Stalking a Stranger - David Loftus

I first saw her when I was waiting for the crosswalk light and she started across the street toward me -- against the light and in front of the cross traffic that had just gotten the green. The cars paused for her to totter to the far side. I looked back a few times before stopping to observe her progress. She was young, and she was weaving.

I don’t think I saw her fall, but I did see her briefly crumpled in the gutter before she got up and continued down the block. I started to follow and watched another couple stop to talk with her briefly before they continued on. She must have told them she was okay, but I didn’t think she was. I was afraid she was going to get hit by a bus, car, or light-rail train, all of which were passing by either next to her curb, across her path, or within a block. Or perhaps a less scrupulous person might take advantage of her in her vulnerable state.

So I continued to backtrack, and caught up with her on the second block where she had stopped to lean against a wall. It’s cold and rainy today, and she was not exactly dressed for the weather: leg warmers on her calves, sure, but a short skirt above her knees, and a thin blouse or tee. She was not wearing her cheap pink imitation fleece jacket against the cold, but had it draped over her head against the rain, and she was lugging a backpack and a shopping bag. I seem to remember a hole in a stocking.

I leaned against the wall next to her and said, can I help you get where you’re going? “I’m fine,” she said, “I’m just resting.” That’s all she ever said. You don’t look like you’re resting, I said, which was not exactly true, but she was so much more. You look like you’re in danger of hurting yourself, I continued, and I’m worried about that, so I’d like to accompany you to a safe place, wherever that may be, but I don’t know where you’re headed. She didn’t say anything or move, so I just continued to stand next to her. Passersby looked at us, perhaps thinking we were together, perhaps even thinking I was bothering this young woman hidden under a pink jacket, but there was no contact between us and no noise of distress from her, so nobody stopped. An older black man was on the other side, almost as close to her as I was and talking on his cell phone, so I kept an eye on him in case he made any sort of move toward her.

She needed a more professional examination. I called home, thinking that Carole would know what to do -- whom to call to get her the proper attention -- but there was no answer. (My wife was out walking the dog, it turned out.) After another moment, I decided to dial 9-1-1. Once she heard me talking and trying to bring more attention, the girl started to move … and I moved with her, keeping the emergency dispatcher apprised of our location for the next 6-1/2 blocks (a right turn, two blocks; a left turn, three blocks; and another left, crossing all the streets in between).

I had a sense of unreality, strolling alongside her, giving a detailed description (dark olive skirt, black blouse, pink jacket, about 5'4", late teens/early 20s, slight build, apparently intoxicated, weaving and walking into traffic, trying to get away from me) on my mobile phone and occasionally moving to block her way and stay between her and the curb.

She walked right into a sidewalk sandwich board on the first block, and would have proceeded into traffic against the light at least once again if I hadn’t stood in her way. At one point I apologized to her, and said I only wanted her to be safe. I remember looking into her eyes and thinking they might be dilated, but I didn't know enough to be sure. I kept expecting her to grab me, shove me, shout at me to leave her alone, but she never did any of those things. She just kept passively moving, weaving, trying to get away from me and whatever else lay behind her.

Finally two police cars pulled up to us and three officers got out to talk to her. I started to walk away, thinking my task was done, then decided I’d better stick around to see what followed, keeping a discreet distance from them, out of hearing range. One of the officers looked over at me, miming a phone call, and I nodded. He came over to note down my name, phone number, and a basic description of why I had called. He instructed me to keep my phone on in case they needed to take her into some sort of protective custody and would require more details. That was two hours ago. They have not called.

I think I did the right thing. Perhaps I’ll phone the police station tomorrow to find out what happened. It’s a hard thing to intervene in a stranger’s life, even a scary one. But what would you have done?

Take Nikki Out to the Ballpark - Nikki Lorenzini

I am currently sitting in my room watching the Phillies getting killed by the Giants. Okay, it is only the fourth inning, but the score is 2-0. I look on Facebook and see people’s status updates on their teams, talk to co-workers and hear how Phillies fans hate Ross, how much they are in love with the Phil’s, how they dress their babies up in the gear in hopes to raise a lifetime fan. I am no different. I posted on Facebook saying how I’ll have to be put on heart meds because of the way that Phil’s work on my heart. 

It makes me think why there are so many die heard sports fans. I understand getting involved in a TV show, a book, a movie. It’s more easy to relate to. But sports? With sports, there is so much drama. If you’re a fair weather fan, you’ll love “your” team when they’re doing well and hate them when they’re doing badly. For the die-hard fans, you’ll show up for the games despite what’s going on around (I’ve been to my fair share of games in the rain, including thunderstorms underneath metal). We have promoted sports players on a special level, almost like mini-gods. We go to sporting events early to tailgate, spend $7 on a beer, $5 on a hot dog, $25 on the cheapest ticket possible. Then we complain that everything is so expensive, and wonder why they are getting paid that much, yet we still come out.

But what is the special love affair with sports? Is it because we only wish we could play like them? Or is it because we’re in a day and age that is obsessed with fitness and being active that we are amazed with the people who almost embody that? Up until recently, it only seems that we only started getting involved with sports player’s lives, with the help on Tiger Woods. Is it because sports are relatively drama free we get so involved with them? 

While I ponder this, I’ll be sitting on the edge of my bed, fingers crossed, that the Phils make it to the World Series for the third year in a row. 

Early to rise not necessarily wise - David Loftus

For the past few weeks, news sources have reported on a study that suggests people may live longer lives on less sleep than has previously been thought most healthy. I first read about it in my local paper on Wednesday, but a Google News search turned up stories that were nearly two weeks old. However, as many news reports or their headlines about scientific studies can so often be, some of them may be misleading at best, and at worst utterly wrong.

“Sleeping as little as 5 hours a night might be good for you,” reads a representative Oct. 2 headline on the Web site for a Fox News station in New York City, myfoxny. According to the story, an article in the journal Sleep Medicine by Dr. Daniel F. Kripke and a team at the University of California at San Diego did a follow-up on a study of 459 women who participated in a sleep and mortality study 14 years ago. At the time, they were between the ages of 50 and 81. This year, researchers found that survivors were much more likely to have been getting less than the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep -- considerably less. Women who got less than five hours of sleep a night and women who got more than six-and-a-half had two to four times the mortality rate of women in between … the ones who slept from five to six-and-a-half hours per night.

Those are the bare, factual findings. In some places, though, they were sloppily reported. Few newspaper reporters or editors have been trained in the sciences, or in proper interpretation of statistics (even a decent course of logic would help), so what they write about scientific studies often goes overboard. I recall one twenty years ago, that found a correlation between coffee drinking and frequency of sex, which gave rise to lots of jokes and commentary that we should all drink more coffee.

That this study may have found a correlation between less than eight or seven hours of sleep a night and the longevity of some people does not mean everyone should automatically switch to sleeping fewer hours. One of the mantras of science students is (or should be) CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION. In other words, just because two phenomena happen to coincide or coexist, it does not follow that one causes the other, or that there’s any meaningful relationship between them at all. By that logic, if I notice that over the past few weeks the sun has risen shortly after my alarm clock has rung, that does not mean I can reset my alarm an hour ahead and expect the sun to rise an hour earlier.

In this case, the women who sleep only five to six-and-a-half hours may also be inherently more sturdy (genetics) or lead generally more healthy lifestyles (no smoking, lots of exercise, etc.) than the women who get what has traditionally been regarded as the healthiest eight hours. Perhaps the women who have been getting eight hours of sleep a night find it hard to get out of bed because they’re exhausted from stress.

The report in my local paper was more careful than Fox News NY: “Longer lives linked with getting 5-6½ hours of sleep” the headline reads, and the text included the critical caveat “Kripke says more study is needed, especially to find whether deliberately sleeping less might help you live longer.” The phrase “more study is needed” is always a good thing for a researcher to say, and in this case it’s especially true, since nobody has any idea why the mid-level sleepers showed a surprising longevity. The best (and most) that many scientific studies find, when they establish a possible correlation, is where further study should be focused.

Unfortunately, the Fox News NY story not only omits that caveat but ends with a more dicey proposition, supposedly from the scientific report itself: “The study concluded, ‘People who sleep five or six hours may be reassured.’ ” And in fact, I saw at least one of my Facebook friends say as much yesterday after reading the story in the local paper. But the crucial word there is may, because there’s no reassurance to be had if you’re getting less sleep due to an overstressed lifestyle and you fail to achieve balance with good nutrition and exercise.

Misinterpretation of scientific studies can occur at any level: a simple-minded reporter may overinterpret the results; or the reporter may get it right, but an editor may slap on a simplified headline that is misleading; or readers may misinterpret accurately reported stories and heads. The last is probably the most common, since it is not difficult to find misreadings and overblown interpretations in the electronic comments that follow news stories online.

It’s important to read everything in the news with a critical eye, not with your prejudices and hopes intact.

Thoughts on Ryan Clementi and the Rutgers Tragedy - Ryan John

 

 

When freshman Dharun Ravi and his lady friend set up the web cam on Tyler Clementi's laptop in Rutgers this month, I'm sure they didn't anticipate Clementi jumping off the GW Bridge.  But, what did they expect?  They expected to extremely expose Clementi's most hidden secret to willing viewers in an effort to achieve some short lived Internet fame that would increase their popularity around a very large and intimating college campus. 

 

Ravi probably assumed maybe a few Rutgers students would take his Twitter advice and log into iChat to view the video and like wild fire the video would spread to hundreds of Rutgers students before making it's way to the rest of the world. Ravi's name would be attached to this video as the funnyman prankster who caught his roommate in the act. How hilarious, right? A great way to kick off his freshman year!

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is scouring Youtube watching the widest range of videos the site has to offer.  And I figured out why.  I am obsessed with reality.  I'm obsessed with figuring out the world through analyzing real people and situations... what people are really thinking or what happens when someone is caught off guard.  That is the type of video I really enjoy- Basically people's candid reactions when they believe no one is watching.   

 

The barrier to this is that most people put on a show in front of other people. They go by the character that they want the world to know them by and their lines are almost rehearsed like that of an actor. But when individuals are given an opportunity to watch other peoples real selves in action, it reminds us of our own imperfect selves and we feel comforted to know that we are not alone in our human imperfection.  

 

Hence the unquenchable thirst for reality television. But lets not get it confused.  The reality television of 2010 isn't what first caught our eye back in the days of America's Funniest Video's and Cops.  It has turned into a scripted reality that shows what people might do for money, but I guess the majority of people fall for it. 

 

If I could have one wish, it would probably be to be invisible so that I could figure out the world little by little. The Internet is a gateway to figuring out the world.  I think we all have that desire to be invisible and a computer screen is often the projection of what that invisible eye picks up.

 

These moments of candor expose other peoples humanity.  Ravi probably felt better about himself and his human flaw because he was exposing something he thought was humiliating about another.  It just so happens we all have that personal need for comfort and when someone or something can make us feel better about it, we'll entertain it. There is strength in numbers.  The people watching that video are the equivalent to the kids on the playground laughing and pointing when a bully beats up a "wimp."

With the internet, the bully doesn't have to be the biggest kid on the playground.  With the internet, Ravi was able to bully Clementi to this extent.  But without the internet, this story probably wouldn't have the reach that is has and perhaps the lesson learned wouldn't be to so many people.

Pride and Carnage - David Loftus

[Note: this is part three of a commentary on a guerilla protest mounted by Veterans for Peace on Friday; if you haven't read part 1, obscenity as protest, and part 2, the tactical use of obscenity, you should read those first.]

I’ve never understood the phrase “I’m proud to be an American.” For most of us, U.S. citizenship is something over which we have had no control. We were born here; to be proud of that fact makes no more sense than to say “I’m proud I have brown eyes,” or “I’m proud that I’m five feet nine inches tall.”

You can be proud of an achievement -- something that took effort, determination, and the decisive use of your talents -- like running a 4:25 mile or writing and delivering an effective speech -- but the happenstance of where you were born? That’s incomprehensible to me. It makes as much sense as saying “I’m proud that I won the lottery.”

Now, I’m pleased to be an American. Sometimes (such as when I was traveling for three months in West Africa) I feel pretty darn lucky to have been born here; it’s about as good as having won the lottery, when you consider the many theoretical alternatives of historic time or geographic place in which one might have found oneself. I’m often proud of my country’s attempts to live up to her great ideals and laws, but just as often ashamed and disgusted by her failures to do so.

These wars are one example. Seven and a half years ago, as war appeared imminent in Iraq, my book discussion group read The Threatening Storm, by former CIA intelligence analyst Kenneth Pollack who laid out the arguments for war with Iraq. At the end of our discussion, the members of my book group voted on whether we thought the U.S. should go to war. With roughly half the room I voted firmly against it, and subsequent events have convinced me that I was right.

One comment about the VFP banner posted to my discussion list said: “wars are a necessary evil, because there are people out there who would dearly love to kill you and everyone you love.” To respond that “wars are a necessary evil” is no answer at all to the question of whether this or that particular war is necessary or whether it is being fought in an effective way … rather in the same way that objecting to the word “Fuck” in a public banner simply avoids the more critical issue of the purpose for which it was flown.

I am fairly certain that not very many people in Iraq or Afghanistan (or Kosovo or Libya or Vietnam) really did want to kill me or the people I love. The few who might have desired to do so had no way of getting to me or to my loved ones, never mind anyone else within the continental borders of the U.S., so protection of Americans as a justification for those wars is a red herring.

Wars may be a necessary evil, but my reading of history suggests they’ve been an evil to which human beings have turned far too often, unnecessarily; which have caused untold suffering and death, for little or no or false reasons; and which almost never did anyone any good except for the odd arms dealer and his employees.

So I’d say the current wars, like so many others, are an obscenity that far outstrips the tastelessness and shock value of “fuck.”

The Tactical Use of Obscenity - David Loftus

[Note: this is part two of a commentary on a guerilla protest mounted by the Veterans for Peace on Friday. If you haven't read part 1, to there.]


I would imagine the vast majority of people who objected to the banner had seen the four-letter word reproduced on it before. Many of them have probably employed it in their own speech. Why did they object to it here?

The question isn’t whether such a word should be employed in public (after all, it appears often enough in movies, novels, and cable television series -- and I hear it daily on the street), but to what purpose is it being used? Most of the time, the word is used in public entertainment as an illumination of character and/or expression of heightened emotion.

The latter appears to be the point here: veterans wished to declare their extreme frustration over the carnage being done overseas in the name of the United States, and the relative inaction of the American people and a President who had promised in his 2008 election campaign to end it soon. The banner acknowledged its own shock value, and was pointedly hung before a restatement in stone of the American right to free speech.

I hear people complain about nudity in movies or in live theater, but I have seen full frontal nudity (male and female) effectively and appropriately used not only to shock but to express tenderness under fire from an authoritarian government. I find the use of obscenity in this context no less appropriate and effective.

As for addressing Mr. Obama as if he were a fellow citizen, there is nothing disrespectful about that. Presidents are elected out of private life, and they return to it. They are also public servants, just like local school board members or U.S. Senators, and I don’t believe there’s any harm or faux pas in addressing any such officeholders as Mr. or Ms. The Constitution makes it very clear that no special titles apply to holders of the Presidency other than “Mr. President.” He is not “the Honorable,” “Your Highness,” or “Lord” Obama. Certainly, far-right commentators and countless letters to the editor refer to the Chief Executive in far less correct and respectful terms, but I never hear of their fellow citizens correcting them on that point.

Next: U.S. pride and carnage

Obscenity in the Protest of Obscene Military Actions - David Loftus

On Friday, October 1, the activist group Veterans for Peace, who state that they are opposed to wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, hung the banner pictured here in a prominent place in Washington, D.C. The site was the Newseum, a museum just off the Capitol Mall between the U.S. Capitol and the White House, at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The protestors pointedly hung their banner over a 74-foot marble engraving of the First Amendment.

Someone posted this photo to a discussion list I belong to -- one devoted to professional theater and film work -- and created a mini-uproar. As usually happens when people respond emotionally over a political issue, a lot of ground got covered in a very short time. Comments questioned the taste and appropriateness of the banner and its circulation to our list; objected to the President being addressed as merely “Mr.”; questioned the tactical wisdom of a banner that seemed intended only to “inflame, offend, and spark dissension”; and affirmed that the poster was (or was not) proud to be an American.

First, being offended does not confer any particular moral stature upon the person who takes offense, or express any inherent righteousness. We are all offended by different things, and some emotional responses are more justifiable than others. The reason one can offer for taking offense, if it is persuasive to others, is what confers legitimacy upon one’s complaint.

In this case, some readers in my newsgroup (and undoubtedly elsewhere) were offended by blatant public obscenity. But that was precisely the activists’ point: the banner acknowledges its offensiveness, but makes a comparison to the death and destruction our forces are responsible for overseas.

“The American public should be shocked that we are still killing and crippling thousands of innocent people in these countries as well as our own soldiers – that’s what’s truly obscene,” VFP spokesman Mike Ferner told the media. Ferner is a 59-year-old veteran who served as a navy corpsman during Vietnam. “Blowing people’s arms and legs off, burning, paralyzing them, causing sewage to run through their streets, polluting the water that kills and sickens children, terrorizing and bombing people and their livestock with flying robots -- that defines obscenity. If this banner shocks and offends a single person who hasn’t been shocked and offended by what’s being done in our name, we’ve accomplished our mission.”

Just imagine how people would react if enemy soldiers were in California, doing to American citizens precisely what our soldiers are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan! Yet we passively accept that it’s going on day after day, month after month, and year after year in our name. According to Ferner’s terms, the outraged responses to the banner among my peers in the theater list was precisely what the veterans had sought. Ideally, they might desire to change some minds and get more people to lobby against the wars, but given the state of apathy and helplessness with which most Americans seem to view U.S. foreign policy, in this as in so many other areas, Veterans for Peace surely knew that was too much to hope for.

Next: the tactical use of obscenity, and addressing the President

Sartre and Beauvoir: the arrogance of intellectual celebrity - David Loftus

It’s funny what you run across by chance when you were looking for something else. I was searching the library bookshelves recently for biographies of Francis Bacon and Oliver Cromwell (a recent book about Shakespeare had piqued my interest in both men) when I happened upon a fairly new dual biography of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Carole Seymour-Jones’s 2008 book is titled A Dangerous Liaison: a revelatory new biography. I checked it out and read it quickly. The book prompted some thoughts about honesty -- with oneself and with the public face one offers to others.

I had read two previous books about the existential philosopher and his brainy companion who was a fair country theorist in her own right and became a mother to the feminist movement with her 1949 book The Second Sex. Though never married, Sartre and Beauvoir were lifelong partners. They traveled together, often lived in various hotels and friends’ homes (neither had any interest in owning property), and critiqued each others’ writings before publication. The picture one gets of them changes dramatically from one book to the next.

The first dual biography I read was in the early 1980s, I believe titled Hearts and Minds and authored by Noel Riley Fitch. It depicted a nearly idyllic partnership between intellectual equals who had an open relationship, with an understanding they might occasionally get involved with others, but “never went to bed angry.” That idyllic picture of intellectual and emotional harmony stuck in my memory.

Some years later, Deirdre Bair published a biography of Beauvoir. The subject cooperated to some extent by submitting to interviews with her biographer, and this partly explains the extent to which Beauvoir comes across in Bair’s book as something of a shadow to, even a victim of, Sartre. He seduced a succession of her female students, and late in life adopted one of his young admirers so that the girl became his heir and literary executor, which Bair writes was incredibly painful to Beauvoir. On the other hand, Bair managed to catch her subject out in some of her prevarications, too. Beauvoir made some questionable compromises with the Nazi occupiers of Paris, and hotly denied sexual affairs with other men besides the American novelist Nelson Algren, let alone women. But the questions remained open.

It is in this new book that the depths of the famous couple’s deceptions and self-deceptions are brought to light. Beauvoir not only seduced many of her own female students, but passed them along knowingly to Sartre as a method of holding his attention. Since several were quite young, the author does not scruple to avoid the phrase “child abuse.” Beauvoir also slept with many young men, and tried to seduce tall and handsome Albert Camus but decided she hated him after he turned her down. Both Sartre and Beauvoir seemed casually unaware of the mortal dangers that faced their young Jewish friends, as well as continuing their literary and journalistic careers under the Nazi and collaborationist authorities.

Sartre’s overlong flirtation with Communist governments (his hatred of Western imperialism and capitalism made him turn a blind eye to Stalin's death camps; here, the two of them chat with Castro and Che Guevara in Cuba) is deepened in this book by the revelation of a longtime romantic affair with a Soviet spy, who herself may have been acting under compulsion from her Communist masters. Seymour-Jones also confirms the terrible pain Sartre inflicted on his lifelong partner when he adopted Arlette Elkaïm, a former student and lover 32 years his junior, and suggests Beauvoir retaliated by adopting a student-daughter of her own, Sylvie Le Bon. These disagreements have been carried on long after the deaths of Sartre and Beauvoir, as Elkaïm-Sartre and Le Bon Beauvoir have fought publicly over their mentors’ estates and papers.

What to make of all this? Nearly all of us have secrets that, if paraded in public, would make us appear less noble than we would prefer to be. Fortunately, most of us don’t live our lives in public, serving as spokespersons for political and moral causes the way Sartre and Beauvoir did. So we’re less likely to serve as poor examples, and we don’t have to decide whether to gild the lily in public. The truths that writers write are, to some extent, independent of their lived lives. Each of us must decide for himself whether the scuzziness of a Sinatra or Polanski is enough to make their creative work unworthy of our time.

Sartre and Beauvoir (like Keith Richards, who once famously told a British magistrate during a 1967 hearing for drug possession, “We are not old men; we are not worried about petty morals”) might have earned the right, or at least possessed the ability, to live in a free and open relationship, but they continued to share a world with others who were less able or inclined to live under such conditions. A free mind (more or less) does not confer the right to hurt other human beings.

But that’s what they seem to have done. Repeatedly and sometimes even blithely.

Bethany Storro's bogus acid attack story: just who's the victim here? - David Loftus

Whenever I travel out of state, I hear that Oregon has a generally positive image among U.S. citizens: naturally beautiful, politically (or at least environmentally) progressive, and a great place to visit. So why does every national news story that comes out of our region have to do with nutcases? (Remember the Rajneeshees, Tonya Harding, a mayor lost her job because she had posed in lingerie on one of the town's firetrucks, and earlier this year, a man who gave other bus riders unwanted haircuts?)

Yesterday, Bethany Storro made her first appearance in court to plead not guilty to three charges of second-degree theft. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, she’s the 28-year-old who made national news after calling 9-1-1 and claiming an African American woman had walked up to her and thrown acid in her face. True, the alleged attack occurred in Vancouver, across the Columbia River from here, and Storro’s plea was heard in Clark County Superior Court, also in the state of Washington, but she was treated for her burns at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center here in Portland, so most of the print and broadcast stories about her have spread across the U.S. from local news outlets.

Storro’s horrific story not only spread nationwide and earned an invitation to the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” but funds to help with her medical expenses were set up at Umpqua Bank (my bank, incidentally), and Riverview Community Bank; and the Safeway supermarket chain started a collection for her because she was employed by a Safeway store. In all, more than $28,000 was donated to Storro from around the world.

Unfortunately, the police could not substantiate her story. The sunglasses that supposedly protected her from being blinded by the acid splash could not be found. The splash pattern didn’t resemble a splash but a careful and even application. Parts of her face that should have been protected by the sunglasses were burned.

Although she provided a fairly detailed description of her “attacker” (late 20s/early 30s, wearing a green shirt and khaki shorts, had three piercings in her ear) and police released a composite sketch of the “suspect,” later they confronted her over the discrepancies and on Sept. 16 the Vancouver Police Chief announced that Storro had admitted the injuries were self-inflicted. She had wiped drain cleaner on herself and hoped to get a new face from the ordeal. Her trial is scheduled for Dec. 20.

Oddly, another woman was attacked with acid in Arizona just two days after Storro’s incident. Derri Dias Velarde, 41, suffered second-degree burns on her face and chest after a woman threw acid on her outside her home in Mesa. I find no mention of an arrest so far, but police say it was not a random attack. Velarde is recovering at her parents’ home in Middleboro, Massachusetts.

What strikes me as especially unpleasant about the Storro story is how quickly and widely her false report was spread, and how easily some people believed it. Perhaps I should say "believed and acted upon it"; it's fine to believe whatever you like, based on what may be incomplete or erroneous evidence, but don't take action because of it, when it's not your business.

Not very many African Americans live in Vancouver, or are seen on its streets, and there have been reports that black women were harassed there in the days following Storro’s hospitalization. She’s obviously a very troubled girl, and it’s a shame she not only hoodwinked lots of credulous and generous donors but indirectly victimized others and heightened racial tensions with her bogus tale.

Although ultimately she needs psychiatric care, of course, I wonder why she was not charged with making false statements to a police officer as well as theft. It’s a sad, sorry story all around.

Still Hoping for Change - Jeff Weiss

Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign focused on two words: "hope" and "change."  To a country filled with citizens who saw the nation's economy burn in the background of two wars while the sitting president fiddled, "hope" and "change" sounded great.

Now, as the two year anniversary of Obama's historic election win approaches, very few Americans have seen improvement.  The stock market didn't crash, but the housing market is still faltering, unemployment rates are still sky-high, and many people are running out of hope.  We have been told many times that the recession is over, but no one is quite sure when the recovery will trickle down to us regular folks.  I can agree with how the woman in the above video feels.  I supported Barack Obama in 2008.  I volunteered for his campaign.  I voted for him.  And I spent a good part the last year and a half defending him to others who just don't see enough results.

It's quite possible that - even though things aren't great now - they could easily have been worse if Barack Obama was not the President of the United States.  But, it is very hard to try to ask people to imagine how much worse things could be, when they find themselves worse off now than before Election Day of 2008.  I still support President Obama and as of now he will have my vote in 2012, but for his sake as much as everyone else's, I hope he will have a stronger list of accomplishments by the time he starts campaigning.

Bedbug, Bedbug, Who's Got the Bedbug? - David Loftus

When I was a child, my parents tucked me into bed every night with a little rhyming exchange that they must have taught me but was typically started by me:

-- Good night.

-- Sleep tight.

-- Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

-- I’ll try not to.

I don’t remember wondering what bedbugs were or what they might do to me, any more than I suspect many of us considered the implications of “Now I lay me down to sleep…” or “I pledge allegiance to the flag….” It was just another comforting daily ritual.

So it’s a bit startling to be reminded of that nightly exchange from my early years -- and to see variations of it quoted in one story after another -- in the news. Bedbugs are a big deal this year!

The tiny parasitic insects known as Cimex lectularius, shown in the photo doing its thing, like to to live in beds and suck human blood. Others varieties of Cimex prefer bats or poultry, and other warm-blooded animals. C. lectularius often live in beds and can feed without disturbing their hosts. They’re brown and about the size and shape of an apple seed. They’re not a big enough health threat that the government is apt to throw huge amounts of money at them, but there is a problem from skin rashes and allergic effects that make it hard for people to sleep. (Plus the huge psychological problem of knowing your safest, most comfy haven has been invaded by wee beasties!)

With the help of DDT, these pesky critters had pretty much been eradicated from the U.S. during the 1940s, but they’ve experienced a huge resurgence since 1995, even in major metropolitan areas. Cleanliness and caretaking won’t keep them out of your home, the experts say; you can pick them up anywhere from hotels to buses. Recent surprising locations that reported infestations were the Sheraton Manhattan in Times Square, Nike’s flagship store on East 57th in Manhattan (which had to close down), the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco, and the Hilton Palmer House in Chicago. In my neighborhood, they’ve been reported in apartment building and on the Portland State University campus just a block or two away.

This revolting development is another prompting to become more aware of how interdependent we all are, individuals and nations, whether we like it or not; and for each of us to be more conscious of the people and surfaces we come into contact with every day. Recent new Web sites such as bed-bug.org, bedbugsguide.com, bedbugger.com, and bedbugregistry.com keep track of the spread of the little monsters and offer tips on how to avoid and fight them. In today’s news, USA Today reports a big turnout for a Bedbug University North American Summit in Chicago.

This problem highlights how precarious our place is at the “top” of the critter chain. Any time, a tiny challenger could make serious inroads into our complacent civilization. AIDS took a big hunk out of our confidence starting 30 years ago. Another disease that was nearly eliminated, tuberculosis, has made a serious comeback with the help of easy flights to and from the less-developed world.

I’ve wondered whether the common cold might someday develop enough resistance to our nostrums that it could live in balance in our systems permanently -- an unfriendly but not fatal symbiote -- and we’d all trudge through each day with a permanent, ongoing case of the sniffles and cough.

Personal Faith or Professional Compassion? - Ryan John

Last year at Eastern Michigan University (EMU), a school counselor named Julea Ward was expelled from her counseling duties after refusing to counsel a homosexual student on his relationship difficulties.

Ward refused to counsel the student on the basis of religious conviction and recommended the student see another counselor. Following her expulsion from the university, she filed a federal lawsuit against EMU which claimed her First Amendment right to freedom of religion had been violated. In late July, a judge ruled in favor of EMU’s claim that its school counseling curriculum adhered to the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics which mandates “professional neutrality and a strict non-discrimination policy.”

In Georgia, former Augusta State University (ASU) student Jennifer Keeton, a student in the school counselor masters program, filed a federal lawsuit against ASU, claiming staff had required her to accept homosexuality or be expelled from the school’s masters program. Keeton was assigned remediation assignments from faculty that were designed to increase her sensitivity toward the gay community.

Suspicion arose based on her class writings and discussions concerning homosexual topics. Failure to complete these required tasks would lead to Keeton’s dismissal from the graduate program. After first agreeing to it, she reneged and stated the University’s assignments were aimed at making her accept such homosexuality in contradiction to her religious beliefs. Keeton lost her legal battle recently when U.S. District Judge Randal Hall dismissed her case.

I applaud ASU’s proactive approach in assigning Keeton tasks that would test her flexibility with the gay and lesbian community after hearing her respond negatively on such issues in her class discussions and writings. Perhaps ASU and other school counseling programs could “nip it in the bud” even earlier on the application for admission into the school counselors graduate program.

I atttended a conservative Catholic college. I interviewed our director of counseling for a class I was taking. A self-confessed liberal, he told me he almost hadn’t gotten the job because he exposed some “liberal tendencies” when faced with a question about how he would handle a pregnant student.

I wonder how Ward was even hired in the first place at a gay-friendly institution like EMU. I suppose I can see how a job applicant wouldn’t be familiar with the campus culture prior to experiencing it first-hand, even though such familiarity should be an integral piece of the interview preparation process. But, as EMU values its gay-friendly atmosphere, as my institution values its Catholic beliefs, they should have raised hypothetical questions during the interview process to gauge where Ward stood on these important issues. Kudos to my school for hiring our director of counseling forty years ago, despite his honest expression of some fundamental religious differences.

As a graduate student in a school counseling program myself, I believe that remaining non-biased, non-judgmental, and client-centered should take precedence. The only book a counselor should be devoted to is the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics.

One Last Sniff, Then On to the Pistachios: 48-Hour Film part 5 - David Loftus

Sabra finished shooting her Chinese girl scenes about 1:00 p.m. Sunday, and then drove me back to the city from the Valerios’ farm. When I got home, I took off all my dirt-covered clothing and had a shower. My wife Carole said, “You look like you could use a beer.” She was right.

So we went to our local pub and I was halfway through a salad and my second pint -- maybe about 4:30? -- when my cell phone rang. Brian McKee, the cameraman, wanted to know if I could do one last shot for the film. I had to go home, put back on the dirty clothes I’d worn all weekend, and rejoin Brian.

The script had called for a brief shot of my character sniffing the urine sample on his clothing while riding the bus home from work. Dan had planned to do a “guerilla” take on board a city bus, but that seemed too dicey, particularly given that we were only a couple hours from the deadline to turn in the film.

So we shot the scene at a Portland Streetcar station just outside Powell’s Books instead. Brian lurked at the far side of 10th Avenue while I planted myself at the stop. The other “passenger,” the girl, and the traffic were all fortuitous elements. You’ll see this sequence early in the film between 0:42 and 0:50.

Dan’s script for “A Hole Story” won Best Writing for the 2009 Portland 48-Hour Film Project.

Which brings us up to this year. At 7:00 p.m. on Friday, August 6, we received our assignment: character would be Pete (or Pam) Peterson, artist; prop was pistachio nuts; and line of dialogue would be “I have a surprise for you.” Our particular team was assigned the genre of Mockumentary.

We had a lively brainstorming session from 7:30 to 10:30. Several separate ideas that surfaced during that time would come together in the finished film. Dan was interested in the self-referential, post-modern idea of inserting videos within a video. Someone called pistachio nuts “addictive,” which raised the notion of bringing the prop into the story as an actual addiction. Dan’s team had worked on other stories in which a guru figure teaches a novice how to do something, and it was suggested our artist could be a video filmmaker who knew how to make viral YouTube videos.

It was only in Dan’s script that the character became a filmmaker who expressly could not make such a video, though he was trying desperately to do so. That would allow Dan to parody some of the most famous viral videos on YouTube, such as “the Numa Numa Dance” (Gary Brolsma lip-synching to a Moldovan pop song in front of his computer Webcam), guys getting injured doing stupid things, and cute animals.

When I was describing my thoughts, I conscientiously referred to the as-yet hypothetical protagonist as “Pete or Pam Peterson” -- but speaking quickly, I ran them together. The person next to me, Alex Huebsch, heard them as one word and suggested the character’s first name should be “Peteorpam.” This not only made for a great inside joke for the other Portland filmmakers who would recognize a slurring of what we’d all been assigned, but would sound like “Peter Pan” to a wider audience. Best of all, it set up a “who’s on first”-style comic dialogue with a package delivery person played by Dylan Hillerman.

I didn’t get the script in my email box until something like 9 a.m. Saturday, and arrived at Dan’s house well after 10. We shot some of the script in around his house: a sequence involving a TV repairman that Peteorpam arranges to have pushed off the roof (which did not make the contest-entry version), and the deliveryman sequence (which did). Then we headed out to the Valerios’ farm, site of last year’s imaginative film about digging a hole to China.

Part six:  Critters in the House






Read part one: Overview of The 48-Hour Film Project


Read part two: Daniel Elkayam and the Overcast Productions strategy


Read part three: Digging a hole to China


Read part four: In the dirt and through the earth

Writing Creative Facebook Status Updates: a style guide - David Loftus

Friends and colleagues who keep tabs on my Facebook page often remark,“you’re keeping busy,” by which I gather they mean I'm doing a lot of work. I respond that I’m staying active, which is not exactly the same thing.

I see my job on Facebook as not just marketing and networking, but entertaining my friends and family. Updates don’t have to be just “hard news”: you can also post about odd things you saw on the street or thoughts that crossed your mind. A stream of status updates that mention only what or where you’re eating, or who you’re hanging out with, gets tiresome. Anything that provokes thought or a smile will do, but wit, wryness, and the offbeat get extra points.

For example, odd things you observed or experienced can be entertaining:

• David Loftus checked out his very first Cormac McCarthy novel from the library this afternoon and found a playing card -- a Joker -- tucked into the pages. I take that as a good omen.
  
• … got to hear two young women alternate between hysterical, barking giggles and chanted rap lyrics festooned with f-bombs ... followed by two men discussing third-degree burns from a motorcycle exhaust pipe and a campfire. Yep, the 33 is an interesting bus line.
  
• … was waiting at the outdoor library book return box and watched a guy drop a book, open, face-down, in the rain ... and tried very hard not to wince.
  
• … picked up a portobello mushroom vegetarian sub at noon to carry around until dinner time, and five hours later discovered he had a salami and ham. Had to wonder how the other guy felt about his sandwich.
  
• … just passed a homeless man without giving him any money, and the man said he would hold my children for ransom and not ask for anything less than $10 million. Boy was he wrong on so many counts. . . .
  

Things that made you mad or disgusted are always good for discussion, although it’s better to express your passion with elegance and indirection than with an all-out rant:

• David Loftus watched a man toss his cigarette butt on the sidewalk and wished he was large enough to tell him to pick it up and dispose of it properly.

• … walked out of the Safeway to be greeted by the sight of a street kid popping the zits on the upper back of his female companion. I try to be open-minded and tolerant, but . . . .

On the other hand, the right kind of sledgehammer blow can be entertaining, too:

• David Loftus says, “could I spare a dollar for a pack of cigarettes” ? Of course not! . . . that wouldn’t kill you fast enough to make it worth it for me.

If you can take something you observed and come up with a thought, interpretation, or extension beyond the observation, that’s a plus:

• David Loftus realized, while watching people texting on their hand-held mobile devices this morning on the bus, that to say someone is “all thumbs” may mean something entirely different from what it once did.
  
• … wonders why street kids are never accompanied by a stray Dandy Dinmont, Bichon Frise, or Chinese Crested? Even a Great Pyrenees would be a change from the usual pit bulls.
  
• … was wondering what the girls who were sitting next to him and texting all through the movie are going to do when it comes time to raise a family.
  
• … was reading a pamphlet on STDs among elders and read “Have you ever had unprotected sex with a prostitute?” and thought: “Of course not! Her pimp ALWAYS stands guard over us.”

Of course if you make unusual choices, that can be worth reporting:

• David Loftus thought “Mary Poppins” followed by “Shutter Island” was a fine DIY Sunday double feature.
  
• … downloaded a Mozart harpsichord concerto and Bob Seger. I believe in a balanced diet.

• … hadn’t realized that dumpster diving goes a lot more smoothly after a couple of bourbons. Of course, he started scrounging seriously when he was vastly underaged.
  
• … doesn’t imagine anyone else is reading Richard Matheson’s The Incredible Shrinking Man and Jane Austen’s Emma at the same time.

Wordplay, if it’s sufficiently sophisticated, may charm your Facebook friends:

• David Loftus wonders whether a situation in which two strangers establish a rapport by picking on a third might be termed a “dis connect.”
  
• … knows there’s more than one way to skritch a cat.

• [with reference to a certain Jewish holiday meal:] … says, What? NOT a path-over satyr?
  
• … has no particular objection to any religious sects . . . as long as it’s between consenting adults.

Philosophical notions and intellectual speculation offer a nice change of pace, especially if there’s a humorous or shock element to them:

• David Loftus wonders if he can interest some deep-pocket investors in an air-guitar manufacturing plant.
  
• … is designing a very strict licensing program for prospective parents which will be enacted the minute he becomes dictator of the world. Don’t presume YOU would pass it.
  

Even a pointed quotation, if it’s not well-known or widely distributed on the Web already (something from your own current pleasure reading is the best bet here), can also please:

·      “We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.” - M. Proust

·      “Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It’s too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don’t buy it.” - Haruki Murakami

Every once in a great while, there’s a rare and moving flash of beauty in your life. It’s important to share those:

• David Loftus was walking the dog when he saw a tiny green hummingbird flitting about the South Park Blocks in the spitting rain. Dang, those things are so tiny and delicate, you fear a single drop of water would bring them down. . . .