Give Blood

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Yesterday I gave blood for the first time, momentarily overcoming my fear of needles and all things surgical. I had promised myself that I would do it after the triathlon season, and Columbia was hosting a blood drive so yesterday after work I went over to Uris Hall to tap a vein. You complete a form with lots of health questions, which a nurse reviews. Your blood is tested for iron levels, your pulse and blood pressure taken. My pulse was about 20 beats per minute over its normal resting rate–my fear of needles is alive and well. After that’s all done, you get in line to lie on a stretcher and donate.

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Center for Responsive Politics Links Contributions to Contracts

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According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel Inc, the engineering firm selected by the US Agency for International Development to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq, gave $1.3 million in political contributions to Democrats and Republicans between 1999 and 2002 . Not a bad investment considering the contract is immediately worth $34.6 million and could cost over $680 million over 18 months.

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Westchester Triathlon

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2.bike2runWell, I did it! I finished the Westchester Triathlon in 2 hours, 43 minutes and set a personal record in the process! This time bests by 2 hour 55 minute time at St. Anthony’s by 12 minutes, but what’s even better is that this time I completed the .9 mile swim in 29 minutes! That’s a 9 minute improvement! I feel validated in my swim training strategy, which was simply to focus on form instead of worrying about getting fast. Well, the practice on form translated into less effort and SPEED. I was consistent about sighting and swam pretty much in a straight line. I emerged from the water ready for the bike ride.

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Two Years of Cyber Deprivation

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“Imagine that you wake up in a strange land. Your room is small but comfortable. As the sun streams through fine lace curtains, you look at your watch. It’s 4:30 A.M., far too early for the sun to be shining. Then you remember: Thirty-five years after President Kennedy’s call to serve, you’re in the Peace Corps, and you’re going to be living in this strange land for the next two years.” An excerpt from ‘Two Years of Cyber Deprivation’ Download full article.

Bloggers Note – I wrote this article for Cybertimes, an offshoot of the New York Times web site, shortly after I returned from my Peace Corps service and started temping at the New York Times electronic media company. I went from being a teacher in Rietavas, a town of 4,000 in western Lithuania, where I awoke to the crowing and mooing of our neighbor’s farm to honking horns and screeching New York City subways. Needless to say, my head was spinning. The most difficult aspect of my Peace Corps service was coming home. Though I spoke the language and dressed the part, I felt as though I didn’t belong. Everyone had two years of references that I didn’t get, and I had two years of references that were foreign to folks back home. However, I couldn’t have picked a better place to land than New York City–where an escape to a foreign country was always only a few blocks, or subway stops away.

Downtown for Democracy

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New, York, NY – “On Sunday, September 12, 2004, forty contemporary artists, working under the auspices of Downtown for Democracy, transformed the block of 22nd Street between Tenth and Eleventh avenues into the Liberty Fair.”–from the downtown for democracy website. We hired a writer to send Colin Powell a letter respectfully asking him to do the right thing and resign, got temporary tatoos, and one of us sort of wound up in the New York Times.

Mark Sept. 1 on the Calendar

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The scene in Rietavas, Lithuania, on September 1, 1996– it’s the first day of school. (imagine a similar picture at every school in Lithuania, Russia and the former Soviet Union). Tradition dictates that the oldest 12th grade students escort the youngest first grade students to their classes. Students, parents and teachers don their best clothes. The 12th grade students opted to wear their Soviet-era black and brown uniforms. Students held fresh flowers to greet their teachers and perhaps soften them up a bit. We gathered first in church (Lithuania’s an overwhelmingly Catholic country.) It was sunny, crisp, beautiful day–one of my favorites as a Peace Corps Volunteer. The town came together, whether they had children or not, and saw the children off to school. A soviet relic with charm. September 1, is or rather was, always a joyous, hopeful day.

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I want my MP3s!

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A Macintouch. reader wrote in asking how they might synch MP3 libraries–in non geek speak–have your MP3s on your home computer and want to listen to them at work. Rather than try and synch them, here’s a way to access them from home.

“…[U]se a product like Edna, in its own words, "edna allows you to access your MP3 collection from any networked computer. This software streams your MP3s via HTTP to any MP3 player that supports playing off a remote connection.”

Edna serves up Playlists that can be managed in iTunes. Sadly, Edna can’t stream protected .AAC files. Andromeda ($35) streaming jukebox software works in a similar fashion, and does handle .AAC files.

Overall, Edna provides a handy way to access most of my music collection on my home Mac when I’m elsewhere.”

Basketball: Lithuania Beats the American Olympic Team

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22hoops.1841Athens, August 21.  The Lithuanian basketball team
beat the US, 94 to 90. I am not a huge basketball fan, but as a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Lithuania, 95-97) the result made me smile.  Basketball is a sacred sport in Lithuania.  Vaidas Paulauskas, a student, usually quiet during classes that stressed English conversation, always chatted me up after school about the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan.  He’d go onto remind me that Lithuania’s best, then Marciulionis and Sabonis, played in the US. Lithuania is a small nation of 4 million, but its presence looms large in basketball circles.

For most of the 20th century Lithuania was caught up in global power plays–falling under Russian, German, and then Soviet domination.   (The Soviets were kind enough to co-opt the best Lithuanian basketball players for their Olympic team before Lithuania broke free in 1991.)  Nevertheless, it’s not often that a small country goes up against the legendary American dream team and wins.  Yesterday, in beating the US, Lithuania showed that passion, practice and persistence can take down a giant.

As an American, I’m a little embarrassed that we’re getting trounced in a sport that we invented and where athletes command multi-million dollar salaries.   As a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, I am overjoyed for my adopted country.  In America, we expect to dominate.  This reversal, an object lesson in hubris, is refreshing–if fleeting.   My guess is the Americans will be more focused in the finals, but I’ll still be rooting for Lithuania.