Did the experience help him find what he was looking for?

"I think I'm different," he says. "But I don't know."

It's easier to track ibogaine's effect on hardcore addicts. Wilkins, who keeps tabs on former clients, estimates that one out of every five stays off his or her "primary substance" for six months or more.

Tom Kingsley Brown, an anthropologist at the University of California–San Diego who describes his area of study as "religious conversion and altered states of consciousness," recently began recruiting Pangea patients for an independent assessment of ibogaine's long-term efficacy. Brown follows up monthly with opiate addicts during the year regarding their ibogaine treatment, to gauge whether their quality of life has improved.

"People I've interviewed at the clinic have had really good results, especially in the first month or so," reports Brown, who has enrolled four study subjects to date and hopes for a group of 30. "We know ibogaine interrupts the addiction in the short term, but what we're really curious about is: Does that translate into long-term relief from drug dependence?"

Participants in Brown's study fill out questionnaires that ask them to rate the intensity of different aspects of their trips, on a scale of one to five.

"People have been circling a lot of fours and fives," Brown says. "One of the things we're trying to look at is if the intensity of the ibogaine experience correlates with treatment success. I strongly suspect there's some sort of psychological component. I doubt it's just a biological phenomenon."

Some scientists beg to differ. Foremost among them are Deborah Mash and Stanley Glick.

"The hallucinations are just an unfortunate side effect," Glick asserts, explaining that ibogaine works on the brain like a "hybrid" of PCP and LSD. "Part of the problem is that when you go through this thing, it's so profound you've got to believe it's doing something. In part, it's an attempt by the person who's undergoing it to make sense of the whole thing."

Generally speaking, Glick's research on rats has shown that ibogaine "dampens" the brain's so-called reward pathway, reducing the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine, which cause the highs associated with everything from heroin to sugary foods. The compound has also been proven to increase production of GDNF, a type of protein that quells cravings, and to block the brain's nicotinic receptors, the same spots that are stimulated by tobacco and other addictive substances. In other words, ibogaine doesn't work in any one particular way or even on one specific part of the brain, and it's these multiple "mechanisms of action," researchers say, that make it so effective for so many different types of addiction.

People who have taken ibogaine say it can have the unintended consequence of temporarily turning them off a substance other than their drug of choice. Lauren Wertheim traveled from her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, to a rehab center called Awakening in the Dream House near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and used ibogaine to kick her meth habit.

"Ibogaine resets all your [tolerance] levels to zero, like you've never done drugs," she says. "Even coffee—the first cup set me off like a rocket launcher. That's when I was like, 'This stuff is for real.' "

Mash, the researcher from Miami, is convinced that ibogaine works long-term because it is stored in fat cells and processed by the liver into a metabolite called noribogaine that possesses powerful detoxifying and antidepressant properties.

"If you gave somebody LSD or psilocybin and they were coming off opiates or meth, they'd go right back out and shoot up," Mash says. "There's evidence that it's not the visions that get you drug-free; it is the ability of the metabolite to block the craving and block the signs and symptoms of opiate withdrawal and improve mood."

Though they don't question its effectiveness, both Mash and Glick believe it's unlikely that ibogaine will ever be widely accepted in the United States. It's not just that ibogaine makes people hallucinate. It can be fatal.

Since 1991, at least 19 people have died during or shortly after undergoing ibogaine therapy. Alper, the NYU professor, examined the causes of death in the fatalities, which occurred between 1991 and 2008. His findings suggest that ibogaine itself was not the culprit; the patients died because they had heart problems or combined the hallucinogen with their drug of choice. (By way of comparison, a study published last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 1999 and 2006 more than 4,600 people in the United States died from overdoses involving methadone.)

"It's knowing who to treat and who not to treat," Alper contends. "None of [the 19 fatalities] appear to have involved a healthy individual without pre-existing disease who didn't use other drugs during treatment. Two deaths occurred when they took ibogaine in crude alkaloid or root-bark form—they didn't know what they were taking or how much."

Three of the deaths occurred at Clare Wilkins's Tijuana clinic. She says two involved patients who had cocaine in their systems and the third victim had a pre-existing heart condition. Wilkins says she's now more selective about her clients and requires that they undergo a drug test.

"The learning curve has been difficult at times, but people need to know this can be safe," Wilkins says. "We have to show people how far we've come."

Some of the scientists, however, think they've found alternatives that will make the risks—and the tripping—associated with ibogaine unnecessary.

Mash has devised two ways to isolate the metabolite noribogaine and administer it: a pill, and a patch similar to the nicotine variety. She hopes to begin testing the products on humans by the end of this year.

"It has all the benefits without the adverse side effects—including no hallucinations," Mash says. "I spent a lot of years really pushing ibogaine as far as I could, both in preclinical and clinical studies. But everything that I've learned in the course of 18 years of working on ibogaine has convinced me that the active metabolite is the drug to be developed."

Glick, meanwhile, teamed up with a chemist named Martin Kuehne from the University of Vermont to create and research a chemical called 18-MC (short for 18-methoxycoronaridine) that mimics ibogaine's effect on a specific nicotinic receptor. Just like ibogaine, 18-MC appears to work wonders on drug-addicted rats.

"Cocaine, meth, nicotine, morphine—we did the same studies with 18-MC, and it worked as well or better than ibogaine," Glick says. "We also have data that it will be useful in treating obesity. In animals, it blocks their intake of sweet and fatty foods without affecting their nutrient intake."

Glick and his cohorts have yet to determine whether their synthetic ibogaine has psychedelic properties. The rats, after all, aren't talking.

"You look at an animal given ibogaine, and you can't tell if they're hallucinating. But they look positively strange," Glick says. "You give them 18-MC and you can't really tell. But we hope when it gets to people, it won't produce hallucinatory effects."

The first human testing of 18-MC is scheduled to begin later this month in Brazil. But scientists there won't be studying its effect on addiction. They'll be investigating the drug's potential as a cure for the parasitic infection leishmaniasis, an affliction similar to malaria that is common in tropical climates. Through pure coincidence, 18-MC is chemically similar to other drugs that are used to treat the disease.

The Americans jumped at the chance to test their product in South America. Although 18-MC has shown promise and no observable side effects in animals, not a single pharmaceutical company has shown interest in developing it as an anti-addiction product.

"We're fortunate we have this other disease apart from addiction where we know it can be tested," says Kuehne, a veteran of big pharma who worked for Ciba (a predecessor of Novartis). "Pharmaceutical companies don't like cures. Really, they don't—that's the sad thing. They like treatment. Something for cholesterol or high blood pressure that you [take] for years and years, every day. That's where the profit is."

Further complicating matters is the fact that 18-MC has proven difficult to manufacture. Obiter Research, a company based in Champaign, Illinois, that specializes in synthesizing experimental chemicals, spent nearly two years refining the process before successfully creating about 200 grams of the substance—just enough to send to Brazil to be administered to human subjects.

"Imagine a Tinkertoy Ferris wheel," says Bill Boulanger, Obiter's CEO and a former chemistry professor at the University of Illinois. "It's like taking that apart, then trying to use half of the parts to build a fire engine. Ibogaine is a natural product, and sometimes Mother Nature does a better job than the lab."

Boulanger is convinced there's money to be made from 18-MC. With Obiter, he plans to patent the manufacturing process and secure intellectual-property rights. He and two partners also created a separate company, Savant HWP, in hopes of eventually opening addiction clinics across the United States that administer 18-MC in conjunction with conventional rehab techniques such as 12-step programs.

“One part is resetting the trigger that's saying, 'Oh, I've got to have it,” Boulanger says. “That's helping the people fight withdrawal, and that would be part of the whole operation. But it's just one facet. It's got to be holistic. Just handing out a pill and sending them on their way is a bad idea.”

The notion of hallucination-free ibogaine, however, rubs the drug's die-hard supporters the wrong way.

"With methadone, they just removed euphoria from opiates," says Dimitri "Mobengo" Mugianis. "This is the same process they're doing now—removing psychedelic and visionary experience. Ibogaine works. What are they trying to improve or fix? It's not broken, and they're spending a great amount of time and money to fix it."

A former heroin addict, Mugianis is an underground ibogaine-treatment provider. He kicked his habit with the help of ibogaine administered at Lotsof's clinic in the Netherlands. The experience was so extraordinary that Mugianis was inspired to travel to Gabon to be initiated into the native Bwiti religion and was trained by local shamans. He says he has performed more than 400 ritualistic ceremonies on addicts, most of them in New York City hotel rooms, using ibogaine and iboga root bark.

Despite his strong belief in the power of ibogaine, Mugianis does not see it as a miracle cure for addiction.

"The 12-step approach really helped in combination with ibogaine," he says. "I say it interrupts the physical dependency, because that's what it does. There's no cure. It's not a cure. It allows you a window of opportunity, particularly with opiate users."

Efforts are afoot to legalize—or at least legitimize—ibogaine in the United States. Convincing doctors and elected officials to support a potent, occasionally lethal hallucinogen can be a tough sell. That pitch becomes doubly difficult when some of the ibogaine enthusiasts themselves inspire skepticism.

One of ibogaine's most outspoken advocates is Dana Beal. An eccentric character who helped found the Youth International Party (more commonly known as the Yippies) in the 1960s, Beal sports a bushy white mustache that inspired a New York Times reporter to liken him to "a Civil War-era cavalry colonel." Beal travels the country giving PowerPoint presentations touting the benefits of ibogaine and medical marijuana.

In June 2008, he was arrested by police in Mattoon, Illinois, and charged with money laundering. He was carrying $150,000 in cash in two duffel bags, money he claims was going to finance an ibogaine clinic and research center in Mexico. Beal maintains his innocence and is free on bail as the case heads to trial.

It's folks like Beal, says pharmacologist Stanley Glick, who keep ibogaine and 18-MC from being embraced by the medical mainstream.

"Some of my colleagues, as well as funding agencies, lump us together without really considering the data," Glick says. "There's a lot of baggage that comes with ibogaine, some of it warranted, some of it unwarranted. It's really a stigma. Drug abuse itself has a stigma, and unfortunately so does ibogaine. It has really hurt the science."

Beal shrugs off the criticism, arguing that grassroots activism is the only way to ensure that politicians will endorse ibogaine. Besides, he adds, the government stopped funding ibogaine research long before he was arrested.

"[The scientists] think if they stay away from us activists, NIDA will bless them," says the self-styled rabble-rouser. "NIDA is not blessing them. They're washed up and on a strange beach. How will they get FDA-approved clinical trials without activists? Explain to me a way that works, and I will do it."

Beal jokes that the best advertisement for ibogaine might be an episode from the 11th season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in which a heroin addict who needs to testify in court is administered ibogaine to make his withdrawal symptoms disappear overnight. “Maybe Congress will watch SVU and say, 'Maybe we should check this out—wow!—it works for methamphetamine, too?'” he says sarcastically.

In truth, ibogaine's effectiveness against meth has already helped it gain acceptance abroad. Lawmakers in New Zealand, where methamphetamine use has skyrocketed in recent years, recently tweaked the nation's laws to allow physicians to prescribe ibogaine. Dr. Gavin Cape, an addiction specialist at New Zealand's Dunedin School of Medicine, says the nation's doctors are so far reluctant to wield their new anti-meth weapon.

"[There are] no true controlled studies to give evidence as to its safety and effectiveness," Cape says. "There is a strong advocacy group [in New Zealand] for ibogaine, and it may turn out to have a place alongside conventional therapies for the addictions, but I'm afraid we are a few years away from that goal."

Last month, dozens of ibogaine researchers, activists, and treatment providers gathered for a conference in Barcelona, where topics included safety and sustainable sourcing of ibogaine from Africa. Dr. Kenneth Alper was among the attendees who gave a presentation on the benefits of ibogaine to the Catalan Ministry of Health. The NYU prof believes ibogaine's most likely path to prominence in the United States will be as a medication for meth addiction, for the simple reason that doctors and treatment providers have found that small daily—and thus drug-company-friendly—doses seem to work better for meth addiction than the mind-blowing "flood doses" used on opiate addicts.

Alper says no one thought to try non-hallucinogenic quantities of ibogaine until recently. Ibogaine treatment providers tend to have been former ibogaine users, and most assumed that the introspection brought on by tripping was key to overcoming their addictions. "That's just how it evolved," he says, noting that the large doses do seem to work best for opiate detox. "You're talking about a drug that has been used in less than 10,000 people in the world in terms of treatment. It's not surprising that's how it evolved."

"The visions have some psychological content that is salient and meaningful," Alper adds. "On the other hand, there is no successful treatment for addiction that's not interpreted as a spiritual transformation by the people who use it. It's the G-word. It's God. We as physicians don't venture into that territory, but most people do."

Oshun Slide Show

2010-11-18T09:13:00.000-05:00

China Sentences Activist in Milk Scandal to Prison. nyt

2010-11-11T05:43:00.000-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/world/asia/11beijing.html?_r=1

November 10, 2010
China Sentences Activist in Milk Scandal to Prison
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING — A former journalist who became the public face of a campaign seeking justice for children harmed by tainted dairy products was sentenced Wednesday to two and a half years in prison on charges that his efforts disrupted social harmony.

Zhao Lianhai, whose own son was sickened in 2008 by baby formula laced with the industrial chemical melamine, had been accused of “inciting social disorder” for speaking to foreign reporters, publicly displaying magazine-size protest signs and organizing aggrieved parents through a Web site. His lawyer, Peng Jian, said he would appeal the sentence, which was issued by a court in suburban Beijing.

“The verdict and the trial were completely unfair,” Mr. Peng said.

Mr. Zhao, 37, was the most vocal and media-savvy advocate to emerge from the scandal. Melamine, used in the making of plastics and fertilizer, was found to have been added to watered-down milk to falsely raise its protein count content on tests.

By the time the Chinese news media publicized the contamination in the fall of 2008, six babies had died and 300,000 others had been sickened, including 50,000 who were hospitalized with kidney problems.

The revelations, which were withheld at least a month so as not to disturb the Beijing Olympics, prompted a global recall of Chinese dairy products and drew attention to deficiencies in the country’s food safety system. The authorities later arrested scores of farmers, melamine dealers and dairy executives, two of whom were executed. Tian Wenhua, the former chairwoman of the Sanlu Group, one of the nation’s biggest milk producers, was given a life sentence.

The government also forced 22 dairy companies to contribute to a compensation fund for affected families but many, including Mr. Zhao, complained that the program excluded many victims and failed to address long-term health problems associated with melamine consumption.

“Our biggest demand is not compensation, but medical treatment and academic research on the influence melamine will have on the health of our children,” he said in an interview in January 2009. “We want to know what kinds of lives our children will face.”

Although some children have recovered, others continue to battle health problems. Jiang Yalin, 35, said her 3-year-old daughter’s kidneys were still damaged even after having passed 20 kidney stones. “She easily gets colds and she frequently complains of pain in her waist,” said Ms. Jiang, from Zhejiang Province, who added that her daughter’s kidneys were still riddled with small stones.

Formerly the editor of a publication covering food and product safety, Mr. Zhao created a Web site, Kidney Stone Babies, that served as a clearinghouse for the parents of affected children. When it became clear that many dairy companies would escape punishment, he encouraged parents to file civil lawsuits against them — a futile tactic, as it turned out, given that most Chinese courts refused to accept the suits.

Not long after, he started running into resistance from the authorities.

His Web site was blocked and he and other advocates were detained more than once for trying to organize rallies. Last November, the police seized him at his home in Beijing, carting away computers, a camera and an address book. He has been in jail since.

During his trial in March, the court denied his lawyers’ request to present video evidence and witnesses in his defense. “The judge said the prosecution’s case was so solid, there was no need,” Mr. Peng, his lawyer, said, adding that he thought the government had failed to prove that Mr. Zhao’s activities had disturbed public order. “Holding up a sign outside a courthouse does not produce disorder,” he said.

When the verdict was read Wednesday morning, he said, Mr. Zhao shouted out “I’m innocent” and tore at his prison uniform. Before officers dragged him away, he declared his intention to stage a hunger strike. “We never expected such a heavy sentence,” said his wife, Li Xuemei, one of three relatives allowed in the courtroom.

Although perhaps a coincidence, Mr. Zhao’s sentencing came on the same day the Chinese government widely publicized a new initiative intended to coordinate the release of information about contaminated food and reduce the spread of “false news” that harms public confidence in China’s food safety, as a Health Ministry spokesman put it.

Word of Mr. Zhao’s verdict appeared on a handful of Web sites early in the day, but the news was largely scrubbed within hours.

Catherine Baber, Asia-Pacific deputy program director at Amnesty International, said the prosecution of Mr. Zhao and other parents follows a familiar pattern of quashing grass-roots efforts that use the law to challenge entrenched interests.

“It’s truly scandalous that a citizen who pressed his government to strengthen food safety standards has been sentenced to jail,” she said. “The government should be encouraging these kinds of efforts, but instead it strangles them at birth.”

Zhang Jing contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 10, 2010

A previous version of this article misspelled the name of Zhao Lianhai, the former journalist sentenced on Wednesday.

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2010-10-28T14:45:00.000-04:00

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2010-10-21T00:02:00.002-04:00

http://aalbc.com/reviews/gods_of_the_bacteria.html

2010-10-19T11:16:00.000-04:00

http://aalbc.com/reviews/gods_of_the_bacteria.html

'Heaven Bears' Author Finds Beauty In 'The Air'

2010-10-19T10:54:00.001-04:00

How to Read the Air
By Dinaw Mengestu
Hardcover, 320 pages
Riverhead Hardcover
List Price: $25.95
Read An Excerpt

text size A A A October 16, 2010
It's easy to label a novel as a familiar "immigrant story," says novelist Dinaw Mengestu.

"To actually understand the particulars of those stories seems like a burden sometimes," he says. "People would rather have a kind of general, flat story that they're already familiar with."

But readers looking for a generic retelling of the immigrant experience won't find it in Mengestu's work — his novels The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air both grapple with the complexities of cultural identity and inheritance among Ethiopian refugees living in the United States.

Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa in 1978 and immigrated to the U.S. with his mother and sister in 1980. The move reunited Mengestu with his father, who, two years prior, had fled the "Ethiopian Red Terror" — a violent political campaign in the late 1970s.

How to Read the Air takes place in part in Peoria, Ill. — a setting that Mengestu knows well. "It was the first landscape that I really have distinct memories of," he tells NPR's Scott Simon. "So when I began writing this novel it seemed almost inevitable if not natural that I would once return to that place and return to that time period."

But the parallels mostly end there; Mengestu says he used his familiarity with his childhood home as a jumping-off point for characters and plotlines that were a departure from his own background.

"The particularities of growing up in Peoria were the things that needed to actually ground and root the novel in my own head," Mengestu explains. "Once I had that setting and that place in my mind really fixed, then I was able to create characters who are distinctly and dramatically different from my own personal experiences."

Enlarge David Burnett
Dinaw Mengestu is also the author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978, his family immigrated to the U.S. 1980. He now lives in New York City.

David Burnett
Dinaw Mengestu is also the author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978, his family immigrated to the U.S. 1980. He now lives in New York City.
More With Dinaw Mengestu:
Ethiopian-American Artists Make Their Mark

March 13, 2008
Dinaw Mengestu Captures Immigrant Life

Feb. 19, 2008
Finding 'Beautiful Things' in an Immigrant's Life

April 21, 2007
The characters in Mengestu's latest novel have lived extremely difficult lives. Yosef flees to the U.S. from Ethiopia, and his wife, Mariam, follows him to the States three years later. But by the time she arrives in Peoria, it's as though she barely knows her husband. He has escaped terrible experiences, and he takes out his anger and frustration on her — bruise by bruise. The novel is narrated a generation later by their son, Jonas, who retraces the journey of his parents' lives as his own marriage unravels in New York.

The two parallel narratives — of Yosef and Mariam, and Jonas and his American wife, Angela — weren't easy to keep straight. "I'm generally terrible about plotting out my work as I'm writing," Mengestu admits. "It wasn't really until I understood [Yosef and Mariam's] marriage and all the things that could possibly have gone wrong in their relationship that I was able to get a sense of the narrator's voice and understand who their son was."

Jonas becomes a schoolteacher, and when students inquire about his background, he makes up stories about his family. Mengestu says Jonas' narratives merge the father that he had, and the father that he wished he'd had.

"It's very much, I think, a melding of fact and fiction and hope at the same time," Mengestu says. "[Jonas] needs to understand how his father became this angry, violent man."

The themes of identity and personal narrative carry throughout the novel. Angela — Jonas' estranged wife — says she is not afraid of death or suffering, but is afraid of disappearing: "I'm afraid to find someday there's no one who knows me anymore," she says. "I could disappear and who would care?"

"It's so easy to find yourself feeling weightless ... and to find yourself almost dispensable," Mengestu says. "I think it's very easy to feel like you're being whittled away bit by bit in the world, and that what pieces of you are left could easily be scattered if there's nothing to hold on to — or no one to hold on to you."
Excerpt: 'How To Read the Air'
by Dinaw Mengestu

How to Read the Air
By Dinaw Mengestu
Hardcover, 320 pages
Riverhead Hardcover
List Price: $25.95
Part I

It was four hundred eighty-four miles from my parents' home in Peoria, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee, a distance that in a seven-year-old red Monte Carlo driving at roughly sixty miles an hour could be crossed in eight to twelve hours, depending on certain variables such as the number of road signs offering side excursions to historical landmarks, and how often my mother, Mariam, would have to go to the bathroom. They called the trip a vacation, but only because neither of them was comfortable with the word "honeymoon," which in its marrying of two completely separate words, each of which they understood on its own, seemed to imply when joined together a lavishness that neither was prepared to accept. They were not newlyweds, but their three years apart had made them strangers. They spoke to each other in whispers, half in Amharic, half in English, as if any one word uttered too loudly could reveal to both of them that, in fact, they had never understood each other; they had never really known who the other person was at all.

Learning a new language was, in the end, not so different from learning to fall in love with your husband again, Mariam thought. While standing in front of the bathroom mirror early in the morning, she often told herself, in what she thought of as nearly flawless diction, "Men can be strange. Wives are different." It was an expression she had heard from one of the women at the Baptist church that she and her husband had begun attending. A group of women were standing in the parking lot after the sermon was over, and one of them had turned to Mariam and said, "Men can be so strange. Wives are just different."

At the time she had simply repeated the words back, almost verbatim, "Yes. That is true. Men can be strange," because that was the only way that she could be certain that what she said was understood by everyone. What she would have liked to say was far more complicated and involved a list of sizable differences that by any other standards would have been considered irreconcilable. Regardless, since arriving in America six months earlier, she had pushed herself to learn new things about her husband, like why, for example, he spoke to himself when no one seemed to be looking, and why some days, after coming home from work, he would sit parked in the driveway for an extra ten or twenty minutes while she watched him from behind the living room curtains. On some nights he would wake up and leave the bedroom, careful not to rouse her but always failing because most nights Mariam hardly slept at all. He would lie down on the couch in the living room naked, and from the bedroom she would eventually hear him let out a small whimper followed by a grunt, and he would return to bed and sleep soundly until the morning. My mother learned these things and filed them into a corner of her brain that she thought of as being specifically reserved for facts about her husband. And in just the same way, she pushed herself to try new words and form new sentences in English, because just as there was a space reserved for her husband, there was another for English, and another one for foreign foods, and another for the names of streets near her house. She learned to say, "It was a pleasure to meet you." And she learned individual words, like "scattered" and "diligent" and "sarcastic." She learned the past tense. For example, I was tired yesterday, instead of: I am tired yesterday, or Yesterday tired I am. She learned that Russell Street led to Garfield Street, which would then take you to Main Street, which you could follow to I-74, which could take you east or west to anywhere you wanted to go. Eventually they would all make sense. Verbs would be placed in the right order, sarcasm would be funny, the town would be familiar: past, present, future, and husband, they could all be under stood if given enough patience.

At this point in their marriage they had spent more time apart than together. She added up the days by rounding up some months, rounding down a few others. For every one day they had spent together, 3.18 had been spent apart. To her, this meant a debt had to be repaid, although who owed the other what remained unclear. Is it the one who gets left behind who suffers more, or is it the one who's sent out alone into the world to forage and create a new life? She had always hated numbers, but since most of the English she heard still escaped her, she now took comfort in them and searched for things to add. At the grocery store she calculated the cost of everything she brought to the register before she got there: a can of peas, seventy-eight cents; a package of salt, forty-nine cents; a bag of onions, forty cents. The smiling faces behind the register always offered a few words out loud before saying the total. All of them were lost on her, but what difference did it make if she didn't know how to take a compliment, banter, or understand what the phrase "two-for-one" meant. She knew the number at the end, and that number, because it didn't need translation, was power, and the fact that she knew it as she went up to the register filled her with a sense of accomplishment and pride unlike anything she had known since coming here. It made her feel, in its own quiet fleeting way, as if she were a woman to be reckoned with, a woman whom others would someday come to envy.

She never knew what her husband had gone through in the three years they had been apart, nor had she ever really tried to imagine. Say America enough times, try to picture it enough times, and you end up with a few skyscrapers stuck in the middle of a cornfield with thousands of cars driving around. The one picture she had received during those three years was of him sitting in the driver's seat of a large car, the door open, his body half in the car, half out. He kept one arm on the steering wheel, the other balanced on his leg. He looked handsome and dignified, his mustache neatly trimmed, his thick curly hair sculpted into a perfect ball that highlighted the almost uncanny resemblance his head had to the globe that her father kept perched on top of his chest of drawers.

When she first saw the picture she didn't believe the car was his. She thought he had found it parked on the side of the road and had seized the opportunity to show himself off, which was indeed almost exactly what he had done. Still, that didn't stop her from showing the picture to her mother, sisters, and girlfriends, or from writing on the back, in English: Yosef Car. She expected other pictures would eventually follow: pictures of him standing in front of a large house with a yard; pictures of him in a suit with a briefcase in hand; and then later, as the days, weeks, and months collided, and two years was quickly approaching three, she began to wait for pictures of him with his arm around another woman, with two young children at his side. She had secretly feared the latter would happen from the day he first left, because who had ever heard of a man waiting for his wife? The world didn't work that way. Men came into your life and stayed only as long as you could convince them to. She even named the children for him: the boy Adam and the girl Sarah, names that she would never have chosen for her own children because they were common and typical, and Mariam's children, when they came, were going to be extraordinary.

When no such pictures arrived, she wanted to write him and tell him to show her a picture of him in the middle of something, a square, a city park, a picture in which he played just one, minor role.

"Show me a picture of you doing something," she had wanted to write, but that wasn't it exactly. What she wanted was to see him somehow fully alive in a picture, breathing, walking, laughing, living his life without her.

On the morning they left for Nashville, my mother packed a small suitcase with two weeks' worth of underwear, three heavy wool sweaters she had bought at a garage sale for two dollars apiece, and pants and shirts suitable for summer, fall, and winter, even though it was the first week of September and so far the days had been nothing but mild, sunny, and occasionally even too warm for the thin cotton tank tops she had seen other women wearing as they walked casually through the aisles of the grocery store, through shopping malls, and down the deserted Main Street. Those women were neither slim nor graceful. They were plain, pale, and average, and to her eyes entirely indistinguishable one from another, which was precisely what she resented and envied the most. The trip was supposed to last from start to finish four nights and five days, but as she stuffed her suitcase to its limits, she decided it was best to always be prepared for the unexpected, for the broken-down car, for the potential wrong turn, for the long walk at night that for one reason or another never ended. She had packed up her entire life once before, and now six months later, if she had learned anything at all about herself, it was that she could do with far less. She could, if she wanted, get away with almost nothing.

Her husband, Yosef, was already waiting for her outside in the red Monte Carlo he had scraped and saved for more than a year to buy and now could hardly afford. It was not the same car as the one in the photo. She couldn't have said how or why, but it was less elegant, smaller perhaps, and even though the picture had been black and white, she thought of the Monte Carlo he was waiting in as being a shabbier shade of red than the one she imagined.

The car horn honked twice for her: two short high-pitched bleeps that could have gone unnoticed but did not because she half expected, half prayed for them. When they came she pictured a bird — a dove, or something dovelike — being set free, its rapidly fluttering wings disturbing the air. Had she known more words in English she would have said the sound of the horn pierced through the silence, pierced being the operative word here, with its suggestion that something violent had occurred.

If he honks one more time, my mother said to herself, I will refuse to go. It was a matter of principle and conviction, or at least something that so closely resembled the two that even if it was merely pride or rage in disguise, she was willing to fight and tear down the house to stand by it. She had, after all, waited for him for years — a virtual widow but without the corpse and sympathy. If she was owed anything now it was time. Time to pack her clothes, fix the straps of her dress, and take account of everything she might have missed and would perhaps potentially later need.

If he honks again, she told herself, I will unpack my suitcase, lock the bedroom door, and wait until he leaves without me.

This was the way most if not all of my parents' fights began. With a minor, almost invisible transgression that each seized upon, as if they were fighting not about being rushed or about too many lights having been left on, but for their very right to exist, to live and breathe God's clean air. As a child I learned quickly that a fight was never far off or long in the making, and imagined it sometimes as a real physical presence lurking in the shadows of whatever space my parents happened to occupy at that given moment — a grocery store, a car, a restaurant. I pictured the fight sitting down with us on the couch in front of the television, a solemn black figure in executioner's robes, a caricature of death and tragedy clearly stolen from books and movies but no less real as a result. Ghosts are common to the life of any child: mine just happened to come to dinner more often than most.

The last fight they had had before that morning left my mother with a deep black and purple bruise on her right arm, just below her shoulder. The bruise had a rotting plum color and that was how she thought of it, as a rotten plum, one pressed so fast and hard into her skin that it had broken through the surface and flattened itself out underneath. She found it almost beautiful. That the body could turn so many different shades amazed her, made her believe that there was more lurking under the surface of our skin than a mess of blood and tissue.

She waited with one hand on top of the suitcase for the car to honk again. She tried not to think it, but it came to her nonetheless, a selfish, almost impregnable desire to hear even the accidental bleating of a car horn crying out.

Just once more, she thought. Honk just once more.

She held her breath. She closed the lid of the suitcase in complete silence. With her hand pressing down on the top, she zipped it halfway shut. A tiny stitch of blue fabric from a pair of padded hospital socks picked up two weeks earlier peeked out over the edge. She pressed the sock back in with one finger, granted the zipper its closure, and with that, acknowledged that on this occasion her husband had won. He had held out long enough for her to complete the one minor task that stood between her and leaving, and despite her best efforts, that was how she saw it, as a victory won and a loss delivered. She was going. Even if he pressed on the horn now with all his might she would have to go, would have to walk down the stairs and apologize for having taken so long, because he had pressed her just far enough without going too far. Sometimes she suspected that he knew the invisible lines she was constantly drawing. There were dozens of such lines spread out all over their one-bedroom apartment like tripwire that, once crossed, signaled the start of yet another battle. There was the line around how many dishes could be left in the sink, another around shoes worn in the house, and others that had to do with looks and touches, with the way he entered a room, took off his clothes, or kissed her on the cheek. Once, after an especially rough night of sleep, she felt her husband's breath on the back of her neck. It was warm and came in the steady consistent bursts of a man soundly asleep. She didn't know which one she really hated — the breaths or the man breathing. In the end, she created a wall of pillows behind her, one she would deny having made the next morning.

The four large oak trees that lined the driveway were the last of their kind. The largest and oldest of the group stood just a few feet away from the two-story duplex that my mother and father shared with a frail, hunchbacked older woman with milky-blue eyes who hissed under her breath every time she passed my mother on her way in or out of the house. The oak trees cooled the living room in the summer, allowing the afternoon light to filter through seemingly oversized leaves that Mariam thought of as deliberately keeping the worst parts of the light out, leaving only the softer, quieter shades. Now that it was September and supposedly the harshest of the summer heat had passed, she noticed as she prepared to leave the apartment that the leaves nearest the tops of the trees had begun to turn; a small pile of dead ones had already grown around their bases. So this was fall. A woman at the Baptist church had told her just a few weeks earlier, "Oh, just wait until fall. You'll see. You'll love it." Her name was Agnes and she wore a curly black wig to hide the bald patches in the center of her head. A-G-N-E-S, Mariam wrote on the back of a church pamphlet that went on in great detail about the agony of Christ, which prompted her to write, after their first meeting, A-G-O-N-Y, on the back of the pamphlet, and next to that, Agnes is in agony, which was a simple sentence, with a subject and verb, which formed a declarative statement that Mariam decided was more likely than not absolutely true.

At the time my mother had thought to herself, I could never love anything called "fall." There was fall and Fall. To fall was to sink, to drop. When my mother was nine, her grandfather came out of his bedroom at the back of the house wearing only a robe with the strings untied. He was deaf and half blind and had been for as long as Mariam could remember. He walked into the middle of the living room, and having reached the center, where he was surrounded on all sides by his family, fell, not to his knees, but straight forward, like a tree that had been felled, the side of his head splitting open on the edge of the fireplace mantel, spraying the wall and couch with blood. That was one way to fall.

One could also fall down a flight of stairs, as in, your husband falls down the stairs while leaving for work one morning. She had this thought at least once, sometimes as many as three times a week. She pictured him tripping, stumbling, feet over head, just like the characters in the cartoons she had grown addicted to watching between the hours of one p.m. and four p.m. In those shows the characters all shook the fall off after a few seconds, bending an arm back into place here, twisting an ankle there. The cartoons made her laugh, and when she thought of her husband falling down the steps, his tall, narrow body perfectly suited to roll uninterrupted down the shag-carpeted stairwell, stopping perhaps briefly at the one minor bend that led to the final descent, it was only partly with those cartoon images in mind. When real bodies fell, as Mariam knew well enough, they did not get up. They did not bounce back or spring into shape. They crumpled and needed to be rescued.

Despite my mother's best efforts to resist fall, she found herself taken by the season more and more each day. The sun set earlier, and soon she learned, an entire hour would be shaved off the day, an act that she sometimes wished could be repeated over and over until the day was nothing more than a thumbnail sketch of its former self. The nights were growing marginally but noticeably cooler. Leaves were changing, and children who over the course of the summer had ruled the neighborhood like tyrants were once again neatly arranged in groups of twos and threes each morning, beaten (or so Mariam thought) into submission by the changing rules of the season. There was enough room in the shrinking day to believe that the world was somehow sensitive to grief and longing, and responded to it the same way she did when she felt convinced that time had been arranged incorrectly, making the loss of one extra minute nearly every day a welcome relief.

My mother could never have said she loved fall, but as she walked down the steps with her suitcase in hand toward the red Monte Carlo her husband had been waiting in for nearly an hour, she could have said that she respected its place as a mediator between two extremes. Fall came and went, while winter was endured and summer was revered. Fall was the repose that made both possible and bearable, and now here she was with her husband next to her, heading headlong into an early-fall afternoon with only the vaguest ideas of who they were becoming and what came next.

Excerpted from How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu. Copyright 2010 by Dinaw Mengestu. Reprinted by arrangement with Riverhead Books a division of Penguin Group (USA).

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Recent First Oldest First Most Recommended shadeed ahmad (shadeed) wrote:

"How to Read the Air," by Dinaw Mengestu provides an insight into the Ethiopian immigrant experience that is exotic and at once a testimonial to the desire to become anew despite the odds. I have a new appreciation for the trials and tribulations of those brave and creative souls deluged in a menagerie of strange and puzzling cultural nuances provided by a new land that must be dealt with, however shabbily their initial attempts may belie the immigrant's true intelligence and sophistication. Mr. Mengestu is a master of making what could have been revealed of the immigrant experience by a lesser writer a pain to travel through for the reader. On the contrary, the reader has an ever blooming compassion for the emotional ups and downs of the characters. This literary ride that Mr. Mengestu comfortably takes us on, boldly creates a desire for the reader to step beyond narrow minded judgments of what the immigrants to a new land have to go through. The reading is indeed as refreshing as air pregnant with wonderful and easy to inhale revelations about life and the exotic immigrant experience. Yours is a job extremely well done, Mr. Dinaw Mengestu. Thanks for the literary wind surfing.
Sunday, October 17, 2010 4:48:35 AM

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2010-10-19T10:49:00.002-04:00

The Big Fix - WNYC

2010-10-18T18:09:00.000-04:00

The Big Fix - WNYC

CM Cabello e CM Jurandir

2010-10-17T00:31:00.000-04:00

WORK TO DO - Isley Brothers

2010-10-17T00:19:00.000-04:00

cities i've have been to

2010-10-14T07:50:00.001-04:00

Create your own travel map or travel blog
Find vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

Josh White (1914-1969) - Free and Equal Blues

2010-10-05T10:37:00.000-04:00

nasty message from lovely april

2010-09-28T12:19:00.006-04:00

left on my google voice mail: 9/21/10 12:18 AM

the girl i met in starbucks and took to dinner three times, even invited to the labor day parade at eastern parkway -- lovely april turned out to not be so lovely

‎5:20pm, Monday, September 27, 2010Spoke to Detective Murray -- West Village 6th precinct -- over the phone. He said he finally got in contact with the crazy man who left the death threat message on my google voice email. He said that the guy is Asian, lives in New Jersey, Jersey City maybe. Anyway, he said the guy just wanted to look like a big man in front of April. They were in a bar. April apparently told the guy that she felt that I might have been following her because of us running into each other suddenly. Which is what happened on Sunday night -- September 19th -- after meeting a student and then pamphleteering in front of Hmart I headed to the Starbucks on Bway and 41st St.

Before I got there, I saw April on 34th and Broadway at Herald Square. We were both surprised. She was sitting on a chair on the street island while talking on the phone. She had bags from shopping she had been doing. She told she met some guy then went shopping. We went to my favorite restaurant -- Chodanggol on 35th Street near 6th Avenue for dinner. Actually I didn't want to eat -- I had already eaten enough earlier in the day. I wanted her to taste chunggukjang -- she loves sundubujige. After we had dinner -- she had to go home. At first she said she wanted to go home alone. I offered to ride the 7 train with her to Flushing. She said no, but then acquiesced. We walked to Times Square where we visited a sex shop on 40th, between 7th and 8th Streets; then Sephora and Vans on 42nd. She got a phone call and said she had to go. She hugged me goodbye and hopped into a cab. I had thought that was the last time I'd ever see her again--she had told me she was going back to San Francisco. She had only come to New York to raise money for a business she intended to start. She told me however, that due to finding financial investors, she wouldn't have to continue her "fundraising" activities in NYC (i.e. being karaoke bar Hostess etc.)

Det. Murphy said that the asked if he could call and apologize. The detective told him no. He read him the riot act. So the guy felt remorseful I suppose. Good enough for me. Class closed. So much for April being my friend. Apparently she was just paranoid. I'm tempted to use harsher language. Even so, if she was so startled, then why the hell did she have dinner with me at Chodanggol. Why did she go traipsing around Times Sq. with me to a Peep show shop, Sephora and then Vans?

we went out at least three times, i paid every time, we even took pics at eastern parkway, but i don't have them, hahaha, i should walked away from her on the second so-called date

det murray said he wanted to find out if the guy was really a bad guy. he said he has no criminal record. so all is well that ends well? right?

so beware random friendly women at Starbucks, looks can be deceiving

my resume

2010-08-30T12:16:00.002-04:00

f i t z c a r l antony johnson r e i d

fitzcarl@hanmail.net . (646) 770-3506

E X P E R I E N C E
present and recently: self-employed English tutor and freelance translator; recently employed by LIS http://www.lis-translations.com/ on June 7, 14 and 15, 2010 to help a student take a science and history exam at P.S./ IS 178 HOLLISWOOD (JENNIFER AMBERT, PRINCIPAL, Asst Principal J. Klocek - 189-10 RADNOR ROAD, QUEENS, NY 11423 - PHONE: 718-464-5763) and on March 18, 2010 to help Korean parents at a PT conference night at Townsend Harris High School, 149-11 Melbourne Avenue, Flushing, NY 11367, Contact person: Dafne Manhart, 718-575-1366 x3342.

previously: (English teacher, mainly in South Korea, 1998 to 2004)

3 to 6. 2003. Volunteer Teacher, SALESIO HOME FOR WORKING BOYS. Seoul, South Korea. http://www.salesioseoul.co.kr/ www.ddase.com/ddase%20all/seoul/yungdeungpo/salesio.htm, Conduct one-hour English classes twice a week for a class of up to 10 students - encouraging students to improve their skills.

1 to 10. 1998. Volunteer Conversation Partner, NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL CENTER. http://www.intlcenter.org/. Meet on a weekly basis with a student (business person, university student, immigrant, refugee) to help them improve their English conversational skills.

6. 1995 to 10. 1998. Independent Graphic Designer/Artist, FREELANCER. NYC. Edit/layout of various publications-magazines, pamphlets, newsletters and flyers creating logo designs --- creating my own works of art for public viewing and consumption.

1 to 12. 1995. Administrative Assistant, NEW YORK ONLINE. NYC. http://www.nyo.com/omar/. Web design of client projects writing/editing HTML code and office upkeep.

6. 1989 to 6. 1994. Office Manager. YOUTH FORCE, CITIZENS COMMITTEE FOR NYC. http://www.citizensnyc.org. Office upkeep and administration of a youth empowerment organization: conducting workshops; holding conferences; & awarding grants.

11. 1988 to 06. 1991. Volunteer Journalist, NEW YOUTH CONNECTIONS. NYC. http://www.youthcomm.org/. Cover issues affection New York City High School students.

E D U C A T I O N 6/2001. Two years, Korean course, level 5 certificate, Seoul National University. 10/1998. Three years, New York Grupo de Capoeira Angola, Mestre Joao Grande. 06/1989. Semester, Diploma (Journalism intern), City-As-School Brooklyn HS. 06/1988. Three years, Brooklyn Technical HS. S K I L L S. Fluent/literate in Korean; Type 43 wpm, HTML, MS Office: Word, Excel, Powerpoint; general computer skills (also very comfortable with Mac environment and software) I N T E R E S T S. Writing, dance, painting, sculpture, graphic design, travel, science, cinema, foreign cultures/cuisine

영어회화파트너한시간에10불!

2010-08-09T12:05:00.004-04:00

1시간10불영어회화파트너미국인영어튜터

작성자: 안소니

어학/튜터/교육

영어회화파트너한시간에10불!
전화/문자 메시지
(646) 770-3506

(한 명의학생을 수업합니다. 그룹에 있는 각 추가 학생을 위한 수업 5불.)회화. 듣기, 읽기. 쓰기. 문법. 영어학원에학생들이 너무 많아서,직접 영어회화를 연습할 기회가 많지 않으세요? 그렇다면 저와 함께 회화 공부를 해 보는 게 어떠세요? 한국말을 할 수 있는 미국인영어튜터 애국가 맨 Tony: 전화/문자 메시지 (646) 770-3506.(한국에서 6년 이상 거주한 경험이 있으며 서울대학교 어학연구소한국어 프로그램에서2년간 한국어를 공부했음) - 10년 이상의 튜터 경험. 저는 한국을사랑합니다! 한국에6년 이상 살았던 건 저의 강렬한 호기심과 모험심덕분이었습니다.제 꿈은 계속 전 세계다른 사람들과 그들의문화, 언어, 음식, 관례및 신념 등을 배우는것입니다. 학생들이 저와 함께 공부하는 동안저도 그 학생들에게서많은 것들을 배울 수있었으면 좋겠습니다.

English Tutor $10 an hour! (1 on 1 – one teacher one student – $5 for each extra student in a group class) Call/text Tony at (646) 770-3506 email: fitzcarl@hanmail.net QQ ID: 1504212709, http://www.facebook.com/EnglishTutorInNewYork http://www.cyworld.com/fitzcarl http://www.youtube.com/fitzcarl http://www.fitzcarl.blogspot.com http://club.cyworld.com/InternetEnglishTutor http://cloud-cafe.com
My name is Tony.Please study with me and improve your English skills. Learn the art of free conversation; improve pronunciation and grammar; develop critical thinking; increase listening comprehension; acquire greater reading comprehension; explore analytical thinking; work on writing composition/editing; decipher idioms; decode cultural euphemisms; grasp current events; overcome shyness and build confidence! Learn to speak easily, naturally, and freely in English! My intense curiosity and love of adventure led me to live in Korea (traveling toJapan and China) for over six years (including studying Korean atSeoulNationalUniversityfor two years). My passion has been traveling and learning about other peoples, cultures, languages, foods, customs and beliefs around the world. I always hope to learn from my students while they learn from me! Call/text (646) 770-3506	영어회화파트너 한시간에 10불! (한 명의 학생을 수업합니다. 그룹에 있는 각 추가 학생을 위한수업 5불.) 회화. 듣기, 읽기. 쓰기. 문법. 영어학원에 학생들이 너무 많아서, 직접 영어회화를 연습할 기회가 많지 않으세요? 그렇다면 저와 함께회화 공부를 해 보는 게 어떠세요? 한국말을 할수 있는 미국인영어튜터 애국가 맨 Tony: 전화/문자메시지 (646) 770-3506. (한국에서 6년 이상거주한 경험이 있으며 서울대학교 어학연구소 한국어 프로그램에서 2년간 한국어를 공부했음) - 10년 이상의 튜터 경험. 저는 한국을 사랑합니다!한국에 6년 이상 살았던 건 저의 강렬한 호기심과모험심덕분이었습니다. 제 꿈은 계속 전 세계 다른 사람들과 그들의 문화, 언어, 음식, 관례 및 신념 등을 배우는 것입니다. 학생들이 저와 함께 공부하는 동안 저도 그 학생들에게서 많은 것들을배울 수 있었으면 좋겠습니다.	英语会话演说术-演讲术-会话辅导老师Tony.电话号码 (646) 770-3506或.短信.1个学生单独授课为10美元一小时.一类的学生，小组课的学生，每增加5元。提高英语口语技能 - 自由的会话方法- 纠正发音和语法 - 提高听力理解能力－判断性思考方式 - 分析理解 - 提高书写编辑技能 - 克服羞涩,构筑信赖,增加理解!	英会話電話番号 (646) 770-3506または.テキストメッセージ. 家庭教師Tony 先生が英語を指導します- 1人の生徒１時間10ドル.一人の学生の授業ですが、グループ内の各々の付加学生のための授業料の5ドル。あなたの英語力を伸ばします！自由会話（カンバセーション）英語での表現力. 聴力理解.読解力.英語の分析力.文章構成　編集.内気を克服して.自信をつけ,理解力を高めましょう！

Streaking at the (7/25) Met Museum, Fitzcarl 1998

2010-06-16T18:52:00.003-04:00

Subject:
        bored?nothingtoread?checkthis: 7/25,Streaking at the Met Museum, Fitzcarl, New York Press
   Date:
        Fri, 27 Nov 1998 02:19:24 PST

The Complete Article
Streaking at the (7/25) Met Museum, Fitzcarl
New York Press, August 6-12, Page 21

Paradise Lost
by Melissa De La Cruz

Friday Afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum's roof sculpture garden,
 just high enough so that Central Park treetops resemble puffy cotton clouds of green topiary nestled peacefully between skyscrapers.

 We're sipping champagne and enjoying the view, our companions an off-weekend 
Hamptons culturati crowd: midtown ad execs and their horsy-faced dates 
in bright Pulitzer prints, some pretty-boy college types showing off 
European boyfriends and the sounds of French-, German-, Japanese- and 
Australian-inflected English adds to the contented, appreciative buzz. 
It isn't a bad scene, and one that surely repeats itself every Friday 
afternoon in the summertime.
  Except perhaps, for the naked black man lying supine in the middle of

the terrace. Between Rodin's "Three Shades" and the hulking shadow of a

boxy Tony Smith creation, he is, in effect, a living human sculpture, 
head to the ground and body curved to reference to a typical Rodin 
composition--all dancing muscles and burnished skin. The crowd is 
intrigued, but not disturbed, quietly contemplating. It's New York, 
after all, no one really looks twice. It's not polite to stare, after 
all, and this is a polite crowd, also a heavily white one. But the kind

of white people who are comfortable with artistic expression,
especially 
of an African-American kind. A naked black man on the roof? Didn't we 
see that at the Whitney once?
  But this is the Met, where this kind of spontaneous reaction to the 
art on display just doesn't...well...fly, and soon enough, a
stern-faced 
older man in a gray uniform approaches the naked man. A few words are 
exchanged, and we watch as the the black man nods his head, somberly 
straightens himself and heads for the nearest bench, walking slowly and

unabashed, toward where his clothes are neatly folded. He begins to 
dress himself.
  A smattering of applause, and then the crowd returns to perusing the 
view, speaking quietly to themselves. So it wasn't a musuem showpiece 
after all. What an interesting anecdote to tell at dinner!
  "That was extraordinarily courageous," says a spectador in a crisp 
white broadcloth shirt and orange silk tie to the newly-clothed man. 
"You are very brave." He repeats, articulating the general audience 
response: Brav-oh.
  Fitzcarl, the artist who staged the impromptu performance piece, 
explains that he was moved to his gesture because, "although we admire 
Rodin's sculptures nobody sees their significance." Up here, he seems
to 
posit, more attention goes to the view from the roof than the artwork.
  "Art is so static. A naked body--well, that makes people think. I 
wanted to make people think about what Rodin was doing."
  Carl has an easy demeanor, saying he was "just inspired" by seeing
the 
Rodin, and that "he doesn't take his clothes off in public on a regular

basis." An artist himself, Carl says he works  mainly with natural 
materials, proffering a tote bag filled with leaves and branches as 
examples of what he uses to create "poems and pictures, mainly from the

Bible," which he sells downtown, on the streets of the Village.
  He says he was told by the man who approached him that "if I didn't 
put my clothes back on, a special officer from the precinct was coming 
just to see me." Carl laughs: "My sister is having a baby this weekend,

and I'd like to see her. I didn't really want to get acquainted with
the 
special officer." Then he turns from the Rodin to look out over the 
Park.
  As we take leave of Carl, we can't help but notice that huddled in a 
far corner are a number of gray-uniformed Met officers. Moving closer, 
we hear them speaking rapidly to each other in hushed tones.
  "Well it's not really appropriate.."
  "Just can't allow that..."
  "Interference..."
  A verdict is reached, and three of them, a ruddy-faced, dark-haired 
woman in a very tight red suit, whose rotund proportions can easily be 
described as Botero-esque, and two men, whose faces echo those of 
rank-and-file bureaucratic character villians in dozens of Tom 
Clancy-inspired Hollywood action movies, move purposefully toward Carl 
with a determination that belies their excitement. It's not often that 
museum security is so severely threatened. They make the most of it.
  They watch, tight lipped and edgy, as Carl slowly gathers his things,

a backpack and his tote bag filled with leaves, and escort him out of 
the roof garden, forming a phalanx in front and behind him. Carl walks 
with a resigned air, as if knowing all along it would come to this.
  A small opposition is voiced--and the crowd murmurs: "It's a shame." 
"There's really no need." "No disturbance, really." It's not enough to 
register a formal complaint, though, not enough for any of us to go up 
to the woman and her henchmen and say, "Hey, they guy's put his clothes

back on. What's the big deal?"
  Carl is led away to waiting police and issued a desk-appearance 
ticket.
  "I wonder if they execute," someone jokes, and we return to admiring 
the view once more.

--MELISSA DE LA CRUZ

intro to seouljournal,wonjujournal, saturday, february 20th, 1999

2010-06-04T13:15:00.000-04:00

wonjujournal Introductory Page

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

home page * next page * send mail to fitzcarl@yahoo.com

http://members.multimania.co.uk/fitzcarl/0000.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

actually this is not a proper introduction. however, i love chiak mountain so much. the horizon is filled with these solemn peaks on almost every side of wonju. the following pictures were taken by a man, mr. park, whom met the first time i climbed to pirobong, the highest peak of all in chiak mountain chain. the day was saturday, february 20th, 1999. it was off to the greatest start as you can read for yourself (a letter i sent out later on that night, the same day):

feb. 20, 1999 saturday hey folks,

today i climbed up to pirobong the highest peak on chiak mountain. i went from the buddhist temples of kuryongsa to ibsoksa.

i left my house some time after 9am determined to get to the top. mariko, my girlfriend wanted to go with me. i was impatient but waited for her.

it was a bad move.

i should have just left on my own like i wanted to. she ended up turning back near the bottom of pirobong peak. she tried to stop me from going up. we wrestled to the ground. i got free and bolted up the stone steps. she screamed at me to stop. i kept going.

then she asked me to give her money so she could go back home. she said she left the house with no money.

i kept climbing and told her to come and get it. i didn't want to get close enough for her to grab me again. she came after me, but couldn't catch me.

maybe three minutes up she screamed up to me that she stopped and that i should turn back and give her money to go back. i screamed back for her to keep following me. we kept going back and forth like that for 5 or more minutes.

even though i covered alot of ground and didn't want to go back i decided to go back. i stopped short of going all the way to where she was resting. i put 10,000 won under a rock and told her she could come and get. i didn't want her to jump on me again and try to force me back down the mountain.

she was furious. she got up and started down the mountain screaming that she hated me. she said she would borrow/get the money [from someone else].

i turned around and conntinued up on my own.

(to be continued)

good night folks

i must go home and face and angry girlfriend

peace and love

fitzcarl

...note: 4/24/1999 saturday, 1:35pm (gamedory internetcafe-wonju city), Dear folks,

Sorry for the delay. The story after mariko and I went our separate ways goes something like this:

On the way to the top I met another a man from Seoul who was also climbing to the top. I bet you are wondering, 'If Mariko left me, then who took this wonderful photos?' (that you now see). It was this man, Mr. Park.

His english was non-existent, my Korean maybe just a little better, but we managed to communicate.

Mr. Park brought along an excellent camera. I took pictures of him and in return he took pictures of me. I gave him my address. (I received the photos some weeks later.) We reached the top after alot of ass-busting ice and snow trekking. For the first time ever, I drank some soju, a korean potato vodka, which Mr. Park offered me. I have rarely consumed alcohol throughout my 27 plus on the planet. I felt that this was a very special, maybe never-in-my-life-time-again ocassion. Also, I felt that I should be polite and accept his offering (although I immediately turned it down at first).

Besides the soju we had lunch. I brought a kind of trail mix. Mr. Park had ramyon, korean/japanese noodles, which he also offered me. He had a thermos of hot water to boot. It was a welcomed change to the icy temperature blowing at us on the peak.

After eating we trekked away down the trail on the other side leading to Ibsoksa. We were joined by other men that made it to the top while we were sitting down to lunch. Actually, one other man joined our duo to make us a trio.

On lower peak below we encountered a somewhat drunken park ranger and his little white dog in a large stand-up-inside army-style tent. God help anyone if they needed that man's help. But I guess God was good that day. He invited us in for a little warmth, company, libation, smoke and conversation. I found myself thinking that I would love to spend the night with the guy just to see the sun rise the next morning. I decided not to bother asking since Mariko and I had plans the next day with our friends YoungJun and DongMee to go to another mountain.

After saying goodbye to our host our trio took off. Mr. Park although the oldest in the groupk, was in the lead keeping a quick pace and kept outdistancing myself and the other young man (who, I noticed in the tent, fingered/had on one of his wrists, prayer beads-perhaps on a spiritual journey). I saw numerous stacked rocks along the trail that I learned are a kind of natural buddhist pagoda.

Also, at the top of pirobong, are three massive stone-stacked pagoda structures (which I stood next to in some of the photos).

note: perhaps I will reflect more on this day later, now, I want to finish up other work...but...long story-short..after we got down...we took a bus back to the center of town...I left my fellow mountaineers getting off the bus early...I wandered down a main road...when it occured to me to see a movie...specifically jackie chan's new feature, "BIG TIME"..in chinese of course, subtitled in Korean..after asking directions..to the mun hwa theater...i enjoyed one of my kung fu heroes, loner style...alone but not alone with the other movie goers scattered throughout the spacious hall...

Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 09:33:21 -0400

From: allison

Subject: Re: my pusan adventures

To: Fitzcarl Reid

>i thought i had lost contact with you. how's your

>life. tell me what's going on with you and nettrice.

>and what do you exactly mean about my into page?

it just seemed as if when i read the entry about the mountain fiasco,

(4

lack of a better word, really) it was like reading some "fairytale with

a

moral".

U wanted to REALLY climb this mountain.

She didnt want you to.

U ran past her 2 climb farther, she begged u 2 come down.

She baited u.

You came down a little.

She went after u 2 pull u down the rest of the way.

U raced past her again, to go higher & higher, etc.

It was like some weird personal challenge story, with Mariko as the

villain, or some Dark Force trying to bring u down. And hey, i don't

know

the relache between u & Mariko, but while reading it, I almost yelled,

LEAVE HIM ALONE ALREADY, AND LET HIM CLIMB THE DAMN MOUNTAIN. haha.

Seems like a weird relationship based on what i read so far.

But, in my Bensonhurt, Brooklyn accent that jumps outta me now & then,

"whattaya gonna friggin do, ay?"

As far as everything else, I'm ok. Still workin full time in Jersey

City as

a graphic designer for New Jersey City University. Been in my own weird

relationship for 2 3/4 years. Into desktop video now, and exploring the

WWW. Tryin 2 keep these long locs up & outta my face, (u can donate

fabric

wraps! haha!). Living just enuf for the city. (not really, but i like

sayin

that.)

Nettrice doesnt live far from me, which is cool. She works with East

Harlem

Tutorial Program, with a new computer techie title position she created

&

implemented there. (yea Trice!). We both miss Brooklyn sumptin FIERCE,

but

know with Guilliani there, we can't go back. I'm sure Brooklyn misses

u.

The stretching techniques on the C train platform were classic. Haha!

Peace & hairgrease, (if u can get that there....)

Allison.

-------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 22:19:33 -0700 (PDT)

From: Fitzcarl Reid

Subject: Re: my pusan adventures

To: allison

monday, april 19th, 1999

thanks allison,

i thought i had lost contact with you. how's your

life. tell me what's going on with you and nettrice.

and what do you exactly mean about my into page?

love

fitz:)

--- allison wrote:

> >check out the details on my updated web

> >journal.

> >

>

> Fitz i like your site alot. Well thought out &

> nicely laid out. And cute

> photos. This is my first time seeing Mariko.

> I can't hold my tongue, I think there is some

> symbolism in that intro page

> text about Mariko & yourself climbing a mountain,

> but I am not the type to

> "go there". (yeah right).

> I was wondering what had happened 2 u. Glad to see u

> are still enjoying

> your time overseas. I look forward to updates &

> journal entries.

> Thanks for sharing.

>

> Allison Thornton.

>

> PS: Hey, put Nettrice on your list, she talks about

> u sometimes.(its all

> good. hahah) nettrice@rocketmail.com

>

>

>

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 22:18:34 -0700 (PDT)

From: Fitzcarl Reid
Add to Address Book
Block address

Subject: Re: my pusan adventures, dear ally

To: allison

friday, april 23,,1999, wonju college, wonju city,

south korea

dear allison baby!!

what a great letter!!!

with your permission i would like to put it on my

intro page after my corny story.

can i? huh? please? please? pleassseee?

actually you are not the only one to note the

weirdness between mario and i. i have written to many

folks in the past about the constant shinanigans

between mariko and myself. so often in fact that a few

of my friends like Aisha (Hakim-Dyce) have publicly

lambasted me for my excessive whining via email.

it's nice to hear you and nettrice are stronging it

black woman stylie. which makes want to say, KICK the

shit out of mr. Gooliani.

i just checked nettrice's page and sent her a few

words.

actually i better high tail it outta here. i must

teach a class in the next town in about an hour. it

takes that long to get there.

love

from your bro on the asian peninsula known as korea

peace

fitzcarl

-------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 09:33:36 -0400

From: allison

Subject: Re: my pusan adventures, dear ally

To: Fitzcarl Reid

sure sweety u can use my letter if u like.

peace & love 2 u.

ally.

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wonjujournal Page 1

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home page * next page * send mail to fitzcarl@yahoo.com

4/6/99wonjucity , second trip to japan

2010-06-04T13:13:00.003-04:00

wonjujournal

http://members.multimania.co.uk/fitzcarl/wonjujournal.html
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table of contents * latest page * intro * learn Korean * e-mail: fitzcarl@yahoo.com

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Check out my university entrance essay - Statement of Purpose ¿¬¼ö¸ñÀû ¹× °èÈ¹¼ - (my sixth draft) for Seoul National University's Korean Language Program (still in progress)

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my second trip to japan...

note,saturday night,10pm,may8,1999: last week, GOLDEN WEEK (a national holiday from friday to wednesday-children's day), I passed my 28th birthday, May 1st, in Japan. i arrived in narita airport on friday, april 30th. after much confusion i made my way to tokyo. i had to spent friday night outside of tokyo train station after being kindly ejected by station workers. the next day early morning saturday i took the shinkansen express train to visit my friend noriko. she lives in iwate prefecture. her hometown is noda. noriko's sister yuko was kind enough to put me up saturday night. noriko had to spend the night there also because her parent's gave her room to relatives visiting for golden week. noriko's dog, bibi, also had to spend the night. noriko's parents saying the relatives don't like dogs...

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4/6/99wonjucity

(note tuesday, 4/27) newsflash: wow! :) Mariko finally made it to the top of Chiak Mountain on Sunday, April 25, 1999. I went along too. I got up at 5am that morning. I was going to go on my own, but Mariko said she wanted to really go this time. We caught the #41 bus to Chiak at 7am. We spent the entire day there leaving at 8pm and getting home at 9pm. Unfortunately, we didn't bring the camera. So, Mariko has only her memories and still aching feet to treasure the moment.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fitzcarl Reid

Wonju City

wonjujournal

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latest page * intro * learn Korean * e-mail: fitzcarl@yahoo.com

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a bit of news from a friend... New California Media, a coalition of more than 100 California-based media and civic education groups founded by Pacific News Service has officially launched NCM Online, America's first multi-ethnic newsportaland.

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May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness;

2010-06-04T13:12:00.001-04:00

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness;

this is immeasurable loving kindness;

May all beings be liberated from suffering and the causes of all suffering;

this is immeasurable compassion;

May all beings be free of suffering and always stay happy;

this is immeasurable JOY;

May all beings be free of grasping and aversion towards other,

and develop faith in the equality of all beings;

this is immeasurable equanimity.

-The Four Immeasurable Vows, Tantric Buddhism

jamaica journal

2010-06-04T10:16:00.000-04:00

자메이카 생활

2006.04.08 02:29
기본폴더
sidharthur
http://kr.blog.yahoo.com/sidharthur/1
now, monday april 3, black river town, an internet cafe
(9시43분, 토요일, 2006년 4월 1일 ?9:43am, Saturday, April 1, 2006 ?South Field Library, St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, West Indies)
제마이마 할머니 그리고 집뒤에 무서운언덕 굴

JEMIMA and the BEANSTALK or The mystery of the marl hole cave or The FOOLBOY that cut down me chocho, kill me rooster, broke me window?/SPAN>

This is just a collection of journal entries and musings that are in no particular order. They are things, for a little while now, that I have wanted to put down on paper or the internet anyway. (I can SEE, from my grandmother뭩 house veranda, Great Bay, the open sea, the sun when it sets뾵ith the silhouette of her sour sap tree in the foreground-- and the wide open sky. Yet I am not fully satisfied. What more can I want?)

아름다운 별자리다

I woke up last night or rather early this morning before sunrise (around 4:30am). I had fallen asleep with the light on. If my grandmother knew she would not be happy at all. I had a very weird dream where I was being chased (by my friend from Canada?st1:City w:st="on">Nancy뾵e met in Seoul)뾱he had extraordinary witch-like powers.

I went outside to behold the night sky. The Pegasus constellation had did an almost complete 180 degree turn around the pole. I have yet to have seen Polaris though. Pegasus looks like a 밷ig dipper? So I wonder if it isn뭪 the big dipper. Orion was no where to be seen. I usually see it (and the part of the Milky Way it뾥e?--inhabits) not long after sundown before it disappears into the western horizon. This has been happening faster with the onset of spring.

The stars are always lovely. But tonight was extra special. I believe I was looking at the center of our spiral galaxy. It looked like a long fuzzy cloud in a shape of an eye뾩ike the eye of Soron in the Lord of the Rings. There were stars that I had never seen before. I saw at least five meteorites--shooting stars. I made wishes. The insects, lizards and whatever else seemed to be at the height of their full symphonic glory. The cats were running around like maniacs.

There was a solar eclipse on Thursday. But it could only been seen in certain places in Brazil, Turkey and Northern Africa. I뭭e found out that there will be a 뱈eteor?shower from the break up of comet in May. I뭭e been slowly learning about the constellations with star charts on the internet뾍imalee, my sister, has sent me a nice pamphlet on the subject.)

I thought to myself as I gazed up into the heavens that the origins the creation story must have it뭩 roots in stellar events. The morning star is named for Lucifer뾲he bringer of the light뾬r that which heralds the coming of 뱓he?greatest star in the sky뾬ur sun뾵orshipped as God by many ancient cultures. I can imagine that someone had witnessed a cosmic explosion (possibly during the day) and interpreted as a war between good and evil in heaven. I suppose an explanation like this is written in some anthropology book somewhere.

제마이마 이모님

My grandmother seems to be well-loved in general by everyone around her뾯elatives and friends alike. Everyone calls her Auntie Jem (or Gem). Her name is Jemima Blackwood. Hahahah yes just like the pancake syrup brand. If you can remember the joke?U>Ain뭪 ya Mama on the pancake box?U>Aunt Jemima. (She said her mother had named her Susan. But she, never liking the name, changed it.)

This morning, two children (Shawna Kaye and Tunde뾲he former, a girl and the latter, a boy) that live down the hill, had come to look for neeseberry (spelling?뾲he fruit looks like a qiwi but it뭩 really sweet뾫ot tart. They can get as big as my fist. They will gum up your works if you eat them too early. The sap is very sticky. It뭩 thick and yellowish.

She always gives crackers any children that come to the house. But she told them to get from under the tree. They wouldn뭪 listen. I was in the outhouse at the time뾱moking the wasps out while뾞hem뾡oing what I had to do.

시골생활이 신기다

The mangos are really coming in big time. Many of them fall off before they fully mature뾋 used to get sad seeing them on the red dirt뾟ut I have lately taken to using the machete like a cricket bat on them.

My granny has a concrete water tank (six feet high) that collects rainwater from gutter fixed to the back lower side of her roof. She could get a line hooked up from the road뾲here is a reservoir. But I am glad she has the tank (along with a smaller plastic tank and barrel drum). Her neighbor뾏r. White뾦s always complaining that someone cut his pipe뾲o steal water or out of spite.

The reinforced-cement house (a zinc-roofed one-storey cottage with two bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen space and an outside veranda/patio) has an indoor toilet. We only use it at night. During the day we use the outhouse. She makes fun of me for wastefully wrapping wads of toilet paper around my hand before going to use it. She said I used to do the same thing as a boy. The plant, insect and reptile life is intense out here. Lizards, ants, giant roaches, field mice and more constantly come and go through the house. There뭩 no running water. We have to carry water in pails into the house to bath and drink. We have a gas stove in the house kitchen. She uses it mostly to boil water for tea or to make porridge in the morning. Grandma does her main cooking with wood in the outside kitchen. She can only use Dutch pots made from iron on the iron prongs.

I tried to use a stainless steel pot once to make rice. It only became blackened with soot and never got hot enough to actually boil the rice. Grandma had been pissed, until I cleaned it off.

할모니 의 속담

My grandmother is always telling me what and what not to do. It뭩 very annoying, but I know she means well. I also know that in many, if not almost all cases, her advice is quite sound.

The Jamaican proverbs (or just plain admonishments) I have heard my grandmother say so far are:

1. You can뭪 plant peas and expect corn.

2. Hide your things.

3. [It is a] scornful dog [that] eat[s] dirty pudding.

4. Get up and make up your bed (6am).

5. [It뭩] no use [to] eat all today and famine tomorrow.

6. They can make [a] man. But they can뭪 breathe breath or make blood.

7. Get up and make up your bed (7am).

8. If you feed them (the cats) too much, [then] they won뭪 mouse.

9. 밪tudyration?is better than education.

10. Get up and make up your bed (8am).

11. Go and take your bath like a good boy (6pm).

12. Go to bed. Turn off the lights. And go to sleep! (This is mostly annoying on Friday nights. But she tells me this every night around 7pm. God! I miss going out to dance salsa! If I were in a touristy area that would not be a problem.)

-----------There뭩 more, but I don뭪 remember them all--------------

생활의 변하는 것

A lot has changed since the last time I visited Jamaica over ten years ago. There뭩 more crime. There are more people. My grandmother has iron bars over the all of her windows on the inside of the house. It reminds me of my time in the immigration detention center in Yeosu City, Chollanamdo in South Korea. I guess that all the fighting I did for better facilities has come true here. I am still imprisoned. But it is my grandmother that keeps me in more than the bars.

I keep thinking that I could have easily walked away from the police. I definitely didn뭪 have to stay for four months in immigration. I could have gone to Japan or China. But perhaps somewhere deep inside I wanted to come back to see family that I hadn뭪 seen in 2004. My other grandmother had died then.

My mother and other family want me to stay to help. My grandmother is still strong and independent. But she is not well. She has diabetic, arthritis pain and mental health issues for which she takes medication. Someone in the family has to help her. She is surrounded by tons of family. My mother and one of her nieces asked her to move in with them. But she prefers to live in her own house. She says that as long as she can move around on her own뾱he can live on her own.

She still gets a small pension from England. She said that she worked there for five years. If she hadn뭪 fallen ill, she would have stayed longer. Some of her other family have more money because they were able to.

It looks like the ball is in my court concerning being with her on the daily. Jesus! I definitely didn뭪 think I came here to live permanently. (Yes. I know. What뭩 permanent?) But everyone뭩 asking me to.

I do have fantasies of building wind turbines and solar powered generators ?even a machine to generate electricity from plants뾲here are microbes that are being harvested to produce hydrogen; creating a learning center with all the latest AV equipment; and doing hydroponic gardening alongside making a pond for fish. But I would need to be here for a while to do that. It뭩 so strange. When I was younger I had always dreamed of living on my own land while growing my own food. Now that I have the chance뾋 just want to run away.

I had been thinking that if I joined the military, then I could just send money back home. Then my mother and other family could spend more time with my grandmother and not worry so much about financial matters. My mother has a house in Miami thanks to my sister. So far, I have done squat to help out. When I first left New York to go to Korea in 1998, I had nothing. AND now that I am back I still have nothing뾦n the in bank; I am seven years older; unmarried; and, most painfully, lack the four-year college degree뾲hat would have more than come in handy during my time abroad. I am not eligible for government scholarships or loans because never signed for selective service뾟ack when I was protesting the first Gulf War. How f-ing ironic뾥ahaahah뾋 find myself considering actually joining the military for that same money. The funny thing is even if I had signed up for selective service뾡idn뭪 mean that I had to join the military.

Oh well, I do have a Korean language skill set (with working knowledge of Japanese and Chinese). I want to continue my studies. But where do I go from here? When I look at the stars, I wonder if there is such a thing as fate뾡estiny. Can the planets, stars, sun and moon alter their preordained orbits? Yes and no, I guess, scientifically speaking, Orbits are changing, but humans don뭪 live long enough to watch it all unfold. I mean everything goes in cycles뾟irth, death, rebirth. Am I trapped in some unalterable orbit of life? (But we humans are changing the very weather. I should be able to put my life on a different course. But have I reached a point of no return?)

I guess I should count my blessings. I am lucky to still have my one grandmother. I am lucky to be alive. I keep hearing, on the BBC world service, the news of people suffering dying in Iraq뾲he Iraqi people and the soldiers. Jesus! I just want to travel, explore, study and enjoy getting to know this amazing world.

맛있고 단 ?/FONT>사과
?바나나다

This morning my grandmother gave me two of the bananas that had ripened. They were short and thick, and almost tasted like apples. We told me cut down the rest of the remaining bananas뾲aking off the whole stalk. Then I cut down the tree (technically a bush or plant뾲here뭩 no wood). Grandma says they only bear once. So it뭩 best to cut them down. I guess it뭩 to give the younger shoots a better chance to come up.

굴에귀신사는가? There뭩 a cave in the rocky marl (limestone?) hill behind my grandmother뭩 house in the bush. A couple of months ago, I had cut a path to the mouth and went inside to take out some of the stones. I was told many times not to go inside. It seems that 30 odd years ago a man뾵ho went inside with a friend to excavate the marl for building material뾵as crushed to death by a cave-in. I remember the story from when I was a boy뾵hen I had come before to visit my grandmother. The temptation was too great. I guess I still have some fire left in my belly. It was great workout. But I ended up just packing the stones around the two coconut trees behind the house. I had thought I would use them to make a border for plastic greenhouse I wanted to make.

Anyway, here뭩 little bit about some the people around here:

1. 과일을 훔치는 아이.There is Tunde, an eight-year-old (or seven) boy that lives down the hill. His mother died from injuries sustained after being hit by a car. I thought he was a nice boy the first time I had seen him. Then I saw him start a fight. Plus he kept taking my Grandmother뭩 oranges without asking.

2. 가난한난한 농부. Tunde뭩 father, Collin (or Seem ?as my Grandmother), who seems to be an all-around short stocky burly dark chocolate skinned handyman; he does sharecropping on my extended family뭩 land뾦n a system called 뱓rusting out뵕where a person works the land and gives a certain amount of what is grown to the owner. When I first met him he was very friendly and talkative. But I slowly began to realize that every time he stopped by to chat뾲o school about Jamaican country life, he ended up walking away with something뾪y grandmother뭩 oranges, a piece of coconut, box of matches, and the like. (He almost walked off with an extra door that I foolishly had left outside뾩uckily my mother told me to put it back. It was in my grandmother뭩 room. But, because of rainwater that flooded into the house, she had it taken down and the doorway walled off.)

The coconut had been the last straw for me. I never fight over food but boy was I pissed. He had actually come over to ask my Grandmother for a plastic bag for a bunch of spring onions (scallions) he had with him. But also asked for a scale which he complained didn뭪 work properly. I wasn뭪 pissed about having to share the coconut. I was pissed that he seemed to come out nowhere뾣rom around the southern corner of the house and immediately asked for a piece. This was right in the middle of my grandmother and I having a conversation about whether or not to break open the coconut to use for the rice and peas or just to eat plain. He doesn뭪 come around as much. On that day I had practically growled at him to get his own scale if he didn뭪 like my grandmother뭩 own. AND the day when I told him he couldn뭪 have the door. He was sent by my cousin who had asked for it. My mom told me this very cousin had stoned after they had some argument over my sister뭩 son fighting with my cousin뭩 son. So, naturally I couldn뭪 give up the door. YES, Jamaicans are f-ing BIBLICAL. They stone MO-FOs out here if you come out your face.

3. 너무많이 말하고 있는 할아보지. Mr. White (Claudius), the old man next door, seemed to be a very nice grey-haired thin grandfatherly figure. But he talks WAY too much. He used to come over a lot to tell us the latest news (usually the most recent gruesome murder/robbery), shoot the breeze, unload his pet peeves, tell tales of his life in England, relay old proverbs, dispense advice, and so on. But on two occasions when I commented on his smoking, he was quite offended. In fact, every time I said something he disagreed (or simply questioned the veracity of something he said or that I couldn뭪 understand) with he became quite bothered. He would even get up and leave. Now, He doesn뭪 talk to me anymore. When he does come over, it뭩 to see Grandma. But even Grandma, in low whispery voice, tells me he talks too much. He lives alone. So I guess he뭩 really lonely. Apparently he has a wife, but she lives separately in Manchester. They have children who have visited him from time to time. I feel sorry for him. He is a nice man, but obviously has a side to him that pushes people away. Someone or some people keep cutting water pipe. I guess he뭩 pissed someone off. (Maybe one of them is Redson뾞 guy who had managed to get 4,000 Jamaican dollars out of me뾟ecause I was lost when I first came back her last year. He helped me to find my grandmother뭩 house. He had even wanted to walk off with the sandals on my very feet.)

Mr. White should have built a water tank before he built his house. This area is especially thirsty for water during the dry season뾞 kind of winter in Jamaica. He said no one ever told me. I think it was more like he didn뭪 listen.

4. 배고픈 아이들. Carla뭩 boy or boys (Three or Four boys from ages 5 to 11). What can I say about these poor children? I don뭪 even know there proper names. The other children call them: Chuckie and 멷m brother[s]. They live with their mother and the father (Paulo) of the smallest boy, in a small not very nice house towards the land and path going up north. They all seem to have different fathers. Up until I called the time when I called the police to complain about them, they used to always come over to ask Grandma for food. They have absolutely almost no manners. They would always demand more than what she gave them. I had once given the oldest boy a whole loaf of bread. Boy was that big a mistake. He simply came back expecting more. They are not starving. I have sometimes tried to chase them away with a stick to no avail. They simply run, BAREFOOT, circles around me and the house. (I got a nasty cut on my right foot bottom once trying to chase them off the land.) I have seen them in the day on many occasions when they should be in school. The police officer said that if they got involved, they would have to take the children away from their mother. They would become wards of the state until their 21st birthdays. I decided, after hearing that, not to ask the police to come. (Yesterday뾲oday is Monday. I am in black river town now at an internet caf? I came with my grandmother. She뭩 at the bank. She practically left me in the house. I had to catch her on the road.뾃NYWAY, yesterday the oldest boy came again and asked for 500 dollars뾞bout 8 to 10 dollars in US currency. I don뭪 know why, but I gave it to him뾞fter a long lecture on why he shouldn뭪 beg. I told him that if he went to the police, they would put him in a better home. He said he didn뭪 want that.)

5. SEEING IS WANTING. 견물생심. 見物生心. My older cousin, Chris Turner, once told me that he used the leaves of the library books he had borrowed in place of toilet paper. The next day he asked me to loan him one of the Time magazines I had borrowed from the Southfield Library. I almost laughed at him. But simply said no way. He seemed shocked and walked way. But the next day or so, he asked again. I had to look him dead in the eye and say no. Then I kindly explained to him that I had to be responsible for them. I said that it would be different if they were my own. (But I wondered to myself if I would loan him my own books.) Egads! I felt bad about it. He is my cousin, BUT꿌t seems that you must hide your things if you don뭪 want people to ask you to 밷orrow?them.

6. Trouble in Paradise. 지상 낙원에 곤란을겪다. My Aunt Neese and Uncle Lea seemed like the perfect elderly couple at first. They have a wonderful house뾲hat뭩 too big for the two of them. All of their children have grown up and have children of their own뾩iving in the UK and Canada. Aunt Neese always looks out for my grandmother뾠hecking on her at least once a week. Grandma says she뭩 the one she can count on the most. As time has passed I keep witnessing my aunt and uncle having arguments. Last week, I was bitten by one of their dogs that had recently had puppies. Uncle Lea, an 80 year old man or so, actually hit Aunt Neese뾦t was slap on the shoulder뾣or 뱇etting?the dog bite me.

MORE LATER

(I offer 1 on 1 – one teacher one student - classes but with at least one mandatory group game class)

2010-06-03T12:23:00.002-04:00

(I offer 1 on 1 – one teacher one student - classes but with at least one mandatory group game class)

กวดวิชาภาษาอังกฤษ $ 10 ชั่วโมง!

2010-06-03T11:22:00.000-04:00

กวดวิชาภาษาอังกฤษ $ 10 ชั่วโมง!
โทร Tony : (914) 595-2604 หรือ (646) 875-2397 (ข้อความ)

ฉันชื่อโทนี่ เรียนกรุณากับผมและพัฒนาทักษะภาษาอังกฤษของคุณ เรียนรู้ศิลปะการสนทนาฟรีนั้นปรับปรุงการออกเสียงและไวยากรณ์พัฒนาความคิดวิจารณญาณเพิ่มฟัง; ได้รับความเข้าใจในการอ่านมากขึ้น; สำรวจการคิดวิเคราะห์การทำงานในการเขียนส่วนประกอบแก้ไข /; สำนวนถอดรหัส; euphemisms วัฒนธรรม decode; เข้าใจเหตุการณ์ปัจจุบันเอาชนะความอายและ สร้างความมั่นใจ! เรียนรู้ที่จะพูดได้ง่ายตามธรรมชาติและอิสระในภาษาอังกฤษ อยากรู้มากมายของฉันและรักการผจญภัยทำให้ฉันอยู่ในเกาหลี (เดินทางไปประเทศญี่ปุ่นและจีน) กว่าหกปี (รวมเรียนภาษาเกาหลีที่ Seoul National University สองปี) รักฉันมีการเดินทางและเรียนรู้เกี่ยวกับคนอื่น ๆ , วัฒนธรรม, ภาษา, อาหาร, ศุลกากรและความเชื่อทั่วโลก ฉันเคยหวังที่จะเรียนรู้จากนักเรียนของฉันในขณะที่พวกเขาเรียนรู้จากฉัน

Summer Guide: Undead of Summer—MUSIC

2010-06-02T18:46:00.002-04:00

http://www.nypress.com/article-21271-summer-guide-undead-of-summermdashmusic.html

BLOGS FEATURES COLUMNS FILM MUSIC 24/7 FOOD CLASSIFIEDS PROMOTIONS SPECIAL SECTIONS

News Culture Comics

Home » Articles » Special Sections » Summer Guide: Music » Summer Guide: Undead of Summer—MUSIC

Wednesday, May 26,2010

Summer Guide: Undead of Summer—MUSIC

By NY Press

.......

Summer Stage
SummerStage turns 25 this year, and like any true twentysomething it’s going all out to celebrate, as the Central Park summer staple expands to all five boroughs. See free shows from The xx, St. Vincent, Public Enemy and Jay Electronica, while others from Pavement, The Flaming Lips and Hot Chips will cost you.
June 1 through Aug. 29, various locations, 212-360-2756; Free.

Celebrate Brooklyn!
Prospect Park proves it’s more than just a pretty space by housing one of the best summer concert series in the city. Slather on some sunscreen and go see Sonic Youth and Talk Normal July 31, The Roots July 11 or Kid Koala June 25, as well as an opening night kick-off concert by Norah Jones
June 9. June 9 through Aug. 8, Prospect Park Bandshell, ener park at 9th St. & Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, 718-855-7882; Free.

Madison Square Music
When you’re not in Madison Square Park filling up on burgers, try catching one of its free concerts. Offer to bring a blanket and let your friend stand in line for snacks before seeing soul singer Ruthie Foster, who opens up the park’s Oval Lawn Series
June 16, or the David Bromberg Quartet July 14. June 16 through Aug. 4, Madison Square Park, enter park at Madison Ave. & E. 26th St., www.madisonsquarepark.org; Free.

Vision Festival
Head downtown for something other than a dive bar or brunch and check out the more than 50 dance and music performances this fesitval has to offer, like Jayne Cortez & the Firespitters June 25.
June 20 through 30, Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. (near Pitt St)., 212-254-5420; $20 and up.

Make Music New York
Traditionally our summer starts with shaving a mohawk, but seeing as Punk Island opens Make Music New York the day before summer begins this year, we’ll be kicking our ritual off early. We suggest you do the same. The music festival’s other less abrasive offerings will still take place all over the city June 21.
June 21, various locations, www.makemusicny.org; 11 a.m. to 10, Free.

River To River Festival
From the must-see rock shows at Pier 17 to the early evening concert series at Rockefeller Park, a July 4 concert in Battery Park and the Bang On A Can Marathon, River to River is an exhaustive behemoth of Downtown summer music. Check the website for a full schedule.
June 22 through Aug. 11, various locations, 212-732-7678, www.rivertorivernyc.com, Free.

RiverRocks
See more than the swells break at Pier 54 during Hudson River Park’s annual music series featuring indie rockers like series headliners Phosphorescent & Dawes July 8, The Antlers July 22 and Real Estate Aug. 12.
July 8 through Aug. 12, Hudson River Park, Perry & West Streets, 212-627-2020, www.riverrocksnyc.com; Free.

New York Philharmonic in the Parks
Starting July 13, city parks will be great places for something other than staring at sunbathers; something more classy like a free orchestra concert, including pieces from Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Bernstein and Mozart, in Central, Cunningham and Prospect parks.
July 13 through 16, various locations, 212- 875-5656, www.nyphil.org; Free.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors
It’s not officially summer until Lincoln Center Out of Doors opens, because this annual festival of live music is the touchstone telling us now it’s time to bust out the short shorts, sunglasses and zinc. Make sure to see, on July 31, “The Detroit Breakdown,” featuring The Gories, Dennis Coffey, Melvin Davis, Spyder Turner and more.
July 28 through Aug. 15, various locations, www.lincolncenter.org; Free.

Lilith Fair
The legendary all-female festival of the summer is back and bigger than ever for its 10th anniversary. See sets from Sarah McLachlan, Cat Power, Indigo Girls and Carly Simon, who just might tell you who’s so vain after all these years. Actually probably not, but we’ll keep crossing our fingers.
July 31, PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, N.J., 732-203-2500; 3, $37.75 and up.

Charlie Parker Jazz Festival
Head to Tompkin’s Square Park in the East Village and Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem to hear some of jazz’s biggest musicians perform for this two-day celebration of the music Parker held so close to his heart. JD Allen and Jimmy Scott headline.
Aug. 28 & 29, Marcus Garvey Park, enter park at E. 120th St. & Madison Ave. and Tompkins Square Park, enter park at E. 8th St. & Ave. A; 3, Free.

Music on the Oval
If you thought that only shady rental deals went down in Stuy Town, you were wrong! Every Wednesday between June 16 and July 21, the development will host a concert featuring groups like Delorean, drumming legend Tony Allen, Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens and others. Before each band, a DJ does an hour-long set to pump up the crowd. We can’t think of a better way to start a night out in the East Village, or to meet a nice old lady about to give up her rent-controlled one bedroom.
June 16 through July 21, Stuyvesant Town Oval, enter park at 1st Ave. & E. 16th St.; 6, Free.

Afro-Punk Festival
This three-day festival features plenty of skating, biking and live music in Commodore Barry Park. Highlights are sure to include live sets from Bad Brains, N*E*R*D, Cipher and P.O.S. as well as the cash prizes contestants can receive for winning skate contests.
June 25 through 27, Commodore Barry Park, enter park at Flushing Avenue & Navy Street, Brooklyn; Free.

Summergarden Concerts
The only thing better than the Museum of Modern Art’s Sculpture Garden? Listening to music there this summer. The free series includes concerts by musicians from the Juilliard School on July 11 and 25, and by groups selected by Jazz at Lincoln Center on July 18 and August 1. But not so fast: regular museum admission applies. Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-708-9400; 5:30 & 7, $20.

Washington Square Music Festival
Haven’t seen that shiny new fountain yet? The 52nd season of free chamber music and jazz takes place four Tuesdays in July at 8 p.m., in front of the Holley statue in Washington Square. Featured works are by Karl Amadeus Hartmann.
July 27 features the Charles Mingus Orchestra. Complete lineup at www.washingtonsquaremusicfestival.org.

2010 NYC Undead Jazz Fest
Considering all the young talent that has embraced jazz in recent years, one could easily tell critics who say it’s dead, that jazz is alive and well. The Undead Jazz Festival, a showcase of over 30 distinct independent artists, promises just that.

“I’ve been producing the Winter Jazz Festival for six years, and it has been a unique experience,” says co-organizer Brice Rosenbloom. “This past year, over 4,000 people attended, and it was such an eyeopening experience to have that mass of people come out on cold January nights to hear jazz in New York, that it proved that a similar model could occur other times of the year.”

For this two-day smorgasbord— which takes place at Kenny’s Castaways, Le Poisson Rouge and Sullivan Hall— performers include pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, contemporary drummer Ari Hoenig, guitarist Mary Halvorson and Burnt Sugar.

The unusual choice of the venues was also deliberate. “Kenny’s Castaways has had a history of launching artists like Bruce Springsteen, but more recently it hasn’t had much attention,” explains Rosenbloom. “But in the past two years, it has been included as part of the Winter Jazz Festival, and it’s one of the most charming venues of the three that we’re using.” —Ernest Barteldes

June 12-13, Kenny’s Castaways, 157 Bleecker St., 212-979-9762; Sullivan Hall, 218 Sullivan St., 212-505-1703; Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., 212-353-3474; One-day passes $25, full festival pass $30,www.undeadjazzfest.com.

http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2007/02/yeosu-entirely-preventable-tragedy.html

2010-06-02T12:35:00.003-04:00

http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2007/02/yeosu-entirely-preventable-tragedy.html

Prison Diary of an English Teacher (2)

2010-06-02T12:20:00.003-04:00

Prison Diary of an English Teacher (2)

[Exclusive] One visa-less American has spent two months in prison awaiting deportation from Korea

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=&no=226858&rel_no=1&back_url=

Todd Thacker (todd) Email Article Print Article

Published 2005-05-18 09:13 (KST)

Related Articles [영문편지 원문] Prison Diary of an English Teacher

[편지전문] "경제적·도덕적으로 잘못... 다른 방법 찾아야 한다"

The Guards

A few minutes ago the floor supervisor came inside our cell for one of their regular inspections. He was accompanied by one of the guards -- the one that most people like because he's the friendliest -- always ready with a quick smile. He also does small favors for us, like deliver notes or food to our friends in other cells and buying bakery bread from outside...

For the most part the Immigration and prison guards seem to be ordinary folks just doing their jobs. They have to deal with people who are not criminals in the harmful sense of the word, but are behind bars. So I think they try to do their best...

One of the guards (a young man in his late twenties, I think) says today is his last day. He can't handle the 24-hour shifts -- too stressful. I wish him good luck in the future and give him my Cyworld address.

Day to Day

Another day has come but is not yet gone. I make the best of my time here by studying Korean -- watching the news, reading the Bible in English and Korean, helping translate for the guards who can't speak English and the workers who don't speak Korean, including writing letters to the immigration officers and sometimes to the doctor's office...

All of us have irregular sleeping patterns. During the day we are relatively inactive and not allowed to go outside. But we are expected to be model prisoners and follow whatever orders that are given to us. There is a curfew at 11 p.m., a time when we are expected to go to sleep. Almost everyone ignores this.

As a result, at least in my cell, people sleep for most of the morning until lunchtime. (I usually get up very early and go to sleep early.) The guards are on a 24-hour shift, changing each morning.

Is it possible that these conditions are disruptive to normal sleep patterns and biorhythms? Could this lead to irritability, short attention spans, noise sensitivity, shortness of temper and a low tolerance for what is perceived as offensive? Could both staff and detainee alike be suffering from these symptoms?

I can only say that I have seen relatively minor incidents mushroom into full-blown shouting matches between staff and detainee. It seems both sides perceive, at times, a lack of respect for one another. (Also among detainees in having to live with each other in the same space.)

Guards have the option, apparently, of using a weapon (club) to subdue anyone they deem unruly. (Fortunately I have never witnessed anyone actually being struck by these tools of violence.)

Is it also possible that physical ailments are being caused by irregular sleep patterns? And what about the food? I, myself, am a vegetarian. The Muslims here don't eat pork. Some don't find the meals appetizing and eat only rice at times.

Medical Issues

My friend "I", who is 31, has a boil on his left shoulder -- it's more on his shoulder blade nearer to the middle of his upper back. When he went for our weekly checkup, the doctor said there wasn't much that could be done for hum (he did get a mysterious prescription of pills, though) in the detention center.

He should really go to a hospital outside of the detention center, but the authorities told "I" he would have to pay for any medical treatment outside. "I" says that if he spends any money on medical bills he would have less money for buying his airplane ticket home. So he must go untreated.

Does this make any sense? If immigration authorities have the right to take away our freedom, shouldn't they be obligated to make sure we are in the best of health? Is not our welfare, our very lives, in their hands? Are we not under their control?...

The shortage of staff to run this facility is a danger, especially at night when there are less staff on duty.

When one woman was seriously ill on Friday, April 22, we were told we couldn't have our weekly visit to the infirmary to see the doctor. Of course, if someone is seriously ill, they should be taken care of immediately. However, does that make it right to neglect the medical needs of the other detainees?

Once, when I asked a guard for something to put on a wound I had on my hand, I was told that because it was late, nothing was available. The medical staff had gone home for the day. I asked him if there was an emergency medical box -- he said no.

Safety

On Monday, April 11, at about 9:30 p.m., a woman tried to hang herself. I don't know exactly what happened, but thank god help arrived before it was too late. But it took way too long for that help to arrive because of the late hour and shortage of staff. From what I heard, she tried to hang herself from the bars outside her bathroom window, using a towel. I, my cellmates and the whole prison could hear screams and yelling. We all thought it was a fight at first...

Last night (April 22), there was a fire (I believe in cell 201). It happened around 3:30 a.m. I learned later that is was probably started by three Russian men (who are now in solitary confinement). Before this fire occurred I could hear people shouting downstairs, complaining and demanding that the TVs be restored. (I'm not sure if the people who started the fire were among their number.)

Luckily, the fire was contained. But what if it wasn't. Everyone, behind bars, have no ability to escape to safety. During the fire, the guards on our floor seems to be at a loss as to what to do (or rather, they were waiting to be told what to do.) One guard, if my memory is accurate, sat down at the office computer and played solitaire.

I have been told on more than one occasion that this facility is understaffed and under funded. There are not enough staff, guards or otherwise to safely run this prison. Which, in my view, cannot be lawful, let alone safe for staff or detainee. When a repairman comes to fix the phone or TV, he is locked inside with us. This is only because the guards trust us not to harm that person. (This is also the case whenever one of the staff enter our cells.)

Truth be told, if any detainee had a mind to harm him/herself or another detainee, cause damage to any of the fixtures or objects inside the cells, or start a fire, then it is not impossible. We are not supposed to have lighters or matches, yet a fire was started. How?

On Breaking the Law: 'We Are Not Criminals'

If we are being held in this facility because we have broken the law, then don't we have rights? Don't we have the right to appeal; to probation; to legal counsel; and to any and all such rights afforded to others who are also serving time for violations of the law? Don't Koreans who have committed even more serious violations get even more than we are given? Yet what is our "crime"? That we worked to earn our daily bread? Now we rot here day in, day out, at government expense -- the expense of the Korean people.

Which is the true crime? The laws that put us here or that we were just living by the sweat of our brows? We are not criminals! Why are we put into a facility with bars and locks? Why are we handcuffed when we are transferred to church?

Is it possible that locking people up as if they are criminals causes some of us to behave as if we were criminals? (Acting out, misbehaving, etc.) I must emphasize that the people here are working people, for the most part. Now we are being fed three times a day for doing absolutely nothing. We need activities. We need something constructive and creative to give us a sense of, at least hope, and if not that, just dignity...

People are kept here for far too long. Does it make any sense to pay the cost of locking a human being up for an indefinite period versus paying the price of an airplane ticket to send them home? In my view, it's financially stupid and morally repugnant.

Yes, we have broken the law, but there has to be a better way to deal with the issue. A better solution must be developed. If not for the sake of economy, then at least for the sake of kindness and compassion.

Instead of a punitive penal institution, why not an alternative solution-oriented policy that treats people with dignity and respect. Arresting and locking up workers for deportation is a half-measure band-aid solution applied to a never-healing wound.

The laws favor the employers, but severely penalize the workers. Currently, workers are hunted down and thrown into cages. Then they are told to leave the country. If they are lucky, their employers pay them what they are owed (in back wages.) If not, then they languish here. If people complain, especially if they complain too loudly, they are told to "be quiet." (In some cases, just "shut up.")

There's a running joke here that whenever someone asks when they are going home, they are told "tomorrow, or the day after."

Why not allow workers to get their money before you lock them behind bars (if we are to be locked up at all)? Wouldn't that make much more sense?

©2005 OhmyNews

Other articles by reporter Todd Thacker

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29. I kind of experienced the same thing. Cris from Brazil , 2008-05-26 10:20 0

28. I kind of experienced the same thing. Cris from Brazil , 2008-05-26 10:20 0

27. I kind of experienced the same thing. Cris from Brazil , 2008-05-26 10:20 0

26. I kind of experienced the same thing. Cris from Brazil , 2008-05-26 10:20 0

25. I kind of experienced the same thing. Cris from Brazil , 2008-05-26 10:20 0

24. I kind of experienced the same thing. Cris from Brazil , 2008-05-26 10:20 0

Prison Diary of an English Teacher

2010-06-02T12:19:00.002-04:00

Prison Diary of an English Teacher

[Exclusive] One visa-less American has spent two months in prison awaiting deportation from Korea

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=226771&rel_no=1

Todd Thacker (todd) Email Article Print Article

Published 2005-05-17 18:30 (KST)

In recent months the Korean government has been cracking down nationwide on foreign English teachers working illegally.

English-language instruction is a massive industry here, with relatively high salaries for native English speakers and the owners of the private institutions. But over the past few years, stories of unqualified instructors have faced the glare of the media spotlight.

In the most recent instance, a television documentary in February highlighted negligence and criminal activities by some of these foreign teachers, prompting public outcry and renewed government action.

Widespread arrests and deportations have alarmed the expat community. Many feel there is no due process and point to insufficient legal representation, protections and instances of "summary justice."

One visa-less American English teacher, who was arrested by police in the port city of Busan on March 24, sent OhmyNews a long, diary-style letter on May 2 detailing the circumstances surrounding his arrest, his day-to-day prison life and recommendations for improvements in the system. The letter's return address was from the Ministry of Justice's Immigration Office Detention Center at Yeosu, along Korea's south coast.

The writer, who does not want to be identified for fear of retribution, spoke with OhmyNews on numerous occasions by public telephone from his prison cell. He said he loves Korea and wants to help improve a "broken" system.

In his letter he details the "Catch-22" faced by many of his cell mates -- not just English teachers -- who were arrested and then incarcerated without being able to receive their paychecks to buy air tickets back home. The Korean government only pays for deportation airfare when a prisoner harms him or herself.

An edited version of his letter appears here in two parts. -- Ed.

The crackdown by the Korean government has incarcerated hundreds around the nation.

I wake up earlier than the others. It's after 6 a.m., April 14. The guards turn on the lights at around 6:55 a.m. It's the only time during the day when I can clearly hear myself think. It's a time to prepare for the day ahead. It's a time to just be.

The sun has already risen. Our bathroom window faces west. We can see (through the outer wall window on the other side of the corridor running around our cells) a yard surrounded on three sides by hills that have been landscaped to form rocky, earthen walls -- the tops of which are covered by trees and scrubs. The hill directly across has an electrical tower on top.

It's my 15th day here at the Ministry of Justice's Yeosu Immigration Office Detention Center. (Before I came here I spent seven days at the Busan Immigration Office.)

About the Author

Dear Korean people,

Please forgive me for my wrongdoing. Forgive me for falling in love with your country, food, culture, people, history, land, spirit, cities, mountains, trees, traditions, manners, neighborhoods, skies, rivers, scenery, atmosphere, joys, triumphs, disappointments, fashions, parks, museums, language, movies, TV shows, music, families, seasons, paintings, arts and much, much more for the past six and a half years.

I was born in New York City. My parents are Jamaican. I'm 34 years old. I studied Korean here for two years at Seoul National University, but I still have so much more to learn. If I am able to in the future, I wish to continue my studies, live in Korea and eventually become a Korean citizen. I want to contribute whatever I can to making my adopted home the best place it can be.

I was taken into custody by two police officers on Thursday, March 24, 2005, on suspicion of teaching English at a Busan language institute without a proper visa.

In short, I was tried, convicted and sentenced -- or rather handed over to the immigration office authorities to be deported. Immigration determined that the case against me was valid. I was told I had to leave Korea...

When I was first brought to the immigration authorities in Busan, I was threatened verbally as well as physically because I refused to show them my passport. It was taken from me by force after at least seven immigration and police officials held me down (one, almost suffocated me by covering my mouth.) Before they knew I was an American they thought I was from some African country. After they learned I was American, their attitudes changed drastically...

Although I can't blame the police and immigration officials for trying to do their jobs, I believe my human rights were violated. I do not seek retribution. I don't want revenge. I do, however, feel that if the way I was treated in their zeal to determine my identity is common practice, then such procedures should be immediately discontinued, corrected and discouraged by law.

I never had the benefit of protection of a lawyer during the entire time I have been in police and immigration custody. I was never properly informed about what my rights are. I don't even know the names of any of police and immigration officials that I have encountered so far.

I never knew my rights when I was arrested. I never saw a judge. The only time I had the benefit of a translator was when I was asked to give a statement -- in which the police officer who was typing it and asking me questions -- conveniently left out the incident where I was brought to immigration in the dead of night and verbally and physically assaulted by seven officers because I refused to cooperate. Is this justice?...

The Human Rights appeal form is out of reach. Actually, it's practically invisible. When I was in "room" 304 I didn't even know it existed or that I had the right to access it. Only when I was moved to "room" 302 did I notice (many days later) it was taped up on the window of the guards' office (located centrally in the middle of the third floor. Moreover, I learned of it only because a friend told me that I had the right to file a complaint -- I then requested a copy, which initially was denied by the person in charge -- whose name I do not know -- but would prefer to leave out of the matter -- in general -- because it is practice and policy that matters more in the end.

On Thursday, April 21, I was given a copy after complaining to the Human Rights Commission by phone. Today at around 10 a.m. I was asked to sign for a fax from the Human Rights Commission. I did so. The fax was delivered to me a day late, but I signed the receipt form anyway. (I don't know the name of the immigration official who delivered it.) He was, at first, upset that I didn't immediately sign it; of course I said I wanted to read it first. After I signed it he thanked me, gave me a copy, and left...

Ever since I filed my Human Rights petition over the phone with Mrs. Lee Youn Hee, the guards have been neglecting me -- more like consciously avoiding me (shunning me as if I had a terrible disease.) They either have ignored me when I have tired to get their attention (to ask a question) or they simply say, "I don't know," or "Ask the staff."

At some time, often 10 a.m., I am taken by one of the immigration officials (maybe a Mr. Lee) to see one of the higher-level officials (maybe a Mr. Jang, I don't know.) He tells me I'm just like everyone else here. He feels sorry for me. But the law is the law. If or when I leave Korea, I won't be able to return for up to a year, three years or more. Who knows? I guess it's not news really. I was told this by officials in Busan Immigration. Should I leave my friends behind? Should I abandon my home?

Fellow Prisoners' Stories

The massive Mongolian sings beautifully. A sad falsetto -- I imagine it to be about missing a faraway homeland of vast, green pastures, endless fertile grasslands, deserts and broad skies.

My friend "G" tells me that seven women from Russia, China, Thailand and the Philippines) will be going home tomorrow. The news brings a broad smile to my face. "G" is from Uzbekistan. He was arrested by immigration officers along with his wife and several other coworkers from India, Pakistan and Uzbekistan for working illegally at a plastic car parts factory.

Every morning he calls the factory boss (or owner, I'm not sure) to plead for the wages they haven't received. If they don't' get the money they can't buy their plane tickets to go back home. Which basically means that they must stay imprisoned indefinitely.

Even if the Korean government paid for their plane ticket to go home, how would they take care of themselves when they returned to their native country? "G" has told me that Korea has been his home for nine years. He's 37. He has no home in Uzbekistan to return to.

From what I've learned (from talking to immigration officers in Yeosu and Busan), the employers of illegal migrant workers must pay them the wages owed. But some employers try to evade the law to keep the profits...

My friend "M" from Nigeria says that his former employer refuses to pay them (four of his coworkers are here also) for the last three months. He says that without that money, he can't go home. So he'll have to find another way.

Why not seize the factory owners and their assets? Why not give the workers a chance to get their money and do for themselves instead of having them sit idle for weeks, months or longer?

In this prison people's lives are being taken away from them day by day. It is not only the workers behind the bars that suffer, but also the workers on the other side of the bars as well.

The Cells

The floor is covered by giant 1x1 meter foam rubber jigsaw puzzle tiles. We eat mostly here. I guess it is kind of a day room.

The central part is where we sleep. The floor has a heating system installed underneath (ondol) The rear part is the bathroom. It has two sinks, two showers, and a smaller room with a door as the toilet. The three sections are separated by walls that have one door with a window each and two large windows on both sides.

The two windows between the day room and the sleeping room have sliding window frames. We can get a nice breeze from the east side of the building to the west if all the doors and windows on the bathroom wall and the outside corridor are open.

All in all there is a great sense of open spaciousness. Despite the fact that we are "behind bars," when you are in the sleeping room or bathroom, if you don't see the bars you wouldn't know you were in a prison.

However, we are not allowed to go outside. I am told it's because there isn't enough staff, but that in May they will let people go out for exercise, fresh air and sunshine. There is a yard outside on the west side of the building.

The detention center is four stories tall. I am on the 3rd floor. In this part of the building there are two atriums with skylights on the roof. The second, third and fourth floors have an office in the middle that sits between the two atriums encased in glass windows so as to have a clear view of the six or seven cells on the east and west side.

The south side of the building has the smaller solitary confinement rooms. The north side has the administrative offices and visiting rooms. The first floor has midsize rooms. So far only the third and fourth floors seem to be used to keep us in.

On the east side you can see the sunrise from the bathroom window. There is a hill of the right side of the building. It has a number of traditional gray cottages on the top. Below the hill, next to the building is a parking lot and driveway. Farmland -- rice fields, I guess -- can be seen to the left. Railroad tracks run towards the east along a large road which I think runs past this building.

Inside the cell atrium area, people can talk to each other across the two atrium spaces (which is surrounded by vertical stainless steel bars). Women and men are kept apart, but they can talk to each other. Everyone can.

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http://aalbc.com/reviews/gods_of_the_bacteria.html

'Heaven Bears' Author Finds Beauty In 'The Air'

'Heaven Bears' Author Finds Beauty In 'The Air'

The Big Fix - WNYC

CM Cabello e CM Jurandir

WORK TO DO - Isley Brothers

cities i've have been to

Josh White (1914-1969) - Free and Equal Blues

nasty message from lovely april

my resume

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Streaking at the (7/25) Met Museum, Fitzcarl 1998

intro to seouljournal,wonjujournal, saturday, february 20th, 1999

4/6/99wonjucity , second trip to japan

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness;

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Summer Guide: Undead of Summer—MUSIC

Summer Guide: Undead of Summer—MUSIC

http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2007/02/yeosu-entirely-preventable-tragedy.html

Prison Diary of an English Teacher (2)

Prison Diary of an English Teacher

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