Paris Parfait

The morning after

The 15th-century decorative azuelejos (pictured above and below) line a patio at the Museo de Bellas Artes, Sevilla, Spain.

I'm in London and can't comment yet about the American mid-term election results. The ballots in many races were still being counted when I boarded Eurostar early this morning. I'll be back in Paris on Friday and will write about the election results, as well as my time in London.

Paper ballots, anyone?

This is why we need to stick to paper ballots. How can we ever have a free and fair election if some people are prevented from voting, due to long lines and computer glitches??!! And to think of numerous other problems encountered among the thousands of voter precincts throughout the United States. The combination of human error, combined with technology glitches and power cuts just boggles the mind.

An excerpt of an article by George Merritt and Jeffrey Leib, from today's Denver Post:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter stood in a long line at the Washington Park Recreation Center in Denver to vote on Tuesday. He arrived about 7:45 am and left at about 9:30 am after voting on computerized voting machines which contributed to the delay. On a day already rife with computer glitches, long lines and legal appeals to extend voting in Denver, provisional ballots are now running out at some Denver voting centers.

Westerly Creek, 8800 E. 28th Ave., ran out of provision ballots before noon, and as of 2 p.m., still had none. Voters who were seeking shorter lines arrived, and quickly the line grew to more than a hundred people long.

FairVoteColorado.org reported provisional ballot shortages at numerous other sites as well, including Glenarm Recreation Center, Park Hill Methodist, Manual High School, and Montbello Recreation Center. Widespread computer problems were reported, some shutting down entire voting centers, but the problems appeared to ease after 2 p.m.

Democratic party leaders are in court this afternoon, seeking a two-hour extension for voting in Denver, because many were kept from casting their vote. Party spokesman Brian Mason said the motion was in response to "the huge problems in Denver this morning."

Democratic Party representatives came to Parkhill Methodist this afternoon to ask people standing in line if they would go downtown to testify in the court case seeking the extension.

Denver Election Commission spokesman Alton Dillard said there was no systemwide failures and that the delays were being caused by heavy voter turnout combined with "congestion" in the computer network used to confirm voter registeration. "It's our application. It got overloaded," Dillard said. But voters experienced a wide range of problems, that began right when the polls opened at 7 a.m.

Officials at Manual High School said their computers had crashed three times today. They were running at 2:30, but more than 99 people were in line. At lunch time, Denver voters waiting in line at the Botanic Gardens vote center were urged to go to Manual's site because the wait at the Gardens might be at least another hour.

When Kim Smith, one of the relocated voters, arrived at Manual, she found a long line that crawled for at least an hour just to get to the door to the school. Once she got inside, election officials said the voting process was stopping because of computer problems.

When officials tried to form two lines out of the one stalled line, people started yelling because it put some voters ahead of others who had waited longer, said Smith, who lives in Washington Park. Election officials did not know how to handle the crowd, Smith said. Shortly after 1 p.m., Denver Police arrived to calm restive voters.

Earlier, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper emerged from inside the Manual voting site and said, 'This can't happen again,' recalled Smith, who finally voted around 1:30, nearly two hours after she arrived at the Denver school.

Vaishali Patel, who lives in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood, arrived at her voting center near East Eight Avenue and Downing Street after 11 a.m. and was told the wait would be two hours. She was urged to go to the Botanic Gardens site. There, officials told her the wait also would be two hours and she was urged to go the Manual.

Like Smith, she arrived at the Denver school a little before noon and endured nearly two hours of lines moving in fits and starts before she reached the voting booth. "I feel like I have to; I made it this far," Patel said, when she was about 20 people away from the booth. As of 2:15 p.m., the line at the Botanic Gardens was just as long as it was this morning, snaking down the street to 11th Ave.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter waited an hour and a half to vote at the Washington Park Recreational Center this morning. When he arrived at about 7:45 a.m., there were more than 150 people in line ahead of him. Several people said they were frustrated by the long lines. Paul Barsa, a 35-year-old who said he works in accounting, said he was "grouchy" and wished that he waited until the afternoon to vote. Ritter said, "I hope that people will be patient. It's important for them to vote."

The Denver Election Commission reported that problems began right at 7 a.m. as computer problems at the voter-check in stations bogged down, creating a bottleneck in the first hour of voting as a rush to the polls overloaded the system. Power failures slowed voting at some locations, commission spokesman Dillard said.

Voting machines had backup power and weren't affected, but laptop computers used to verify voter registration were knocked out, forcing workers to call the central office for the information, he said. Mark Coles, a computer technician with the Denver Election Commission, said the election system had to be split onto three separate servers to handle the backlog.

"It's just like traffic on (Interstate) 25," Coles said. "It's as if we are building two more I-25s right next to it" to ease the traffic congestion.

But the fix did not come in time to help some voters who hoped to vote before heading to work. At Denver Botanic Gardens, a line several hundred voters long stretched out of the gates and down the block more than half way to 11th Avenue.

"We will not get to vote today," said a frustrated Lauren Brockman as he left the Botanic Gardens. He lined up at 6:45 a.m. hoping to beat the rush, only to stand in line for close to an hour before leaving. But an hour wait was short, compared to some.

Another brocante at Bastille

This 19th-century French madonna crown was found at an antiquaire in Sevilla, Spain. A collector had sold his long-time collection of crowns - both French and Spanish - to the dealer. But the other crowns were too expensive to consider.

A patented 1895 American miner's or railroad lamp (that still works) is pictured, along with tickets to the Antiquites Brocante November 9-19 at Place de la Bastille, Paris. The brocante is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily and features wares from 350 professional dealers. I'm back from London on Friday and you can bet I'll be browsing among the antiques and collectibles.

In Paris, take metro lines 1, 5 or 8 to Bastille and Quai de la Rapee. Bus lines 76, 86 and 91 will take you to the event. Parking is available at Opera Bastille. For more information, within Paris telephone the Joel Garcia Organisation at 01.56.53.93.93.

Tricks won't deter voters

"Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people. The only way to change is to vote. People are responsible." - the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota

If you encounter problems when voting, document the issue by taking names of individuals involved and if possible, photographs with your digital camera. Then telephone the Election Protection hotline at (866) OUR-VOTE.

From Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo about robocalls currently plaguing potential voters in the United States:

Most of the call's script is a fairly standard attack robocall, a series of Republican talking points aimed at the Democratic congressional in a particular district." "... The lead into the call starts with the speaker saying 'I'm calling with information about' Dem candidate X. Then there's a short pause.

At this point, you know it's an annoying robocall, so a lot of people just hang up. If you hang up then, you think it's a call from the Democratic candidate.

Second, the repetition. And this part is the key. If you don't listen through the whole message, the machine keeps calling you back, often well in excess of half a dozen times with the same call. It only stops if you listen all the way through.

As you can imagine, that's driving a lot of people through the roof.

In other words, the Republicans behind the calls win either way. If you keep hanging up, you think you're being harassed by the campaign of the local Democratic House candidate. If you give up and listen all the way through, you hear the political attack. The true source of the call, the NRCC, the GOP House campaign committee, is only revealed at the end of the call.

In another piece, Marshall writes that "both parties deliver millions of robocalls during election season. You've probably gotten the calls from both parties and many outside groups. It happens every cycle. Only one party has a nationwide campaign to deliver millions of intentionally-harassing calls disguised to appear that they're from the opposite party. That party is the Republican party. And the calls are funded by the NRCC -- the House GOP election committee. It's the party of election subversion. Deal with it."

Marshall reported that the company behind the GOP robocall election subversion operation pulled its own phone numbers from its website.

From Daily Kos: State of the Nation these accounts of attempted voter suppression:

Tim Daly from Clarendon got a call saying that if he votes Tuesday, he will be arrested. A recording of his voicemail is online. The transcript reads:

"This message is for Timothy Daly. This is the Virginia Elections Commission. We've determined you are registered in New York to vote. Therefore, you will not be allowed to cast your vote on Tuesday. If you do show up, you will be charged criminally."

Daly has been registered to vote in Virginia since 1998 and has voted for the last several cycles with no problem. He has filed a criminal complaint with the Commonwealth's attorney in Arlington.

State of denial

This is rich, coming from a president who has poured billions of American taxpayer dollars into the black hole that is Iraq: In a radio address Saturday, Bush cautioned voters that a Democrat Congress would hit their pocketbooks.

An editorial published in four independent military newspapers joined the chorus calling on Bush to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bush's response? Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere; he's doing "a fantastic job."

And on a Sunday morning television talk show, Vice President Dick Cheney told George Stephanopoulos that it's full speed ahead with the "stay the course" policy. As Democrat strategist James Carville told CNN's Larry King Sunday night: "I think people don't want -- the message they want is not the full speed ahead with a "stay the course" policy, I think they want something different, but the vice president, who has a lot more power and say-so than I do says it's full speed ahead. So, we'll see what happens on Election Day."

King asked David Gergen, former advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, "Is the White House not reading Iraq right?" "Well, I must say I was surprised at the vice president's comments on the eve of election," Gergen remarked, " because there are a variety of surveys out there saying people really would like a fresh start or fresh direction, they would agree with Ed Gillespie that you know, cutting and running is not a good idea, but they're looking for some fresh course."

"And there has been an assumption going into this that after the election, the president would take a fresh look and for the vice president to sort of, in his defiant terms, you know, throw down the gauntlet and say, 'no, we don't care what the people say in this election, we're going to do it our own way, full speed ahead,' I think this holds out a red flag in front of a bull for Democratic voters, it makes it more likely to want to go out and send a message to the White House, that by golly, we're not happy with the way this is going," Gergen said.

An excerpt from James Wolcott's article Red State Babylon in the November issue of Vanity Fair:

Under Karl Rove's sorcerer's spell, Republicans learned how to exploit the intelligence gap, herding the dopey faithful to the polls and depending on their docility between elections. "Karl Rove was there to recognize that there were substantial powers to be obtained by catering to stupid stubborn people and George W. Bush would be the man to harvest such resources," Norman Mailer brilliantly proposes in The Big Empty, a series of dialogues between Mailer and son John Buffalo. "George W. understood stupid people well. They were not dumb, their minds were not physically crippled in any way. They had chosen to be stupid because that offered its own kind of power. To win a great many small contests of will, they needed only to ignore all evidence. Bright people would break down trying to argue with them." It's like trying to reason with a box of rocks.

It seems Bush and Cheney also adhere to this line of thinking: ignore all evidence.

Spanish ham and haibun

Spanish hams for sale in Sevilla

For One Deep Breath, this week's challenge is to write a haibun,* a poetry form that previously had escaped my attention.

Recently I spent a month in Sevilla, Spain studying Spanish. Eating out was a challenge, as most of the items on the menu were foods I could not identify. Further, the menus in every single restaurant were completely different, using varying terms for nearly identical dishes.

The waiter deposits five tapas dishes on the table, plates of beautifully-presented mysteries, which bear little resemblance to food I thought I ordered. Always game for experimenting, for trying something new, I take a tentative first bite - quiche! It's quiche. French bacon quiche criss-crossed with thick pink ribbons of Spanish sherry. I did not come to Sevilla to eat an egg-laden French dish, no matter how artfully it's disguised. I taste another dish. Hmmmm, much better: a smoky Iberico chorizo, wrapped in pastry and lined with cheese. Delicious!

Unfamiliar words
bring unexpected results
chance to try new things

*"If a haiku is an insight into a moment of experience, a haibun is the story or narrative of how one came to have that experience." -Bruce Ross

Monday diversion

Decorative 15th-century azulejos, Museo de Bellas Artes, Sevilla, Spain

I was tagged by Nina for this quick meme:

a) Four jobs I have had in my life

Project manager
Makeup artist
Newspaper editor
Software development

b) Four movies I would watch over and over again (the list would be very long indeed)

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe
Lawrence of Arabia
Wings of Desire
Il Postino

c) Four places I have lived

London
Amman, Jordan
San Francisco
Santa Fe

d) Four TV shows I like to watch

Grey's Anatomy
Interieurs (French show about design)
Question Maison (French show about people's houses and apartments)
CSI (Las Vegas and Miami versions)

e) Four places I have visited

Kuwait
Cairo
Madrid
Bahrain

f) Four websites I visit daily (I visit many sites daily; see my About page)

Jane Poe
Courage My Love
Ascender Rises Above
Laurelines

g) Four places I would like to be right now

At a flamenco show in Sevilla
Walking along the Pier at San Francisco Bay
Shopping in Madrid
At the Blue Cafe in Norway

h) Four of my favourite foods

Shrimp jambalaya
Duck with sour cherries
Pecan pie
Sweet potato pie

I) Four bloggers I would like to respond

Anyone who has time to play

Art of the Cross

Mary Emmerling's new book Art of the Cross is a delightful compilation of art, textiles and jewelry that bear the most famous religious symbol. If like me, you collect Spanish crosses, Mexican milagros, French and Italian church ornaments and other religious icons, you'll appreciate this book.

Art of the Cross features beautiful photography by Jim Arndt of potent symbols of faith and beauty, including unique items from Emmerling's personal collection. The 19th-century miniature silver crown on top of the book is a recent find in Sevilla, Spain.

A close-up view of the 19th-century silver Madonna crown found at an antiques shop in Sevilla. It sits atop a 19th-century hand-tooled leather Spanish devotional, found at a flea market for just 15 euros!

Tuesday morning in America

Propaganda poster based on a Dorothea Lange photograph, 1942

For the Sunday Scribblings prompt "morning," a poem inspired by the American election on Tuesday, November 7th:

I shudder to think
about difficult mornings ahead
if we don't change our direction

No excuses for sheer incompetence
leading to danger and despair
for this strong brave country

We can rise above those mistakes
and chart a new course
reflecting our nation's heart and soul

Time to move beyond rhetoric
and make informed choices
for the common good

Time to decide what we want
for our children and their children
make our voices count

Time to remember who we are
stand up for our rights
help make a difference

In death, finally considered American

A Kenyan-born man fought two tours of duty with the US Marines in Iraq. But after his death his family had to fight for his American citizenship! Imagine that - a non-American allowed to serve with the military, but no guarantee of citizenship. An excerpt from the Associated Press story:

NASHUA, N.H. - A Kenyan-born U.S. Marine was buried Friday as an American citizen, ending his family's battle to have U.S. citizenship bestowed upon him posthumously after he was killed in a car crash.

U.S. Marines carried Raban Anthony Kimungu's flag-draped casket into the church Friday morning for a service full of family stories and Christian hymns sung in English and Kikuyu that lasted into the afternoon. There, family members were presented with his citizenship papers.

Kimungu, 24, of Hudson survived two tours of duty in Iraq, including a sniper's bullet to the head, then was killed in a car accident Oct. 27 in Nashua. When he died, he was waiting for word on his application to become a citizen.

Dorothea Lange's "Impounded"

Dorothea Lange's most famous photograph, "Migrant Mother," Nipoma, California, 1936

I have always been a fan of Dorothea Lange's extraordinary photographs portraying the human condition. A new book Impounded, shows Lange's powerful photographs of Japanese-American internment - photographs that were initially censored by the US Army. These previously unseen images record the difficulties of a community uprooted by racial hatred infused by war in the early 1940s. Historians Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro supplement Lange's photographs with the story of life prior to Executive Order 9066 to the sudden round-ups, then their life in the internment camps.

In 1941, Lange was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in photography. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she gave up the award to accept an assignment with the War Relocation Authority. She recorded the forced evacuation of Japanese-Americans to relocation camps. Her photograph of young Japanese-American girls pledging allegiance to the flag shortly before being sent to internment camps is a grim indictment of the policy of detaining people without charging them with crimes or affording them appeals - rather like Guantanamo Bay.

Lange's photographs were such a strong portrait of conditions in the camps that the Army refused to release them. Today more than 800 of Lange's photographs are available through the National Archives.

You decide

An excerpt of Tom Friedman's column in The New York Times about Bush advisor Karl Rove and the upcoming election:

"Let Karl know that you're not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable."

"Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq — and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate — it means our country has become a banana republic."

In a similar vein, following is a brief news synopsis from the BBC and CNN websites on Friday, November 3, 2006. Please read these excerpts and decide if you want to keep this government or if you'd rather vote for change:

In Iraq:

Agency exposing corruption shut down

A US government agency that has exposed corruption in Iraqi reconstruction projects will close in 2007. Washington lawmakers have reacted with shock at the discovery that an obscure clause in a military spending bill will terminate the work of the auditor.

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has embarrassed the US administration with its reports on corrupt practices. Critics of the government claim this is what lies behind its sudden closure.

Bechtel pulling out of Iraq

One of the biggest US companies involved in reconstruction projects in Iraq has said it is leaving the country after three years of work there. Bechtel Corp - which has finished its last contract - says the security situation in Iraq has made it too difficult to continue operating.

Fifty-two Bechtel employees have been killed and 49 wounded since 2003. The engineering giant was hired by the US government. Its services cost the American taxpayers $2.3bn (£1.2bn).

Ransom demand for kidnapped US soldier

A kidnapping ring has demanded a $250,000 ransom from the family of the U.S. soldier abducted in Iraq, a suspiciously low sum that his family worries could be a sign that he is no longer alive.

More sectarian murders in Iraq

Police find 83 bodies around Baghdad, as security is tightened ahead of a verdict in Saddam Hussein's trial.

Car bomb kills 15 people

A bomb has ripped through a wedding convoy in Baghdad,killing at least 15 people, four of them children, the interior ministry says.

Soldier who abused prisoners keeps his job, but not in Iraq

The U.S. Army dog handler who was one of the soldiers who abused detainees at Abu Ghraib prison will not go back to Iraq with his unit, which has arrived in Kuwait, the Army decided Friday.

Government website provides details on building nuclear bombs

The US government has closed its website that contained documents found during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Weapons experts had complained that the site contained details on making nuclear bombs, the New York Times said. The US had set up the site to post documents that it hoped might reveal information about Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes.

In the United States:

Aviation safety neglected

More than half of U.S. commercial airports don't have a 1,000-foot margin at the end of a runway, an overrun area the federal government says is needed as a safety zone, according to a new report.

Some of the busiest airports in the country -- including Los Angeles International Airport, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport -- have more than one runway that doesn't meet safety standards, according to statistics supplied by the Federal Aviation Administration.

"Our runways are out of shape, and the Bush administration has failed to move to correct the problem," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, said Thursday. "If we don't get serious about runway problems, the result could be disastrous."

Manufacturing growth slow; expected to worsen

The US manufacturing sector grew at its slowest pace for three years in October, with the news sending the country's stock markets lower.The US manufacturing sector could see much slower growth in 2007 - perhaps 2.5% on an annualized basis - against 5.2% percent in 2006, said Global Insight industrial economist Tom Runiewicz.

Evangelical leader who campaigned against gay marriage quits job

Ted Haggard, one of George Bush's leading evangelical supporters quit his leadership post amid gay sex claims. But he admitted Friday that he bought drugs and received a massage.

Just another busy day in the peaceful, prosperous world in which we live. What do you think? Status quo or should they go?

Blooming palms

Blooming palm trees in Parque Maria Luisa, Sevilla, Spain

The palm trees are blooming and so are several posts, in process now. Since returning from Sevilla, I've been distracted from writing. A friend from Spanish class has been a houseguest and I've been busy playing hostess and showing her highlights of Paris. It is hoped I can soon catch up with posts and read the blogs I've missed.

Blogtipped!

I am happy to report the honour of being "blogtipped" by the innovative artist Ascender Rises Above. She also has recommended two other weblogs I admire and read regularly: The Twitching Line and The Far Side of the Sea. See what all the fuss is about and related links here.

Voter protection for all

"Once an ocean, now just a dream" mixed medium painting/collage by Felix Vigil; photo courtesy the Blue Rain Gallery, Taos, New Mexico

With the American election Tuesday, Nov. 7, those of you who haven't cast your vote via absentee ballot may encounter problems at the polls. According to the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, election observers already are reporting problems with electronic voting machines.

For example, selections made on Diebold touchscreen voting machines in Florida (!) have registered for the wrong candidate, evoking widespread reports of similar problems in 2004. In Virginia, Hart Intercivic voting machines are truncating the names of several candidates on the summary page, including the name of Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate James H. "Jim" Webb, whose name appears on the ballot as "James H. 'Jim.'"

The election features hot races for no fewer than 60 House and a dozen Senate seats, along with a slew of contested state and local races. With many races likely to come down to the wire, election irregularities could lead to disaster.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with the Election Protection Coalition and numerous volunteers will be on the front lines to ensure that voters' ballots are counted as cast. EFF will help solve technology-related problems at the polls, document voting machine-related incidents for future examination and bring legal action if required by equipment failures.

EFF has produced Electronic Voting Machine Information sheets providing election observers and voters a quick glimpse into how today's voting equipment works, as well as descriptions of problems previously reported about these systems. EFF also is investigating reports of voting equipment irregularities and discussing them with on-the-ground observers, as well as election officials.

If things go wrong next Tuesday, EFF and its partners are preparing legal pleadings to go to court to keep polls open, halt the use of malfunctioning equipment and stop illegal or erroneous practices by election officials.

If you encounter problems on election day, telephone the Election Protection hotline at (866) OUR-VOTE.

American dreamer

An ornate door clasp from the days of Moorish rule at La Giralda, Sevilla

The Poetry Thursday prompt is to take a line of a poem "that dances in your head" and use that theme in writing another. One of my favourite poems is "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by William Butler Yeats. An excerpt:

"...but I, being poor, have only my dreams.
I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams."

'Don't tread on me' was inscribed on the flag
but the rights won in the American Revolution
are in grave danger

This political platform of a privileged few
bears little resemblance to the model
envisioned by the nation's founding fathers

Brave men, unyielding in strength,
determination and hard fought freedom
who understood the importance of a united front

Compassionate men who cared about the average man,
believed in government by and for the people
and had no interest in lining the coffers of wealthy men

Franklin and Jefferson argued that equality mattered,
as did freedom of speech and expression:
civil liberties guaranteed in the First Amendment*

Still an opportunity to vote our conscience
exercise our voice as free citizens; take action
much is at stake

For too long our dreams have been trampled,
lying in tatters and disillusion on the world stage
time to remember who we are

*"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." - The First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution of the United States of America.