treading.net

The other day I was telling DBF that even though we’ve been our new apartment for a full month now, I still don’t really feel like I live here. I feel like I have to go back to the old 806 apartment still. It’s an odd feeling. It’s not like I feel when I’m in a hotel, and I feel slightly disoriented every time I walk in the door; it’s more subtle.

I can’t put my finger on why this is. Maybe it’s because we still have some boxes that aren’t totally unpacked. We’re about 85 percent unpacked, but a mixture of forces have prevented us from unpacking the rest. These forces mostly include waiting for the building storage unit to open up so we can stick all the stuff we had in storage into this storage. (I know it’s not good to squirrel away stuff just for the sake of keeping it, and I did throw out a good amount of stuff before we moved, but it’s hard. Dear God, it’s hard.) We’re also just holding off on purchasing the last few items of furniture. The big one still remaining is getting something to store all of my bags in (yes, I have that many). And shoes. Uh. Love having so many; hate having to store all of it. Shoes, shoes, shoes.

Shoes, shoes, shoes.

Ever since I was little, I’ve been afraid of sewing machines. Mom would occasionally whip her monster machine out and hem a pant or something, but she always approached sewing the way she’s approached cooking: knows how to do it, but would rather not.

The reason the sewing machine always scared me is that I’ve always pictured that ginormous needle going RIGHT THROUGH MY FINGER. I didn’t know that there’s a guard that prevents exactly that from happening. So I’ve always been a bit afraid of them.

But now, I’m ashamed to admit, TV has spurred me into action. See, I love Project Runway, and I finally stopped thinking, “If these idiots can sew, then I can too!” and did something about it. Last weekend, I took a sewing class at Home Ec. We learned the basics of sewing by sewing a bag. It took about three hours, and I came away from the class without any injuries. I think if I can learn to hem my own pants successfully, and even make some basic pieces of clothing, and perhaps a superhero cape for George, it will have been a $95 well spent.

I’m now looking for other easy projects to do; a duvet cover seems like a good idea. A coworker confirmed that a duvet cover really is as easy as sewing two sheets together and sticking on some buttons. And during a stroll in the new neighborhood yesterday, I realized that I’m in what seems to be Brooklyn’s garment district: there’s TONS of fabric stores on Coney Island Avenue!

So now I’m just looking for opportunities to use sewing machines more. I’m going to the Etsy Labs today to see if I can work on something without embarrassing myself.

From the ACLU’s blog:

CIA lawyer Jonathan Fredman argues that the laws against torture are malleable. He encourages his colleagues to exploit any vagueness in the law and declares torture “is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.

Last night as I was watching another Law & Order rerun on the Tivo, Gracie sat on my lap and was fastidiously grooming away. For the longest time, we’ve been trying to get her to take this lysine supplement paste that might help with her respiratory problems. But the hurdle has always been that she won’t eat it. We drop it in her food bowl, and she eats around it. She spits it out when we try to put it directly her in her mouth. The vet told me this wouldn’t be a problem. “It’s meat-flavored,” he told me. “Cats like it.”

Well, not this cat. But then it dawned on me as I watched her lick her leg over and over and over again: I walked over to her with paste, put a dab on my finger, and then smeared it right onto her leg. She first gave me a “WTF??” look, but then she promptly licked it up, nice and clean.

I’m a genius! (It’s too bad we can’t make her take pills this way!)

Yesterday I went to check out the new Richard Ross exhibit at Aperture Gallery.

I loved this show. I’ve never been to a more though-provoking, intense exhibit that really made me think about such a range of issues. I think I enjoyed it the most because it really made me think about the issues that I deal with at work every day in an entirely different way.

The exhibit is called “Architecture of Authority,” and they’re all pretty straightforward portraits of interiors and exteriors of buildings. And I can imagine that seeing them out of context, they would make for pretty mundane photographs. But taken as a collection, it’s incredibly powerful.

A few of my favorites were a set of four pictures. One was of a prison visiting room with the window separating the prisoner from the visitor, another was an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) visiting area with a similar setup, except with the phones on the wall so they could talk. The third was a confessional booth. The fourth was of the private phone booths in the Four Seasons in Mexico City. The striking thing about the juxtaposition was the similarties between the four photos. They all posed some means of verbal communication, but all in separate, walled off areas that isolate the speakers. The prison room vs. the ICE room just drove home how much this country treats immigrants like criminals. Even immigrants seeking refugee status, or those with small children—who should be handled with the utmost care and consideration— are routinely locked up for indefinite amounts of time, not given an immigration attorney to speaking to, and then sometimes just deported.

The juxtaposition of the confessional booth with the phone booth reminded me, possibly because I just the article in New York magazine about infidelity among married couples, of the sort of illicit, seedy aura those hotel phone booths have. Even in the age of disposable cell phones, the calls that must take place on those phones must rival the most sinful confessions.

Another favorite set depicted play area in a California preschool. A large white circle against green floor demarcates the central play area, and desks and other little-kid stuff surrounds the circle. The photo next to it shows a prison socializing area, demarcated by a round of seats lined with telephones and tables and chairs in the center. Ross’s photographs of a corridor of a high school, close to a corridor in a prison, are shocking. These four eerily echoed the school-to-prison-pipeline issue they focus on at work—a system that funnels troubled kids and teens from school straight to the adult prison system.

Another great pair depicted the interior of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, with its huge, multi-tiered circular chandeliers hung with glass candle lanterns and massive expanse of red carpet beneath a soaring domed ceiling. And the picture next to it shows the women’s prayer area in a mosque in Syria which is this tiny area partitioned off by what looks like shower curtains. The message is very clear: the sex-segregation between men and women in mosques leads to treatment of women as second-class citizens. But it made me wonder why Ross didn’t just show the women’s prayer area at the Blue Mosque. Perhaps it was equally grand and didn’t convey the message as clearly.

Other photos stood out just for their subject matter. One photo showed the lethal execution chamber in Louisiana, with the padded platform upon which the prisoner lies, and the padded armrest where the prisoner’s arm will swing out, away from his body, presented to the executioner to deliver the fatal drugs.

Another photos as of the open-air showers—wrapped with barbed wire—at Camp X-Ray in Guant&3225;namo. Guantánamo got a lot of attention from Ross. He photographed an interrogation room, a cell, the military tribunal building, and some of the outdoor holding areas. Abu Ghraib was also represented.

The overall issue of surveillance is present throughout. From a guard watch tower in a prison yard, to video cameras inside isolation rooms in prisons, and even the photos of the interiors of mosques, you get the creeping feeling that somoeone is always watching.

The title of the show also reflects back on the works. Whether the authority is a preschool teacher, to a prison guard at Abu Ghraib, to President Bush, to the United Nations, to God, it conveys both a respect for authority and an almost contempt for it at the same time. The show also confronts how the buildings and things in the pictures both help establish, but then sometimes undermines, that authority.

The exhibit will be up until June 21. Most definitely worth a Saturday afternoon.

The other night I made an embarrassing admission to a friend. He, always looking for good stuff to read, asked: “What are you reading right now?” I can sometimes supply a good answer. “I’m in the middle of the latest Jane Mayer article in The New Yorker about CIA black sites,” or “the abortion article in Harper’s.” I can sometimes give the name of a novel I’m reading. But unfortunately, this time, I had to say something horrifying.

“I’m watching Netflix DVDs of Sex and the City. I don’t have time to read.” [Shudder...]

Did I really just say that?

I blame work. When I’m at work all day thinking about racism, people being kidnapped and tortured, reading people complain that the NSA is wiretapping their phone, the death penalty, and all kinds of other horrible things, it takes a toll. I dream about work stuff constantly, and it’s not of the “oh god, did I get that done? will I miss that deadline?” variety. It’s dreams of ICE agents raiding my parents’ house and dragging them away because they’re suspected of being illegal aliens. I once had a nightmare—and this is the worst kind—that I was pregnant and every time I tried to get an abortion, the abortion doctor was murdered by some insane pro-lifer.

So I turn to TV for solace. I love me some Law & Order, but for true, mind-numbing relaxation, I can’t get enough trashy TV. Gimme Grey’s Anatomy, Dirty Sexy Money, Cashmere Mafia or even the utterly awful Lipstick Jungle any day. But now that they’re all over and no more new episodes aren’t scheduled until the fall, I’ve taken refuge in SATC. The big freakin’ buzz over the movie is what got me into it. I think by the time I’m done watching the whole series, the movie will be available on DVD.

When SATC first debuted on HBO, I couldn’t stand it. I squirmed through watching an episode, and since I was in college at the time and studying very high-minded things like Milton and Kierkegaardian existentialism, I dismissed SATC as sexist garbage.

But these days, after a full day of work, there’s nothing better than sipping tea on the couch with a cat on your lap, zoning out to those four kvetching about their lives. Even more appealing to me now since I’m now the characters’ age—the mid-30’s. I like to indulge in the obssessing. It’s what New Yorkers do best. It’s fun to watch.

And the clothes are horrifyingly fabulous to see in a dated, late-90’s sort of way.

Esquire’s John Richardson profiled Cal professor John Yoo in this month’s issue (the one with Obama on the cover). Called “Is John Yoo a Monster?” the profile is an interesting one. It attempts to humanize Yoo — and after all the bashing he’s taken since the release of the Yoo torture memo, it’s easy to understand why Richardson would be tempted to show that the guy has some heart. And after reading the profile, you could almost believe it.

Except when you read this near the end:

Yoo doesn’t say anything for a moment, then answers in his usual measured tone. “In World War II, we interned people, tens of thousands of citizens. We tried citizens who were enemy spies under military commissions which had no procedures at all. We let the Air Force kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in firebombing runs in Europe. We dropped a nuclear weapon on Japan. Waterboarding we think is torture, but it happened to three people. The scale of magnitude is different.”

“But if the war goes on forever, we’ve created a torture state.”

“We’ve done it three times,” he repeats.

“The White House launched an elective war against a country based on false premises.”

“They made a mistake.”

“But your theory puts the power in the hands of a person who then can invade the wrong country.”

“Who can make a mistake. The Constitution can’t protect against bad decisions,” he insists. “What the framers were really worried about was not that the president would make a mistake, but that the president would become a dictator, and I really don’t think Bush has become that.”

Now, even if you gave Yoo the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t believe that Bush and Cheney wouldn’t abuse every inch of power they were given, and even if you believe that lauching the war in Iraq is a “mistake,” does “we’ve done it three times” justify anything? What happened to learning from your mistakes? It’s incredibly naive at best, and dangerously stupid at worst.

And I wish Richardson would have pressed him on the issue of the fact that it’s been proven, time and again, that torture doesn’t work. So in the end, Yoo could write legal memos justifying torture until the cows come home. When it comes down to it, Yoo didn’t have the balls to say no to Bush and Cheney. Jack Goldsmith did. Daniel Levin did. So when it all the justifications are exhausted, the question still stands: Why couldn’t Yoo?

Seeing — or rather hearing — classical music in New York is always a mixed bag of experiences. This month was a great example.

On May 5, we saw pianist Thomas Schultz at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. Great space, fantastic concert. Had a great time.

The next day we saw Midori at Jazz at Lincoln Center. I can’t see enough concerts there. The space is amazing, the acoustics are amazing, and you can’t beat the view. DBF and I had balcony seats that basically hovered a few feet above the stage on the left side — amazing. Wonderful concert. Loved it loved it loved it. She’s just thrilling to watch, and it was the first time I’ve seen a Brandenburg Concerto (number 5, specifically) in concert. It was awesome to watch the harsichordists’ fingers flying over the keyboards. The tickets were about $60 each, if I recall correctly. Deal!

On Mother’s Day Sunday, I went to a free soprano recital: Brittany Palmer at Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The recital was inside the cathedral’s St. James chapel. And while the room has its acoustical challenges, it is a pretty cool place to hear live singing.

Last Saturday, I joined a couple of friends for the Wall-to-Wall Bach festival at Symphony Space. I had such a good time. During the 3 1/2 hours I was there (the festival featured 12 straight hours of Bach), I heard two Brandenburg concertos, the chaconne twice (on both guitar and violin), two partitas, and flute sonata, and best of all, the Goldberg Variations performed by Jonathan Denk! All free! (I did contribute a $5 donation, as I did at St. John’s…you feel bad about taking in free music ina freakin’ church…especially one that looks like St. John’s.)

So I was on a roll of great concerts, until yesterday, when I went back to Carnegie, this time in the Issac Stern (read: big) auditorium, for the Met Orchestra performing an all-Mussorgsky program. I love “Pictures at an Exhibition,” and will jump at any opportunity to see/hear it live. The tickets were an impulse buy after the Kathleen Battle concert I took in last month. I got $52 balcony seats. Never…sitting…on the balcony…again.

First of all, the stairs up there are weirdly steep: not so great for all the old folks sitting up there. There was so little room in front of the seats that if I leaned all the way back, my head would be hitting the person’s knees behind me. And my huge feet didn’t seem to really fit behind the seat in front of me, so I had to sit with them sideways. For the people for whom I had to stand up to let pass in front of me to get to their seats, there was barely enough room for them to pass. Two of them were a Chinese woman and her daughter, who was wearing a SARS-esque face mask. I swear to god: if you need to wear a mask, don’t leave the freakin’s house!

But the worst part: the old guy sitting two seats away. Was not only fast asleep from the first few minutes of the concert, but he was snoring!! And there was no one with him to elbow him and wake him up! Nice, loud snoring complete with aburpt snorts when the orchestra would play a few loud measures.

That’s an expensive nap, as the DBF would say.

Last night the DBF and I saw Iron Man, which really lacked in action, considering it’s an action movie. I found the many scenes that show him tinkering away at the Iron Man suit incredibly dull…even all the whiz-bang technology the filmmakers dreamt up didn’t really impress.

But one thing I did appreciate, was the sly reference to real-life. In the film, Iron Man is the CEO of a military weapons company called Stark Industries. The company’s logo looks suspiciously like Lockheed-Martin’s:

And come to think of it, I think I remember Lockheed’s slogan being used in the film. Wonder if the director has a beef with them…It’s the little things like that in a movie that I can appreciate.

The DBF and I are huge fans of The Colbert Report. He recently touched on the interment of Japanese-Americans during WWII in the Threat Down: