Shifting Forces
Bush to Back Pentagon Plan to Redeploy 70,000 Troops

Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, has briefed German officials. "Everything is going to move everywhere," Mr. Feith said a year ago, as the administration was developing the details of the plan. "There is not going to be a place in the world where it's going to be the same as it used to be."

Maybe it's a good thing, but why do I think that it sounds like they want to redesign the world, possibly by invading someone new, just to prove we can do it right (and that Iraq wasn't the appalling mistake it was from the beginning)?

Good afternoon friends. Have been sitting in the sun thoroughly lost in a young (age 33) Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams from My Father. Buy this book immediately, anywhere you can, even if you don't live in Illinois. Amazon will do. Better still, walk into a real store and ask for it (it's what I did -- they seem to be sold out now at the Borders in Niles -- at least no more on the shelf).

The writing is vivid, the story unwinding a bit like a detective story, as Obama, just out of law school, makes us understand his family ties, both white and black, and the events making him the extraordinary man he is. His grandparents are a hoot, his upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia complex and exotic. I hate to say it, but it would make a terrific movie.

Back to the place where art and politics collide, the artist Carrie Iverson has emailed me about the "Facade Project" at the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative (see link on the side), in which she has filled all the available windows of the Western Avenue (Chicago) building with images of fallen U.S. troops in Iraq. The building is at 4642 N. Western between Wilson and Lawrence, just under the tracks for the Brown Line. I'll check it out this week and get back to you.

Until then, I'm going back to my book now, so go away.

- posted by Cynthia @ 5:29 PM | | | Link |