There was a conversation I had with an Air Force sergeant who was in town with an F-16 demo team for the annual air show, which I was writing about for the paper. We were sitting around waiting for the show to get going, and conversation strayed into fuel consumption/costs/etc. I had no idea that airplanes burned so much. Especially stunt planes (he estimated 50-70 gallons/hour) and highly maneuverable fighter jets (up to 150 gallons/hour). I mentally stagger at the carbon footprint, he stays firmly in financial territory. “It’s all money spent in the defense of freedom.”

“So is the military looking into alternative fuels at all, given worries about supply?”
“Absolutely. There’s this process involving coal…”

Trying to stay neutral as possible, I wandered tentatively into BP territory: “It’s interesting, don’t you think, the extra attention it’s bringing to energy issues?” And he dismisses. “People forget that nearly everything they own is made from petroleum. Focus on fuel is short-sighted. Unless they find a way to make glass more cheaply, we’ll be using oil for a long time.” True, but it ignores the central question of what we CAN do, and the long-term concerns (opposing, in some ways, the short-term concerns of the military) that would make it worth pursuing.

It was an interesting anthropological moment. One of those where you say, Ah, the values here are very different, but they are held together by a certain kind of logic.

I went to that same air show “for fun” the next day. I have other thoughts, maybe for later, about air shows and America, the land where we go to events that boast about “turning fuel into fun,” the land where the deafening roar of a jet engine passing you at 650 mph is “the sound of freedom.”

Happy Veterans Day!

I think veteran poetry is one good way to celebrate.

"My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair."

- Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It

sticking out

I spent most of my morning at a primary school today waiting for Desmond Tutu to show up. I'm blatantly, shamelessly name-dropping because oh goodness, I think I am in love with Desmond Tutu after only two short media circuses with him. He very distinctly reminds me of my Polish grandmother. A man with a lot of history who can somehow still make jokes and high five small children and not take himself so seriously except when it would help the right cause for him to do so.

So meanwhile, I'm in an art room with about 30 kids, breathing in rubber cement and glitter, and every other media outlet in town has someone there, too. The kids, who were also waiting for Desmond Tutu to show up, still wanted all our autographs and then presented us with hand-drawn cards thanking us for showing up and being great reporters. Have I said yet that this job is making me reconsider everything I ever imagined about journalism involving chameleon-like anonymity? I'm giving my name and number to as many total strangers as possible, and hoping they remember me long enough to drop a note if anything develops beyond whatever story we were initially talking about. So far, mostly only the wine industry is remembering me and inviting me places and offering me free brandy mixing workshops. I'll tell you about the wine industry another time. Suffice to say, I'm trying to up my ass-kicking, story-pitching moxie quotient so I don't have to spend too many afternoons with press releases and communications officers. The sheer pleasantness of the interviews is enough to make teeth rot, diabetics weep, etc etc.

Back to the kids. Because they're a useful tool for really just saying whatever I feel like saying. When it came out that I was American, some of them wanted to know who I was voting for in November. That's the number one question I get whenever it comes out that I'm American. It's often phrased as, "Are you voting for Obama?" When it's not, it's more like, "So, uh, who are you voting for?" "Barack Obama." "Oh good." Considering recent polls have already found that Obama is the world's preferred US President, I'm not surprised, but it is most certainly strange to be living in such a quasi-idyllic political landscape where no one I know disagrees with my voting choices. I sent my ballot request a little late, maybe, and might have to pull some weird emergency-faxing maneuvers around Halloween, but in the meantime it's easy to be excited about the presidential race from here. Ignoring, you know, the big question of whether anything will actually change beyond our national hopefulness index.

It's a little uncomfortable to be an American; it makes me stick out a little when I'd rather just be some girl living in some city, nothing remotely like a tourist. There is also the issue of money (at R8 per dollar, I actually have it) and the way people here really do care who wins in November. It strikes me as vastly unfair. But I'm saving some of that up for another post. Eventually.

Also for later: Small boy asks me over inkwell, "Why is the news always bad?"

I am also making progress on poems, letters, and Spanish verb flashcards. In case you were waiting to hear about any of those.