1. Mark Your Calenders - On July 17th at 2:00pm EST, I’ll be making my triumphant return back to the motherland. I’m flying into JFK and will be spending the next two weeks in NY/NJ. See you in 59 days…
2. Call Me John Boehner – After booking my plane tickets and spending the last three days talking about going home, I feel like it’s really starting to sink in that I’m leaving Cambodia. While it definitely feels like the right time to go, I don’t know how I’m going to make it through these last few weeks. I’ve already gotten emotional on multiple occasions and I’m still almost two months out.
3. The Survivors - Here’s the final picture of the Peace Corps Cambodia K3 group. 44 of us started our journey together two years ago in San Fransisco, today 30 of us remain.
4. Master Knowlton – A big congratulations to Courtney Knowlton, who became a Master of Educational Leadership this week. Well done!
5. Most Changed - A big congratulations to Emmett Knowlton, who was voted “Most Changed” in the Deerfield Yearbook. I love the freshman year pic.
6. Michigan Law Commencement – Apparently a group of Michigan Law students staged a walkout during this year’s Commencement ceremony. The students were protesting the Commencement speaker, Senator Rob Portman, for his anti-gay views. (Michigan Law Commencement Walkout) I wonder if I would have walked out?
7. Whistle Blowers – In this week’s New Yorker, Jane Mayer has written one of the most important articles I’ve read all year, about the Obama administration’s war on whistle blowers. You can read it for free online: The Secret Sharer. It’s definitely a MUST READ…
When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks — more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.
Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book “Necessary Secrets” (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, “Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history — even more so than Nixon.”
8. Tough Week for Republican Men – From Gail Collins…
“What is it with Republicans lately? Is there something about being a leader of the family-values party that makes you want to go out and commit adultery?”…lately, the G.O.P. has shown a genius for putting a peculiar, newsworthy spin on illicit sex. A married congressman hunting for babes is bad. A married congressman hunting for babes by posting a half-naked photo of himself on the Internet is Republican.
A married governor who fathers an illegitimate child is awful. A married governor who fathers an illegitimate child by a staff member of the family home and then fails to mention it to his wife for more than 10 years is Republican.
A married senator who has an affair with an employee is a jerk. A married senator who has an affair with an employee who is the wife of his chief of staff, and whose adultery is the subject of ongoing discussion at his Congressional prayer group, is Republican.
We haven’t even gotten to Newt Gingrich yet! (The Year of Living Adulterously)
And how about this IMF guy? I feel like half the news stories I’ve read this week have been about sex scandals.
9. John Stewart – Watch Jon Stewart take down Billo…
10. Stop Miami – As I life long Yankee fan, I’ve never been able to understand what Yankee hatred feels like, but I’ve gotta imagine it feels pretty similar to the way I feel about the Heat right now.
Well now I’m getting weepy too. The pic of the final K3 group is one for the ages. Does feel like yesterday that you and I were sitting in that Japanese restaurant in SF wondering how we’d all make it through your wild & woolly PC adventure. And now, 59 days left. Where did it go? Court an NYU Master and Emmett an almost DA grad. Time does more than fly.
Cannot take the “man news” these days. Sickened by the whole lot of them. Arnold the most I think. Read in the Times that his kids are posting on their FB pages as Shrivers. Serves him right.
My fave new New Yorker cartoon–not sure this does it justice (p.44 on the hard copy of the 5/23 issue) . A boy walking through the airport on his phone (that’s the visual) and here is what he says, “O.K., Mom, I’m off the plane. I’ll call you when I check into the hotel, and when I check out of the hotel, when I get on the plane home, and when I get off the plane home, and I’ll call you when I’m in the driveway–glad you’re not worrying.”
Sound like anyone you know? Dad’s threatening to blow it up life size and send one to each of you.
Love you, Cooper. Guess you got stuck with the Castellani weepy gene. I’ll send tissues in the LAST (OMG, now I’m weeping) care package going out tomorrow.
xo
From Nicholas D. Kristof
“Getting Smart on Aid”
“One cost of the uproar over Greg Mortenson, and the allegations that he fictionalized his school-building story in the best selling book “Three Cups of Tea,” is likely to be cynicism about whether aid makes a difference.
But there are also deeper questions about how best to make an impact–even about how to do something as simple as get more kids in school. Mortenson and a number of other education organizations mostly build schools. That seems pretty straight-forward. If we want to get more kids in school around the world, what could make more sense than building schools?
My wife and I built a school in Cambodia, and whether it’s our school or one of Greg Morrtenson’s, they can make a big difference. My point is that for years people have been arguing until they were blue in the face about how to help people–and finally, we’re getting some reliable data suggesting how to do that.
I’ve been worried that the “Three Cups of Tea” uproar would lead people to give up on helping others. That would be a tragedy because, over the last decade, we’ve actually gotten much smarter at figuring out how to make a difference. Increasingly, we have a good idea what works–if people are trusting enough to try to help.”
Well you have just got to LOVE Gail Collins, doing her best to keep the Republican Men (and then some) honest!
“Never have we had sex issues with so many layers. It shows you how far we have evolved as a nation. In the old days it was: Warren Harding making whoopee in the presidential coat closet: yes or no?”
Re: #6, see comments to your May 8, 2011, post. If you have time to watch O’Reilly spew racist nonsense, you have time to read your fans’ postings.
Dear Cooper,
Party in AC! Subs, pizza, Springsteen on the beach, and Mom Mom.
See you in two months!
Well if we were in NY or LA we’d be off to the new Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris” (“In Woody Allen’s beguiling and then bedazzling new comedy, nostalgia isn’t at all what it used to be–it’s smarter, sweeter, fizzier and ever so much funnier.” Joe Morgenstern/WSJ). We’ll have to wait for next weekend after DA graduation and Jen’s wedding (both on same day!) for that. So instead, we’re off to “Bridesmaids” (Dad’s choice). Will, needless to say, keep you posted. Not sure beguiling and/or bedazzling in that deck of cards!
xo
ps/one of your pals from ‘Morning Joe,’ Chris Licht, leaving for a big job at CBS. Wonder if Joe and Mika are right behind him?
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