The push to go to war with Iraq seems to have been dealt some severe setbacks. Meanwhile, the push for a Homeland Security Department may yet fall apart, if only because it is so unwieldy. The TIPS disaster wound up turning into just another gimmick for John Walsh on “America’s Most Wanted.” We were even spared a Medicare prescription drug benefit for seniors.
Not too bad. Maybe I should spend more time in D.C.
In spite of my fairly well developed and firm political viewpoints, I’m not much of an activist, I admit it. I’m more of an armchair philosopher, only instead of philosophizing in an armchair I watch TV on a couch.
But this is a cause even I am willing to take to the streets in support of: Topfreedom now! This much is for certain. I’m going to visit this page regularly to keep abreast of all the latest developments.
The whole point of e-mail, after all, is that it’s plain text. It doesn’t take up a lot of bandwidth and can be read by any computer no matter what kind of software’s on it. By dressing up e-mail in HTML, the whole point of e-mail is defeated.
Worse yet, when I try to respond to an HTML-coded e-mail, it’s almost impossible for me to quote the original writer. I usually wind up deleting the original e-mail, since I’m not going to spend 15 minutes navigating code just to write a response. So for those of you who are sending HTML-coded e-mail, please stop. It’s annoying, and doesn’t do anyone any good. Thank you.
In D.C., not only was I away from home and my soon-to-be wife, but from cable TV as well. Here’s a list, then:
What I didn’t miss: Having to watch the Cubs lose games like this. 9-1. Ugh.
Poor, poor Steve Smyth.
The guy has absolutely nothing. He gets rocked every time out. His first start? Against the San Francisco Giants. Could you imagine the third batter you face in your major-league debut being Barry Bonds. Yikes.
I am happy. I am. I really am. I’m done with college, fully employed, marrying the woman I love, moving out of The Stris’ apartment … I’m excited about what the future holds in store for us. I finally feel so … adult.
And it feels good. The way I figure it, I’ve got two thirds of my life left. I’m looking forward to making them the best I can. Right now, everything after this almost feels just like icing on the cake. But the icing’s always been the best part.
And so I am, by the gummint, no less! A friend of mine from Columbia helped hook me up with a group called the Aviation Integrity Project. AIP is an investigative unit funded by the Suburban O’Hare Commission, a group of 14 suburbs surrounding O’Hare Field that oppose expansion of the airport. So the bills, technically, are being paid by Elk Grove Village.
AIP is headed by Terrence Brunner, who used to head the Better Government Association (a longtime goo-goo organization) here in Chicago and has a lot of contacts in the city’s journalism circles. So while this may be a short-run gig, lasting only for as long as the SOC deigns to continue funding it and the issue of expansion itself stays alive, I hope that it will serve as an entree into my next job. If nothing else, this job will afford me the opportunity to
learn more about investigative journalism, which I haven’t done much of so far.
So, what is AIP investigating, exactly? Well, I won’t bore you with the details — and I don’t want to spoil what we’re working on — but the gist of it is that Da Mare and the city have long favored expansion of O’Hare as opposed to a third airport because the O’Hare is actually a part of Chicago, which means that the city controls all the contracts and jobs that get doled out at O’Hare, many of which aren’t even open to competitive bidding.
What we have, then, are airlines and a region desperate to add capacity, and the city doesn’t want a third airport to happen because it would mean they’d lose all that potential patronage. This sets the stage for lots of dirty dealings, including some juicy campaign finance stuff and more. Classic Chicago stuff. It’s fun, and for some odd reason doesn’t feel nearly as dirty as Washington. Maybe just because I’m used to Chicago; it seems more like harmless fun. Clearly, in both cases there is powermongering at play.
And both Da Mare and Dubya have a way with words. Hmm …
Here’s how the proposed legislation to preempt local control over airport expansion is unconstitutional. The author of that article, by the way, is arguing SOC’s case in court.
Actually, it almost never did. The weather was ungodly hot, hot and humid. But the summer was productive and, at times, fun. Working at KRT really gave me an opportunity to write many different types of stories and it was nice to get a taste of life in Washington.
A taste, however, was enough. Whenever I went to cover a speech or a news briefing or saw the latest politico speak to our group, I couldn’t help but involuntarily feel a little queasy. Somewhere, down deep, I couldn’t help but feel that this person — whatever their intentions — lusted after power over others. And worse yet, the entire atmosphere of that town means those with the most powerlust are guaranteed an eager following of syphocants, including journalists, who know that the most powerful people guarantee the biggest headlines.
It’s hard to explain in a rational way, really. I just know that I don’t want to live and work there right now, and I find it hard to imagine that I’d ever want to. Fortunately, that’s not even an option right now, as Karen likes her job at Midway Games here in Chicago, so we’ll be in the Windy City for a while to come.
Boy, it’s hard to think of a time in my life when I was as happy as when I finished that final exam on Thursday, July 25, meaning I was done with classes, done with the internship, done with the program and finally done with college. It was such a feeling of accomplishment. And in two days, I’d be on my way home to see my baby. Oh, it was bliss. It was bliss. It was bliss.
But I’ve a different kind of bliss to look forward to now — wedded bliss. We’re just about done with all the wedding plans. There are some details to be attended to, still, but for the most part it’s all taken care of. We’re taking some private dance lessons this weekend so that we don’t trip over each other during the first dance. That’s my goal, anyway.
We’re going to San Francisco on our honeymoon. We’ll be staying at a Hotel Monaco there. It should be glorious fun. I’ve been reading up about all the wonderful things to see and do, and I’m starting to get excited. I bought a couple of “underground” guide books so that we’re not just stuck in the tourist traps — though we’ll of course visit those.
We’ve already got tickets to a Giants game (hopefully the players and owners will pull their heads out of their asses and avoid a strike) and an Alcatraz tour.
I liked the Washington Post a lot before spending a few weeks in D.C., but there’s nothing likegetting your hands on a paper every day to really give you a feel for it. And the Post is an excellent paper; my favorite one, I think. The Times‘ Magazine is better, and so is its arts coverage, but when it comes to straight news coverage, features, and the editorial pages, the Post is fresher and more balanced.
Here are a few Post stories I read in D.C. that I thought were particularly interesting and linkworthy.
The first story is “At your convience,” a wonderful feature by Libby Copeland about 7-Eleven, written to mark the 75th anniversary of the convenience store chain. Here’s a taste:
Day and night at the 7-Eleven are alternate universes. At 7 a.m., the store is about efficiency. In and out. Construction workers and suits alike are en route to work; they want coffee, “instant food” (quicker even than fast food). Pre-made breakfast sandwiches. Many get the same thing at the same time. Every day. They know how many creams they want in their coffee.
At, say, 11 p.m., the place of business becomes a destination, a community center, in some neighborhoods. There’s a sense that anything goes. A guy walks in barefoot despite the “Shirts and Shoes Required” sign. Two young men jokingly — brazenly — grab a big carton of individually wrapped snacks by the cashier stand and walk out, then laugh and bring it back in. Then they do it again.
The night employees work till early in the morning. They serve breakfast at all hours: They sell to people just getting off work and people just going to work, and the whole thing goes ’round and ’round.
Let’s begin with the sun.
It might seem like a hokey way of going about it, but Copeland executes it beautifully.
The second story is “Cooler heads,” by Jennifer Frey, a pean to Willis Carrier, who somewhat accidentally invented the air conditioner 100 years ago.
A taste:
For most of us, though, summer comes with refrigerated work spaces, chilled shopping malls, bedrooms cooled to optimal sleeping temperatures — at least for the one in control of the thermostat. From the minute the heat wave descends upon us, we dial up the air conditioning, plug in the window units, seal ourselves off from the steamy outside world.
Without air conditioning, we would be limp, damp, foggy, irritable. We would be utterly miserable.
And so let us now praise the invention of air conditioning, which arrived 100 years ago today, and has changed our entire world.
Of course, I was still miserable in D.C. despite refrigerated home and work spaces. It was so goddamn hot. Ugh. The third Post story I recommend is “Designing women,” by Cynthia Gorney, a fascinating look at the scientists who are searching for the “female Viagra.”
While Gorney does a lot of good reporting, in the name of balance of subtlety she takes an overly skeptical view of the entire process. If you read to the end, I think you’ll find her reaction to a woman nearly in tears as obtuse as I did. But here’s a spicy taste:
If you walk into a sexual medicine clinic expecting some version of annotated anatomical charts, with step-by-step explanations of what transpires in the adult female during a fully satisfactory sexual experience, what you get instead still adds up to a giant scribble of circular arrows and question marks, brain to genitals to brain to genitals, with experts like Julia Heiman and Amy Heard-Davison adding research information that sometimes mystifies as much as it illuminates.
The third story is “Brian Lamb’s flock,” by Mark Leibovich, a nice little piece about the cult of personality that has formed around C-SPAN founder, guru and “Booknotes” host Brian Lamb. A taste:
Lamb is open to interpretations of himself — the solemn ones, mocking ones, camp ones.
He’ll play along. He is resigned to his celebrity niche. He has been called the most boring and the most trusted man in America, both of which he would take as a source of pride, or, at least, humor. He’s heard the cult thing over and over. He finds the status silly, if hardly complicated. “I do not want to be a star, I do not want to be a personality,” Lamb says, “and that fact creates a following that I can’t really explain.”
Lastly, there’s this excellent story by Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, “Disparate Justice Imprisons Mexico’s Poor.” A part of the same series on Mexican justice which produced an excellent story about rape in that country, this story is just as heartbreaking. A taste:
Giovanni Hurtado Aviles was hurrying to his engineering class when he realized he didn’t have the two pesos — about 20 cents — for the subway. When he tried to use somebody’s else’s pass to get on, he was caught and hauled to jail. “I made a mistake. I am really sorry. I won’t do it again,” Hurtado, 20, said he told the guard who nabbed him that January morning.
But the Mexican justice system, which often fails to punish serious criminals, zealously prosecutes the most minor of offenders. So the college student with no criminal record was denied bailand forced to mop floors for 12 hours a day for two months while he awaited trial.
The rule of law is almost a cliche, now, but it’s not any less true. It’s this kind of injustice that makes a place like the United States, for all its flaws, such an attractive place comparatively speaking. Welfare has very, very little to do with why Mexicans stream across the border. It’s about opportunity. It’s about having some sense that the game isn’t rigged from the very start.
I’ve finally got all the stories I wrote over the summer up on my Web site.
Now, I need to get a couple of hours’ sleep before work. I’ll post some commentary to go along with the stories soon enough, along with more general impressions of my summer in D.C., in addition to news about my job and whatever reflections or links I might have that aren’t totally pointless to go on about now that so much time has passed.
KRTeens
Lillian Harris laughs when she’s asked whether she planned to get pregnant at 16.
“Definitely not,” she says. “I was in denial for a long time. I never went out to get a test. I didn’t want to accept that I was pregnant.”
But she was. And once the Chicago teen gave birth to her son Jubril, now 4, things only got more difficult. Harris struggled to finish high school while balancing a turbulent home life and the responsibility of raising a child. At one point, she and Jubril even lived in a women’s shelter.
Now 20, Harris is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social work at the University of Illinois-Chicago and works part time as a pharmacist’s assistant. But perhaps most important, she has delayed a second pregnancy.
And that’s saying something. A quarter of teen-age mothers have a second child within two years of their first, researchers say. That second child is often the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Those so-called subsequent pregnancies are a blight on what could be an encouraging trend in teen pregnancy statistics. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 2000, the teen birth rate hit an all-time low of 48.7 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19 — a decline of 22 percent since 1991.
But having a second child can affect a teen mother’s future in myriad ways. So while avoiding a teen-age pregnancy is important, delaying subsequent pregnancies could be even more crucial in helping achieve better outcomes for both teen mothers and their children.
“Many kids can make it with one child, especially with the support of extended family,” explains Pat W. Mosena, a former demographer at the University of Chicago. “The second child is often a wipeout. At that point it’s long-term welfare. If [the second pregnancy] doesn’t change life options, it certainly puts those options on hold.”
According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit that provides civil legal assistance to low-income families, teen mothers who have subsequent pregnancies are one-third less likely to finish high school or get a GED and three times more likely to wind up on welfare. They’re also more likely to abuse or neglect their children and have them removed to foster care.
Spurred by her research, in 1990 Mosena founded the Illinois Subsequent Pregnancy Project, a state-funded program that works with teen moms over the course of two years to help delay a second pregnancy.
ISPP, which is run through nine health and social service agencies in Chicago and around the state, accepts 300 first-time mothers ranging from 14 to 18 years old and “provides intensive home visiting services coupled with substantive training and support through group participation,” Mosena said. This training includes education about birth control, school counseling and career-planning advice.
The program seems to be working. Between 1996 and 2000, only 2 percent to 4 percent of the teen moms participating in ISPP each year had a second pregnancy; 88 percent to 90 percent said they had no unprotected sex in the last month; and between 75 percent to 80 percent remained in or graduated from high school.
Yvette Mitchell, also of Chicago, is a graduate of ISPP and has since gone on to earn a master’s degree in social work. She was 18 when she gave birth to her son Hiram in 1992.
Mitchell, who was raised in a single-parent household, credits ISPP and training associate Anita Murphy with helping her achieve her dreams.
“She really explained to us that your roof is your child’s floor. Where you stop is where your child begins,” Mitchell said. “I knew that if I had anything then my child would have it. I didn’t want to get bound in by another child and be unable to give both children everything they needed, as far as nurturing and caring.”
Murphy said that many of the teen moms she works with “are missing options in many areas — family, school, work, positive role models — and all of these are inextricably tied to adolescent pregnancy. These factors, or the lack thereof, are not only affected by, but also precipitate pregnancy.”
While there’s no federal legislation that specifically targets teen subsequent pregnancy, programs similar to ISPP have achieved success elsewhere. The Nurse Home Visitation Program in place in Elmira, N.Y., and Memphis, Tenn., works with young mothers up to 24 months after the birth of their first child.
Harris, the young mother now at UIC, started out in ISPP but has now moved on to a slightly different program called Next Step for Teen Moms, a three-year-old Chicago venture that seeks to not only delay a second pregnancy but prepare teen moms for college.
The two-year program offers training sessions on contraception and career planning, but also helps the 20 to 25 girls in the program prepare for the SAT and the ACT, fill out college applications, and find scholarship and grant money.
What is most unique about the program, says coordinator Diane Deaderick, is that each girl is paired with a mentor from the Junior League of Chicago, a women’s community service volunteer organization that has committed $750,000 over five years to the project.
Nancy Snyder, president of the JLC — one of 296 junior leagues worldwide — said the focus on college readiness grew out of the stark disparity in lifetime earnings for college graduates and non-college graduates. According to a Census Bureau report released last July, the average lifetime earnings for a full-time, year-round worker with a high school education are about $1.2 million, compared with $2.1 million for a college graduate.
Harris’ mentor, Pat Arnold, helped her find an apartment to move into last May, and also helped in the job search that landed her at Osco Drug Co.
“She’s always trying to look out for me,” Harris said.
Arnold said she’s always enjoyed working with teen-agers, and Harris has been no exception. The mentors are meant to be older women who can serve as positive role models and help the teen moms in the programs find solutions to their problems.
“I couldn’t have found a better partner,” Arnold, 53, said. “One of the things I do love about Lillian is that I remember picking her up one day and she said, ‘I had a terrible weekend!’ She was constantly pouring out all the information I needed to help her.”
While it’s too early to judge Next Step for Teen Moms’ relative success, Harris said her relationship with Arnold will not end once she finishes the program next June.
“This is now a lifelong relationship,” she said. “We’re more than just a mentor and a partner. I consider her a friend.”
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© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services.
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