Balkan Barbie

I really like my new bike!!!! I picked it up Friday 10/31/08. (That's Christian W., my neighbor, in the foreground. His mom, Christa W., took the photo with my cell phone). My bike is a Bianchi Cortina 21" Metalic Silver hybrid, wheel size 700c. I bought it for transportation/commuting to work (campus) and errands (I like close to two groceries, the post office, the library, the coffee shop etc). I'll have the fenders and racks installed soon. Bikeworks assembled the bike in time for me to ride it this weekend, it is probably the last warm weekend we'll have for a while (they don't know about my dissertation chapter deadlines that kept me indoors Saturday and probably will all day today). I rode home from Bikeworks on Friday shouted at the first pedestrian I saw, he looked like an undergrad into the hip hop scene - "hey, I got a new bike!!" And he gave me thumbs up.

Someday, I'd Like My Own ... Tugboat! And I would anchor it on the bank of the Ohio River, at the port of Paducah, KY.

I'll add jokes to my writing genre. There are 3 men working on a tall building. They go to lunch and the first guy opens his lunchbox and sees a salad, He says.. "damb it! if my wife makes mea salad for lunch one more time im just going to jump off this building and kill myself." The second guy opens his lunchbox and sees a sandwich. He also says, "if my wife make me another sandwich for lunch, I’m going to jump off of this building with you!" The third guy opens his lunchbox and sees chicken, which he is also tired of, So he goes on to says " if my wife makes me some more chicken for lunch, i’m going to jump off of this building with you guys." At the funeral home , the first wife goes up to speak. She says, "If I had known he didn’t want a salad for lunch, I wouldn’t have made him any, I’d have chosen something else... and went off crying... The second wife gets up to say, "If I had known that he didn’t want another sandwich for l...

I guess that we have been friends long enough for me to tell you about the time I led a Partzian Women's Brigade. Or maybe it is seeing Sarah Palin in the media that inspired me to tell you about this. I was the sefica at the Pecko shoe factory in Zagreb on Nova Ves (the building is now the shopping mall, Kaptol Centar). Here I am with Ankica to my left. We're in Samobor on a Sunday outing. I did that all the time, take the whole factory and their families for Sunday outings, and the factory paid for everything. I am the first female factory director in all of Croatia and the ex-Yugoslav territories, for that matter. You can see the tension and jealousy in Ankica's face, even though I gave them such handsome uniforms and hats. I innovated shoe production of the healthy shoes that women who work wear. No, not spiked Cesare Pacoti shoes worn by sminkarica. Those healthy shoes worn by women who work blue-collar jobs, for example, preparing food in the canteen in the basement o...

At The Canopy Club (canopyclub.com) last night, I saw Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile. You know that I like the mandolin. I had seen Chris Thile a few years ago, before his rise to fame. This show, the band played songs from a new album. I guess that is why they seemed self-conscious. The music seemed to follow their script. Chris monitored the other players, when they would come in and out of the songs, and signaled them as well. I know that is standard, but he also seemed ready to jump on them for missing. They responded to him, especially joining in as the audience responded to songs, but also seemed like they were familiar with his bossy side. Maybe that comes with the role of leader of the band, but he seemed less expansive last night. For the last three songs, though, they let the music flow and gave each other room to play their instruments and find their timing. The whole show was good, but that was the best part.

Here is Vogel's quote about his life as a Spyswapper, "I was neither a resistance fighter nor a good Samaritan. My paths were neither white nor black. They had to be grey, otherwise it would not have worked." Does it mean the Cold War? The brilliant thing about Vogel is that he kept the system going, but he did not become a martyr or a victim. Here is the obituary of Wolfgang Vogel from the Financial Times (Aug 30/31, 2008, p. 8). His nickname was "The Devil's Lawyer." Does every political era have its moral order? What is ours? Who (what) is in the middle of the "war on terror," keeping it going by doing its dirty work, work it denounces by day?

The oft-talked about NYC Breakers poster on display at Exile on Main Street. Found in a 1983 K-Tel Records compilation aptly named Breakdance . From the web site of the people who supply my CD player, Exile on Main St.