Ordinary Canary

At the moment, it is clear that the big U.S.ian political issue is health care. I’ve been talking to a lot of people about it - and one of the most bizarre arguments that I’ve heard in a long time is the idea that human beings have to earn their right to go to [...]

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I’m not much of a clothes shopper, which is evidenced by the fact that my wardrobe has gotten into a pretty sad state. I’ve been slowly trying to remedy this, which is hard to do when you hate shopping as much as I do.
Also, in this go around of trying to replenish my wardrobe, [...]

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Yesterday I was at a burger joint down by Wall Street. Being a vegetarian, it’s not a place that I go into often, but I was with a bunch of coworkers.
We got to the board with the specials and they had a Presidential Burger.
“Oh boy,” thinks I. Then I started reading the ingredients. [...]

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President Obama apparently reads this blog.
Well, hey, it’s a start, though I do wonder when we’re going to stop our crusade to make every country a democracy.
I am a fan of democracy, but I’m also a fan of not killing people.

Sphere: Related Content

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Is it just me, or is the Obama Administration really irking you with their focus on the middle class?
I’d like to think that they see a classist society where there is an upper class and a middle class and no lower, since that’s how they’re acting, but I suspect it’s more of a “we just [...]

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I’m not sure if this is national news or not, but here in NYC, we’re seeing two hospital closings in Queens as a result of financial difficulty.
In addition to the horrors of even fewer medical facilities in Queens (and, having lived in Queens for five years, I sadly have some personal experience with this), the [...]

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An article on lesbian separatist communities that I found interesting.
I’ve been thinking a lot about communities of women (of all sexual orientations) because of the novel I’m reading, The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett. It is really, really good. It’s about a home for unwed mothers run by the Catholic church [...]

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Cuba officially supports Linux now, which is pretty rocking from both an open source perspective and a “gosh, American policies regarding Cuba are so beyond stupid” standpoint.
The plane we were on from Montego Bay was delayed rather significantly by a sick passenger. We had to go back to the gate and let her off, [...]

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That would be me, by the way.
Jamaica is one heavenly place. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen somewhere so incredibly beautiful.
We had a good time. However, we were not blind to what the effects of our economy are on Jamaica - the hotel that we stayed at was very empty. The [...]

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A very worthwhile article by Zadie Smith on multiracial identities, Barack Obama, William Shakespeare and My Fair Lady.
An excerpt:
A few minutes later, I was in a taxi and heading uptown with my Northern Irish husband and our half-Indian, half-English friend, but that initial hesitation was ominous; the first step on a typical British journey. A [...]

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