Happier Holidays

With an Old Cuban:

• 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1 ounce simple syrup
  
• 1 1/2 ounce aged rum (Bacardi 8 Anejo)
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• 6 mint leaves
• 2 ounces champagne

Muddle 6 mint leaves in freshly squeezed lime juice and simple syrup. Add rum and bitters. Shake with ice. Strain (double-strain if you don't want bits of mint in the drink) into chilled and sugar-rimmed cocktail glass (champagne, martini, or sour glass). Top with champagne, garnish with mint leaf or a sugar-coated vanilla bean.

Created by Audrey Saunders from Pegu Club days

A Little Perspective On Martin Luther King's Birthday

A censored clip, never broadcast, from a 1974 Merv Griffin Show.

Former presidential candidate Pat Paulsen:





It's taken thirty-three years to get from there to here:



...and we still can't talk about race and ethnicity without someone's hackles getting raised.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Christmas morning. The television isn't working. Bah humbug.

Actually, the television is working fine; there's something wrong with the DishNet connection and the soonest they can get a technician here is Thursday. I guess he's coming from India.

The tech support that Maximillian managed to get on the phone speculated that it might be something in the connection inside the junction circuit box located on the wall outside of the garage. So Max had to try his manly man on it, delivering a few well-placed whacks, which, of course, had no effect. Or no healing effect. Returning from the garage, Max told me he thinks that maybe a little later, "Once it warms up a little and the condensation evaporates, it might fix the problem." Or, at least it might have, before the "well placed whacks" knocked something loose or broke something in the fine integrated circuitry.

After I fixed 'the look' on him (which he swears has a full orchestral track of the collective sighs of women from time immemorial chanting, "these idiot men, these idiot men, are id-i-ot id-i-ot id-i-ots"), he defends his fix-it skills by reminding me how our nation's nuclear missile arsenal are maintained:

Back in the late 1960s, a friend who was in the Air Force ROTC, graduated and was put in charge of a minuteman missile silo in a western state. He recounted that when performing periodic maintenance tests on the controlling electronics, they would fail about 40% of the time. He said that usually what they would do would be to pull the suspected circuit board out of the rack, drop it on the cement floor, and kick it a few times. After plugging it back into the rack, he said, "It would usually work."

So you might say that our country's national security depended on a well-placed kick.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good luck.

Getting a Jump on the Holidays

It's 19 Days to the beginning of Chanukah (Wednesday, December 5-12, 2007), 22 days to Bodhi Day (Saturday, December 8, 2007), 32 days to the beginning of the Hajj and Id al Adha (Tuesday, December 18-20, 2007), 39 Days to Christmas (Tuesday, December 25, 2007), and 40 days to the beginning of Kwanzaa (Wednesday, December 26-January 1, 2008) [For more information on holiday dates throughout the year and their meanings, go to the Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education.]

For most Americans, the holiday season is a time for demonstrating our humanity with periods of celebration and feasting, reflection and fasting, being mindful of the great indulgences and deprivations that exist side by side on our planet and performing practical acts to try to even it all out.

It's also the time (from Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, through to the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after Christmas) that retailers make most of their annual sales. The Constant American strongly supports capitalism (with regulations) within a mixed economy as the most successful method for creating a fair, equitable, peaceful society where all people have the opportunity to grow and prosper.

Toward that end, in the coming days and weeks I will be sharing some of my favorite products and causes, for giving and receiving, that have made my world a better place and might make yours, too, beginning today with a focus on the human spirit: Nourishing the inner diva:

#1.

Owen Smith's "Sweetie", polychromed ceramic

Whether you're in New York, or just in a New York state of mind (watch & listen online), don't miss a visit to the Met.

"Sweetie" (displayed above) is a selection of art work from an exhibition at the Metropolitan Opera House’s Gallery Met. The exhibition marks the première of a new production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel.” It runs from November 16th through February 2008, and includes interpretations of the fairy tale by Edward Koren, Lorenzo Mattotti, William Steig, Gahan Wilson, and Roz Chast.

The Met's gift shop CDs (particularly poignant this year with the recent death of Luciano Pavarotti is a 12-CD boxed set of his recordings), books, calendars, umbrellas, etc., for the opera and ballet afficionado.


#2.
From Confiserie Altmann & Kuehne, these most charming liliputian chocolates will impress the 'little girl' in each of us.


#3. Nourish other divas through a remarkable organization that does the job by getting down to basics. Heifer.org's mission is to end world hunger and poverty while caring for the earth:

Finding Global Solutions
Heifer has learned over the years that a holistic approach is necessary in order to build sustainable communities. So we’ve developed a set of global initiatives – areas of emphasis that must be addressed if we’re to meet our mission of ending world hunger and poverty and caring for the earth.

Agroecology
In a world where land is overused, community members need to learn how to protect and rejuvenate their land, water and other natural resources. Heifer helps by teaching environmentally sound agricultural techniques.

Animal Well-Being
Before any Heifer animal is passed along to a project partner, Heifer trains the new recipient in animal management, using our strictly enforced. Animal Welfare Guidelines

Gender Equity
In Heifer's view, gender equity is a social justice and human rights issue that directly leads to ending hunger and poverty. That's why our participants are equal partners in sustainable development projects.

HIV-AIDS
Today, we as a world community, confront AIDS, a virus that in the past 25 years has either infected or killed over 64 million people. It is not only a health issue, as it fractures every sector of society, for Heifer, it is a prominent concern in the arena of sustainable development. This is why Heifer is incorporating HIV/AIDS education in our community training groups.

Microenterprise
Heifer provides both "no-interest living loans" in the form of livestock, as well as small monetary loans to help people start and expand businesses that yield big benefits for families.

Urban Agriculture
Heifer is reconnecting city-dwellers with their food sources, building strong alliances and instilling an entrepreneurial spirit among adults and youth through our Urban Agriculture projects.

Young People's Initiative
Heifer weaves youth-focused programs through all our project work and emphasizes young people's needs.

Happy Hauntings

Celebrating Monks

Burma’s Monks: Ethics is not confined to Books and Temples

"By speaking up for the people of Burma who have suffered so much under military rule for so long, the monks of Burma are doing precisely that: living up to the Prophetic mission of Buddhism and showing that ethics and morals are out there in the streets and in demonstrations."

~Farish A. Noor

What can the world do?

* * * * * * * * *

Happy Birthday

Tony Shaloub
(born October 9, 1953)

* * * * * * * * *

Thelonious Monk, October 10, 1917 - February 17, 1982

It's a Holiday Today . . . .

. . . . Somewhere in the world.

A global event centered in San Francisco, it's PARK(ing) Day. Artists, activists, and citizens collaborate to temporarily transform parking spots into public parks.

The PARK that is San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's parking space in front of City Hall.

When Candy & Flowers Just Aren't Enough

Guantanamo Bay Secrets Sent in Valentine, Lawyers Say



USA Today reports:

A Navy lawyer accused of passing secret information about Guantanamo Bay detainees sent a human rights lawyer their names and other classified personal information tucked into a Valentine's Day card, prosecutors said Monday.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz's actions endangered the lives of the detainees and of American troops on the front line in the war on terror, prosecutor Lt. James Hoffman said during opening statements as Diaz's court-martial at Norfolk Naval Station.

"This case deals with the deliberate, intentional, conscious release of classified information," Hoffman told the jury of seven Navy officers.

But defense attorney Lt. Justin Henderson said the information was not marked classified and that Diaz had no reason to think that the document "could be used to injure the United States."

"We don't expect the evidence will show that Diaz made the right decision. We don't expect the evidence will show he made a wise decision," Henderson said. "He made a decision that was less than forthright, but he did not make an unlawful decision."

Diaz was near the end of a six-month stint at the U.S. military base in Cuba when he went to his office on a Sunday night in January 2005 and used his classified computer to log onto a Web-based database with information about the detainees, Hoffman said.

Diaz printed information including the names of 550 detainees, their nationalities and other information about them, Hoffman said.

Diaz then "cut that document into 39 sheets so that the nation's secrets fit inside this card," Hoffman said as he held up to the jury a copy of the card, with a big heart and a Chihuahua on the front.

Human rights attorney Barbara Olshansky testified that the document in "this weird valentine" she received in early 2005 was not marked classified.

At the time, Olshansky worked for the Center for Constitution Rights. She said the non-profit legal group was suing the federal government to obtain the names of detainees because the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the detainees had the right to challenge their detention.

Olshansky tried to give the document to the judge in that case but the judge sent a security officer to pick it up, and eventually the Justice Department and FBI investigated.

Olshansky also testified that she never had met or spoken with Diaz.

Diaz, 41, of Topeka, Kan., worked as a staff judge advocate at Guantanamo Bay, where he provided counsel to the military command in charge of the detention center but was not involved in detainees' cases, the Navy said. The U.S. military has held foreign citizens it suspects have terrorist ties at the base since 2002.

Diaz is charged with failing to obey a lawful general regulation, engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer by wrongfully transmitting classified documents to an unauthorized person, and turning over to an unauthorized person secret information related to national defense.

He originally faced 36 years in prison if convicted but some charges have been consolidated and the maximum punishment now is 24 years, Navy spokesman Kevin Copeland said.

Diaz remains free and is stationed in Jacksonville, Fla.