i'm so behind in posting for the week. i need to rant about my stressful apartment search as well as my anguish and embrassment at the way my country handles major crises and the needs of poor minorities.

i missed a protest of this local hate-fest, yesterday, unfortuantely. but i got to see jess briefly last night, which was nice. i've mostly been spending my weekends at home, hanging with the parents doing absolutely nothing because i'm so exhausted from attempts at apartment hunting after work on weeknights. we'll hopefully have a place in park slope or prospect heights, brooklyn within a week or two. cross your fingers. if you like me.

even though i've always had a lot of gripes with the clinton family, as the state of this country's elected leadership has sunken to new and newer lows over the past few years, and as i've read about bill clinton's work in stemming the aids crisis overseas and other work, my admiration for him has started to return, despite many of the decisions he's made that i oppose, most egregiously, his support for "free trade" capitalism at the expense of the rest of the world's welfare. as i walk past his foundation's headquarters every day on my way to and from work, i imagine that it might be a much more exciting and worthwhile place for me to be working. clearly much of his work is attempting to effect major change in global public health.

although i've disagreed with many of hillary's moves since she became my senator 4 and a half years ago, i think it would be really cool if she became president. although many of her goddamn liberal politicking drives me crazy, i do have to face the reality that nobody left of her is going to get elected to the highest office in the land, and of coures, she is a woman.

BUT i was extermely dismayed to learn that she's officially joined the leadership of the DLC. not that she was such a leftist before, as this stupid article seems to imply, but still. the DLC has the potential to suck every idealistic and populist bone out of her body, leaving a centrist shell infinitely indistinguishable form the GOP.

it's now 4 yrs since cornell and ithaca really became my home. i can descreetly remember the entire chronology of that day four years ago, 9/11/01, and how safe i felt tucked away up there amidst the large gothic buildings, the collective brilliance, picturesque hills and meadows, and the throngs of identical looking students. as i've mentioned earlier, i think that day really bonded our class together, as a group, because the place you can experience a tragedy like that and come through it together collectively, is truly home. although the only thing i'll likely be doing today in commemoration is posting on this blog and watching the reading of the names broadcast on tv, the fact that the four years since the 9/11 attacks coincides with the same four years since i began college, since i began my journey of joys and frustrations at cornell has some stronger meaning to me. i'm not sure what it quite is yet. i have a feeling that my journey and relationship to that place is not over and will continue at some point in the future.

as i read my first alumni magazine last night, it was actual more of a sad, heart-felt experience than anything else.although i spent the last 10 months or more complaining aboud so much and wanting to get out of there, last night what i experienced was a sadness at the speed with which those same four years passed and a recognition of all of the regrets i have, experiences passed up, moments extinguished, both trivial and not.

it seems like our country has more and more victimes with each passing year, and it's not only because i have come to experience a more complete political understanding of the world around me since i began four years ago as a freshman: first 9/11, the war in afghanistan, invasion of iraq, now katrina, continous violence in other locations intermingled, specifically israel and the occupied territories, and really every continent i can think of besides australia. i don't know. i feel like the past four years have only partially equipped me to deal with all of these global problems. i feel like it was an amazing start, an immersion in problems, solutions, nuance...but only a beginning. but there seems to be so much more i should have gleaned from that experience, and i can't help wondering if jacob lehman had been chosen a little earlier as university president and stayed a little longer, might cornell have made a bit more progress at advancing towards that goal of comprehensive global education?


may the memories of all the victims over the past four years, near and far, nameless and unnamed by the press be for blessings to guide us to a more just society and world.