Graduation!

Mittermaiers!


Adam looks so hilariously fly in this picture.




I couldn’t keep my hat on to save my life! Evidence…




I was hamming it up for Bernd in the stands, but still… what a ridiculous face! Haha.


Bored stiff.

Graduation party.

Koichi!

Sunday with Koichi.

I look so tooth-achingly wholesome—1950s dress, sensible shoes, half-gallon of 2% milk.

I picked the right man for the job - a man with matches.

Tight-lipped tulips near the Capitol.

People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed.

I spent all day yesterday in painful heels and a very sharp suit. The career fair would have been much more promising if I had majored in something sensible like, oh, economics, engineering, accounting, computer science, math, science-science… the few advertising and marketing positions available were flooded with applications.

Most of the day, I caught up with Saad and Marquis.

Last night, I rejoined my history seminar classmates for a debate on the use of unmanned drone strikes in Pakistan. It’s such a tricky subject. The way I see it
- Lack of oversight of the Predator drone program in the US makes me nervous.
- Lack of public debate over the Predator drone program in the US makes me nervous, since it represents a “radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force” (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker).
- Potential to destabilize the unpopular Zardari regime inside a politically fragmented, nuclear-armed country on the border with another nuclear-armed enemy country (India).
- Potential
- Drones destroy human intelligence on the ground.
- Some drone strike targets dictated by Pakistani government, whose interests (political and otherwise) are not always in line with our own.
- Predator drone strikes are a FRIGHTENINGLY sustainable way for the US to continue conflicts (low cost in terms of American blood, low oversight/accountability, low visibility to US population) around the world. I read somewhere that “drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining political checks on endless war” and—yes. That scares me. When war has a sufficiently high, sufficiently visible cost, we pick our battles more carefully.

Gibetsky.

1) Courtney and I spent four or five hours at the Rathskeller debating American foreign policy, our national security interests and—most depressingly—the sorry state of the public sphere in the United States. We were under the influence of much too much sugar, caffeine and nicotine, and it was great. But now it’s five hours later and I still need to write this paper.

2) My dismaying rant basically went like this... extended over several hours and backed with (much, much) more evidence and more vitriol:

American global strategy changes
When civilian leadership changes
And civilian leadership changes
When the voting public feels SOME WAY about SOMETHING
AND THAT MATTERS!
It matters if Iraq barely registers when a man casts his only vote out of an overblown aversion to gay marriage
And it matters if his neighbor votes with an eye to rehabilitating our image abroad.
IT MATTERS. A LOT.
IT MATTERS WHAT WE ELECT PEOPLE TO CARE ABOUT—whether that’s restricting abortion or remaking Afghanistan!
It matters to troops when their home communities act and think like they’re not at war and it matters to policymakers whether or not the American people demand accountability or write a blank check for endless wars.
And it matters how we discuss foreign policy as a people—how often and how honestly!

IF we are not dying and killing and being bombed out of our homes, IF the electricity cooperates and the water runs clear and cool and drinkable, IF we know we will not pay the billions sunk in faraway wars, IF our interests stop at the end of our driveways or the limits of our school districts as long as our children are K-12, IF our compassion is critically limited by incuriosity, indifference and inattention, IF we have never met an Iraqi or wondered about him, we have denied him a share in our common humanity by not striving to understand and relate, IF we can’t locate Afghanistan on a map, IF the procession of distractions is endless, IF Nicole Richie has a new haircut—why should we care who kills and dies in our names on the other side of the world?

Sometimes I really hate us, honestly.



3) Honestly, sometimes I still date checks “2007.” This may have happened to me today.

4) Did you know if you type “honestly” with your fingers just slightly misplaced on the keyboard, you get “gibestky”? I like it.

Tanzania.

Zazu!


Cooling off after safari.


Baboons in the road. I will forever regret being too dumbstruck/captivated by the male baboons getting it on to snap a picture of THAT.


Just one of the many road hazards in Arusha.


This was really as good as it got, as far as latrines go.


A little boy in the Nkoranga Orphanage.


Bubbles.


Boys lounging.


Hyena in Ngorongoro Crater.


Hippos, immense and portly beings that they are, can roll over in the water with no struggle at all.




Eagle-thing.




Chameleon farm. This Tanzanian family farm is raising about 10,000 chameleons to sell to American pet stores.


DIGI DIGIS!


Young male in Ngorongoro Crater.




More baboons, not giving each other head for once.