Month: August 2007

Here’s an interesting and worthwhile interview with journalist Nir Rosen on Iraq. It puts forth the idea that Iraq as a country does not exist any more in any practical terms, other than as a flag. He’s being interviewed by Amy Goodman, who has done excellent progressive work for a long time.

Interview transcript available here: www.democracynow.org

Today is chess day at Kellys. Yay! We’re up to six-eight people each time, and even though I haven’t won, it’s great fun. One week ago a new player showed up and managed to cinch the win by only loosing to the second place player and tie with me:

11 year old brat Elliot kicked our asses. While we were drinking beer he was eating a icesickle. It was awesome.

And on an unrelated note, I have scratchmarks! I’m a man!

Today I went to the funeral of a co-worker who died of cancer two weeks ago. I don’t think that I ever met her – we worked at different locations – but I recall talking to her on the phone when pay was due, since she worked the financial thingies. The funeral was a secular occasion with slightly less than fifty people attending, and overall it seemed fitting; I wouldn’t know since this was my first funeral.

Lotta had been sick since January, and celebrated her 40th birthday in spring. Looking at the casket, the sombre people, the sheet with misprinted lyrics for the group song, I started thinking of everyone in the building as diseased – each and everyone an ambulating cluster of cells on the brink of malfunctioning. Every wrinkle a sign of age, every small gesture articulating fragility. You notice the man who is limping slightly, the girl in the wheelchair, perspiration on the person in front of you, and you see disease through and through.

Take care of the living, the dead will mind themselves, is a good sentence to carry around. I imagine that it would be a different situation altogether if it was I who was burying a child or sibling.