Author Archives: Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

Why I won’t whine about federal taxes.

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If you’ve ever tried to find an issue of the Congressional Record from say, April 18, 1959, you too know that it is much, much easier to find a particular episode of Law & Order playing on TV at any given time.

I spent much of yesterday morning searching for page 5696 on that date. No luck.

Photo from columbia.edu/Corbis Bettman

Finally, I threw in the towel and emailed the Library of Congress. I expected I would hear back in a week or so. Twenty hours later, the answer is in my mailbox.

The anonymous Digital Reference Section did what elected officials always want government programs to do: Gave me some help, and then provided the tools for me to do the job myself next time.

The librarian attached Cong Record April 18 1959. She or he was careful not to rub my nose in this failure, explaining that the 1950s were not available online, and oops! — the page numbers were 6252-53, not page 5696. Next time I know to go to a Federal Depository Library (all cities have ‘em) and get the stuff.

Oh, and the clip I was seeking? It announced an NAACP youth march in Washington, D.C., in which thousands of young people, black and white, planned to demand equal rights for all. “And they won’t take no for an answer.”

So, that’s why I won’t complain about taxes.

Filed under Government, History, Race & Class

Dec 21, 2010

The Big Green Machine gets greener.

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What if they gave a war and nobody wasted fuel?

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes, it might just happen. Seems the US Navy and Marine Corps are thinking green. “God Bless Them. The Few. The Proud. The Green. Semper Fi.” as he puts it.

As Friedman points out, Big Oil has such a stranglehold on Congress that there isn’t a chance in hell that any fuel-reducing strategies are going to make it into practice. But the Marines and Navy are figuring out ways to float green ships and keep the lights on in the war with fewer of those hyper-dangerous fuel convoys. Fewer convoys, fewer soldiers killed by roadside bombs.

And that’s the micro view in this war. In the big picture, if we were less oil dependent, it would change the whole political and economic ballgame.

Aside from the enviro benefits and Friedman’s point about a weak-kneed Congress, this campaign reminds me how much our view of the military has changed, especially among young Americans. War is still “not healthy for children and other living things” as the poster on my childhood bedroom wall claimed, but attitudes are very different. I am still haunted by the booing and back-turning that happened when my sister’s friends came home from Vietnam. We sent boys to be killed in the jungle, and punished them more when they came home.

If the military stays on this green path, it will change this dynamic even more. Won’t it be amazing if the day comes when we look around and realize that the biggest eco-heroes are in uniform?

Filed under Government, Heroes

Dec 20, 2010

Jacobson on Hanukkah: It’s OK to laugh.

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Apparently, writing a funny piece about Hanukkah and its low place on the holiday food chain is the journalistic equivalent of kicking a puppy.

Writer Howard Jacobson’s op-ed piece headlined “Hanukkah, Rekindled” is very good. From its start you know it’s a winner:

Everyone knows the bare bones of the story. At Hanukkah we celebrate the Maccabees, also known as the Hasmoneans, who defeated the might of the Syrian-Greek army in 165 B.C., recapturing the desecrated Temple and reconsecrating it with oil that ought to have run out in a day but lasted eight… But how many Jews truly feel this narrative as their own? …Those Hasmoneans, for example …. The Maccabees are fair enough: they sound Jewish. Scottish Jewish but still Jewish. There was a sports and social club called the Maccabi round the corner from where I was brought up in North Manchester, and as a boy I imagined the Maccabees as stocky, short-legged, hairy men like the all-conquering Maccabi table tennis team. But “Hasmoneans” rang and rings no bells.

No fewer than 280 comments rained down on the piece and most were whiny complaints about the author’s lack of reverence, understanding, sensitivity, Jewish pride. The Letters to the Editor printed about Jacobson’s piece were a constipated bunch too.

This guy is funny. He’s a humorist. He’s making fun of himself and human nature, not crapping on a religious narrative. And he’s right, the dreidel game isn’t much fun. Admit it.

Filed under Faith, History

Dec 3, 2010

Maybe staying in bed is not a bad idea.

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Filed under Art, Marketing and Advertising

Dec 1, 2010

Truvada: the underachieving drug.

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Let’s pretend there’s a drug that helps minimize effects of lung cancer in people close to death. Call it Inqui. (“Inn-kwee.” Derived from the Latin word for “unfair.”)

Inqui has been around for a few years. Researchers and docs familiar with the drug know it also works well as a preventative for lung cancer if taken daily.

Yet, that knowledge has not resulted in widespread use of Inqui as a prophylactic. Here are a few of the reasons:

–Testing drugs on well people is tricky.

–Anti-American protesters don’t want it tested on poor people in other countries.

–The drug company making it would rather not give it to un-sick people, because live people tend to sue when things go wrong, whereas dead people do not.

And, perhaps most significantly, because politically active healthy nonsmokers are violently opposed to giving the drug to people who smoked. Those people knew the risks and did not seek help to quit using nicotine or breathing second-hand smoke, so screw them.

This would be outrageous. Right?

Yet this is pretty much the case with Truvada, a drug prescribed to people infected with HIV, as described in “An AIDS Advance, Hiding in the Open,” by Donald G. McNeil Jr. in The New York Times.

As he put it:

“The delay [in selling Truvada for prevention] turns out to be a combination of scientific caution and the fiery politics of AIDS. While a medical advance can be made by a momentary flash of inspiration or luck — as legendarily happened with penicillin — proving that it works can take forever. And that is particularly true with AIDS, a disease surrounded by visceral fears, longstanding prejudices and the potential for huge profits.”

Good thing lung cancer affects straight people, otherwise “Inqui” as preventative wouldn’t have seen the light of day either.

Filed under Ethics, Health

Nov 29, 2010

Writers in passing: Hugh Prather, Norris Church Mailer.

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Two deaths reported in The New York Times give me pause. Both were considered accidental authors by their critics. Both found their gifts in unusual ways.

Hugh Prather wrote Notes to Myself as a journal in the early 1970s; it was a surprise bestseller. Norris Church Mailer was a fashion model who married Norman Mailer when he was more than twice her age. While insisting she was no intellectual, Ms. Mailer created fine art, theater and prose that showed intelligence and spirit.

Prather came from privilege and discovered his literary and artistic talent through manual labor; Ms. Mailer climbed out of childhood poverty as a beauty-pageant contestant and became the glue in the lives of the much-married writer, her two sons and seven stepchildren.

Both artists used inner strengths to empower countless others. Prather was the first contemporary journal writer I read, and his gentle reflections helped me make the feminism of my twenties part of my heart, not just my rhetoric. Ms. Mailer I came to admire in middle age, for her ability to be both helpmeet and writer–in the shade of Norman Mailer’s massive ego and talent, yet.

The notion that writers should “empower” us is a relatively new requirement. Literature and memoir were not always evaluated for this ability. There’s a certain flimsiness to the idea, since it bases the value of a piece of writing on how it makes us feel, period. A key manner in which new books are publicly valued relies on tabulating the number of people who buy into the hype of impending empowerment, then buy the book.

There are, though, other measures of a book’s power over us. The test of time, for one. The books that stay shelved in one’s inner library do matter, often for reasons beyond craft or depth. And the “back story” of a book has power too. For all the celebrity and success around her, Ms. Mailer rarely had a real Room of Her Own. She was always a writer with a hyphen: wife-and-writer, mother-and-writer. She too was someone for this feminist to learn from, and admire.

Filed under Art, Authors, Death

Nov 24, 2010

“Cry to Heaven” by Anne Rice

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“Cry to Heaven” (Knopf) came out in 1982 and it is the first Anne Rice work I’ve read. It’s rich and brilliant, the story of 17th century castrati, castrated males with unearthly, beautiful voices. These revered artists were courted by the Vatican and high society, but were also outcasts: eunuchs who existed in an excruciating gender limbo surrounded by complicated societal mores and attitudes. The boys who were sold by parents, then “cut,” did not all become stars. The ones who lost their voices or never developed the talent needed for the stage are among history’s most tragic figures. The story tells of Tonio Treschi, a Venetian nobleman kidnapped and castrated, who rises through the ranks of this odd society. His teachers, lovers, audiences and family are all swept up by his unearthly gift, for which everyone pays a price. Read this and prepare to dream about the story at night. Rice is a clever literary witch.

Filed under All tucked in and reading, Art, Authors, Gender Mysteries

Nov 23, 2010

Back away from that tomato.

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You have to love a guy who writes a song about genetically modified food titled “Smells like Genocide” with the line, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t want your gene-spliced food.”

Click here to hear Craig ‘CMOR’ Morrison’s genius.

Filed under Art, Health

Nov 23, 2010

Keegan Smith’s music: New baggage

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Music can be heavy. By that I mean, it has baggage. Meaning, it takes me places.

And, some days, I just want to hear good music, not travel old roads and remember days when I was younger or happily dumber. I want to hear something new that makes me feel like I’m into something different, but not just a voyeur spying on the 20-somethings.

photo from Keegan Smith website/Portland Music Awards

I just want to feel good in the car with the music cranked up, you know?

So, for that…there’s Keegan Smith. We heard this young guy a couple months ago at Jimmy Maks in Portland (best Jazz club in the Northwest, and maybe the West) and loved him. He’s original, but he showcases his roots. Clever, but real. A good musician who seems to love the life.

As an added attraction, this marked the first time I’d seen a rapper perform while holding an infant. (This being the time and place it is, the kid was wearing protective earplugs while Daddy got down.)

Then we went to hear him at another Portland club, where I was the oldest person in the room. It was the night after Halloween and everyone else was in costume. The guy dressed in a trash bag with a sign reading “Douche Bag” will go far in this life, you could tell.

Smith’s new CD, “Special Delivery” was just out and he performed several of the cuts. There’s some ghosts of the past in his work–you catch a few seconds of Paul Simon here, maybe a moment of Van Morrison, a whiff of Genesis in the late 1970s. With rap and reggae in there to be poetic and recreational.

I wanted the CD fast, so I downloaded it for $8.99 from Amazon. (I’m making dubs for friends, and I’ll send $8.99 a whack to Smith directly. It is bad, bad juju to steal from a musician, my niece taught me that.)

Go ahead, get yourself some new baggage. There’s the download, used copies, or you can be a big spender and go for the new CD.

Filed under Art

Nov 19, 2010

Guns into plowshares. Or Christmas stockings.

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Portland’s mayor Sam Adams wants a gun “buy back” event in December. Those are the events to which you can bring a gun, turn in it without any questions asked, and get a few bucks. Not a bad concept, and it works well in many cities to get weapons out of homes.

But leave it to Adams; the guy could make free ice cream sound stupid.

The Oregonian’s website quotes Adams as follows. Italics are mine.

“The mayor said on Friday he’d announce the exact date and location today. The December date, Adams said, should draw plenty of gun owners who may be looking for extra shopping money for the holidays.”

Yup, the greenest city in America has a new economic stimulus plan. Maybe we should cut out the middleman and just let people use the guns as legal tender. Pistols as point-of-service payment.

The ad campaign practically writes itself: “For everything else, there’s Smith and Wesson.”

Filed under Politics

Nov 16, 2010

Keep it simple.

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Bank of America’s business plan: We take your money.

That’s pretty much it.

Filed under Business, Economy, Ethics

Nov 16, 2010

Pretty in pink. Yeah, but it’s still cancer.

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For some time now, I’ve wondered what it is that seems wrong to me about the breast-cancer awareness barrage — all the pink on the NFL gridiron; the rallies, the walks, the t-shirts, the slogans. Surely it’s a good thing to make people more aware of this disease, right?

Well, yes. But there’s more to it than that. A piece by Peggy Orenstein in The New York Times answers my question: Anything that gets more women to do exams is good…and promoting open conversation about cancer is very good. But the pep rally nature of all of this has also obscured some of the realities. Orenstein had breast cancer. She writes:

“But a funny thing happened on the way to destigmatization. The experience of actual women with cancer…got lost. Rather than truly breaking silences, acceptable narratives of coping emerged, each tied up with a pretty pink bow. There were the pink teddy bears that, as Barbara Ehrenreich observed, infantilized patients in a reassuringly feminine fashion. “Men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not receive gifts of Matchbox cars,” she wrote in her book “Bright-Sided.”

Alternatively, there are what Gayle Sulik, author of “Pink Ribbon Blues,” calls “She-roes” — rhymes with “heroes.” These aggressive warriors in heels kick cancer’s butt (and look fab doing it). Like the bear huggers, they say what people want to hear: that not only have they survived cancer, but the disease has made them better people and better women. She-roes, it goes without saying, do not contract late-stage disease, nor do they die.”

Orestein describes a wave of new attention-getting t-shirts and slogans, meant to attract and educate young women. Some really are funny and clever. (“Save the Ta-Tas” made me laugh, I admit it.) But there’s a real danger that this disease becomes a big pink event, especially for those younger women. Orenstein writes:

“I hate to be a buzz kill, but breast cancer is just not sexy. It’s not ennobling. It’s not a feminine rite of passage. And, though it pains me to say it, it’s also not very much fun. I get that the irreverence is meant to combat crisis fatigue, the complacency brought on by the annual onslaught of pink, yet it similarly risks turning people cynical. By making consumers feel good without actually doing anything meaningful, it discourages understanding, undermining the search for better detection, safer treatments, causes and cures for a disease that still afflicts 250,000 women annually (and speaking of figures, the number who die has remained unchanged — hovering around 40,000 — for more than a decade).”

I don’t think Orenstein wants the breast-cancer walks to stop, and I don’t think she’s claiming that all women share her view. Many feel empowered and supported by this movement. But she does a great service when she asks that we remember that this is a disease, not an ad campaign.

Filed under Gender Mysteries, Health

Nov 15, 2010

“Scottsboro” by Ellen Feldman

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“Scottsboro: A Novel” by Ellen Feldman (Norton, 2008) -

The case of the “Scottsboro Boys” in 1931 proves that real-life stories, are in fact, stranger, meaner, more shocking and riveting than the made-up stuff can ever be.

The Alabama case of nine African American teenagers charged with the rape of two white women stretched on for years, a spectacle still unrivaled. The Jim Crow racism that allowed the trumped-up charges to stand is well known, but Ellen Feldman’s excellent novel tells of the other forces at work.

The International Labor Defense (legal arm of the Communist Party), the NAACP, various writers, and other defenders of the Scottsboro nine kept them alive, each questioning the motives–even the true goals–of the other. As one character remarked in accusing another defender: Some activists knew that nine martyrs were more politically useful than nine free men, and so actually hoped for their convictions.

Some of the novel’s characters have rich real-life histories, such as Sam Leibowitz, the tireless defense attorney–also known as a CommieNewYorkJew, who was a hero, an opportunist, and a figure who provoked both pride and fear in other American Jews. (The Scottsboro case explains much about new waves of anti-Semitism during the years that followed.) The two women, cast as victims by Southern white-supremacist myth, emerge as a pair of the most sympathetic liars in modern history.

A fine book, well grounded in history and crafted with skill.

Filed under All tucked in and reading, Books, Race & Class

Nov 12, 2010

Deep end of the gene pool.

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Often when I read some fascinating piece in The New York Times about mental health, addiction or behavior…I look up and see reporter Benedict Carey’s byline on it. The piece headlined “Genes as Mirrors of Life Experiences” in the online edition is the latest one to catch my eye.

The piece is about “epigenetics” — the study of how our life experiences and surroundings affect gene function. This is all new to me — and mind-boggling stuff. I long ago came to understand how my paternal forebears’ addictions took up residence in my genes’ neighborhood, but this? Whoa.

Carey writes:

“In studies of rats, researchers have shown that affectionate mothering alters the expression of genes, allowing them to dampen their physiological response to stress. These biological buffers are then passed on to the next generation: rodents and nonhuman primates biologically primed to handle stress tend to be more nurturing to their own offspring, and the system is thought to work similarly in humans.

Epigenetic markers may likewise hinder normal development: the offspring of parents who experience famine are at heightened risk for developing schizophrenia, some research suggests — perhaps because of the chemical signatures on the genes that parents pass on….”

The children of Holocaust survivors, offspring of veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, descendants of successful, happy folks…all those genes carry their own back story, it seems.

Read the whole story here.

Filed under All tucked in and reading, Health, History, Science

Nov 12, 2010

“Among Thieves” by David Hosp steals the show.

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If you saw the movie “The Town” about underworld life in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood, you know this Irish-thug genre. It draws on the local “family business” of crime, in which fathers pass on armed-robbery skills and turf to sons, continuing a particularly violent history in the narrow streets of a tough neighborhood.

The story of the film is good, but “Among Thieves” by David Hosp (Grand Central Publishing, 2010) is much better. It has killers with and without wits; a big, smart ex-cop; a small, smart gal cop; a criminal-lawyer-with-a-heart; a tough teenager and a shockingly bold museum robbery.

(The robbery at the eclectic and wonderful Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum really happened in 1990, and remains unsolved.)

The author is a lawyer in real life, with a big fancy Boston firm. Of course he makes Finn, his lawyer-hero, a hardscrabble case who eschews the trappings of a successful career. But is still the smartest guy in the game. A forgivable conceit. Finn won’t rest until he serves his client, a fuck-up of a crook just trying to provide for his newly discovered daughter. That puts Finn back in the museum case 20 years after the fact, racing against the bad guys and assorted cops all running down the same trail.

It’s hard to put down, and the mystery remains a mystery until close to the end. Don’t pick it up if you have work to do or a place to be.

(More Tiny Book Reviews, here.)

Filed under All tucked in and reading, Books

Nov 11, 2010

I hope you dance.

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Beautiful, moving, funny, amazing. I could watch the man in the white t-shirt (who comes up later in video) all day long…Watch this one right to the end.

Filed under Art

Nov 10, 2010

Portland: Low-tech and high priced.

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If you want an excellent blueprint for wasting resources, look at this report from Portland’s city auditor. You don’t need to read very far to get the idea.

The city that prides itself on its green approach to life is hugely wasteful when it comes to that paper stuff called “money.”

392 Business System Software Implementation Audit FULL(2)

If a private business operated this way, its creditors would be holding a fire sale right now.

Filed under Business, Economy, Ethics, Politics

Nov 9, 2010

“Cooks Source” is a den of thieves.

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People who steal images or words from others on the web will go to a special Hell…where there is nothing to read but outdated airline magazines with pages missing.

And the reading light is too low.

Oh, and no snacks. Or bathroom.

And the only other human is the person who was meanest to you in grade school.

You, word thieves, are scum.

(Click here for “Copyright Infringement and Me,” a blog post about plagiarism by “Cooks Source Magazine” and one editor’s ridiculous response that inspired the above sentiments. The rant against Cooks Source is going viral and the unleashed fury is wonderful to behold.)

Filed under Art, Ethics, Tech, Writing & Words

Nov 6, 2010

FDR survived midterms. Long live the Obama administration.

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It happened before. (Midterm elections causing Democratic hearts to sink.)

And, here are some good answers to the question, What’s Obama Done for Me Lately?

Filed under Politics

Nov 3, 2010

Hosed.

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If you are in America, make it to your 50s, and have some combination of insurance, alarm about inevitable personal decline, relevant family history and inability to ignore physician edicts, you will probably have a colonoscopy.

No matter what you read or hear, you will wish you could avoid this procedure; if for no other reason than it seems just plain wrong to pay a stranger to do this.

Afterward, you will become one of the veterans who assure others it is a walk in the park. Armed with two gallons of lemon Gatorade and a stack of reading material, the prep is tolerable. The procedure is easier to navigate than an appointment for a root canal. If you’ve given birth, this will not slow you down at all. You’ve been on the beaches of Normandy; this is a parking ticket.

One nagging question remains unanswered. If they don’t find anything wrong in there, how do you actually know they did anything?

The oxymoronic “conscious sedation” works so well that you don’t remember anything that proves the procedure took place. They wheeled you in and next thing you knew, a nice nurse is offering you some apple juice and handing you your clothes. Other than a mad scramble for a BLT and a large chocolate milkshake, the aftermath is uneventful.

What if–as my mother (of blessed memory) used to insist about NASA’s space program in the 1960s—they faked the whole thing on a sound stage?

We may all be part of a conspiracy much larger than we can imagine. And what with the slashed budgets at daily newspapers, it might be awhile before anyone gets the goods on this one.

Filed under Business, Health

Oct 31, 2010

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Author Archives: Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

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