… are excited about the prospect of travel to Cuba, and this news will certainly cheer them:

President Obama will announce today that he is lifting travel restrictions that block Cuban Americans from traveling to Cuba and will relax the rules governing what items can be sent to the island, a senior White House official said.

The decision does not lift the trade embargo on communist Cuba but eases the prohibitions that have restricted Cuban Americans from visiting their relatives and has limited what they can send back home.

No, UD still can’t go. But maybe soon.

… about Peter Zumthor,
the Swiss architect who
just won this year’s
Pritzker award.

It should be up pretty soon.

Got an email a moment ago telling me students have occupied the graduate building at the New School in New York, barricading themselves in until the president and vice-president of the school resign.

Background here.

*****************
Update: Police have ejected the protesters.

What can UD tell you about the friend she’s known for almost thirty years now that he’s a very big deal?

He was the best man at her wedding. He gave a glorious toast.

He and Mr UD go way back. Both sons of Harvard professors, the two lads lived only a couple of blocks away from one another in Cambridge, and they were among the first to attend Charles Merrill’s Commonwealth School in Boston. (Mr UD loves to tell the story of Merrill one afternoon awkwardly announcing that the kids were going to have a guest speaker that day, a poet… Uh… the headmaster’s brother… Guy named James Merrill…)

Both went to Harvard, where they remained close friends. Both moved to Washington, Peter to work for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Karol to work at the University of Maryland.

Over the years, Mr UD has accompanied Peter to Kurdistan, Baghdad, and East Timor to work with him on political issues.

Les UDs have spent many moody, meditative New Years in Vermont with Peter (he has long had a house there), his family, and other friends.

Peter is a loyal and loving friend.

He has an excellent sense of humor. UD once made him laugh so hard he almost lost it. Les UDs and Peter and Peter’s girlfriend were driving back from kayaking in Virginia somewhere. Peter was at the wheel. UD, notorious for being unable to tell even a simple joke correctly, was trying to tell the first of these two jokes. It all went terribly wrong, and became far more obscene than necessary, in her hands.

Somehow the total ineptitude of UD‘s telling, and the desperate obscenity of her version, sent Peter into such a spin that he almost lost control of the car.

*******************************

Peter has the driven, complex, difficult personality you’d expect with his high-powered background, his politically active and ambitious family, and the legacy of his world-historical father. In fact it looks as though the Number One diplomat in Afghanistan (Peter will be the second in command) didn’t want him appointed.

“Galbraith is a much stronger personality, he’s a bigger name, from a bigger country and he is going to carry more weight [than the Norwegian at the head of the UN team,” one diplomatic] official said.

Yeah, I guess he’s a strong personality. Sure. Very strong.

***********************

Update: UD doesn’t have any pictures of herself with Peter on this computer, so she’ll run this one instead. He’s standing somewhere nearby.

Les UDs visited Peter when he was the American ambassador to Croatia, and they spent a day yachting and eating excellent food on various islands with Croatia’s then-president, Franjo Tudjman. In this photo, La Kid, showing a good deal of sense (Tudjman was an unsavory character), is hiding her face rather than be photographed with him. UD has no such reservations, and smiles, as you see, broadly.

“I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened,” [George W.] Bush said [of his projected autobiography].

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley suggested that AIG executives should accept responsibility for the collapse of the insurance giant by resigning or killing themselves.

“I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed,” Grassley said. “But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.”

CONDOMS COMING TO CAMPUS IN HUNDREDS

University of Maine student newspaper

… little essay in today’s George Washington University newspaper quotes your UD.

There are a few errors of writing in this piece, which I will hereby diplomatically correct.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm keeps her trap shut when UD‘s getting any form of media attention. Rule Number One of this blog.

Some excerpts.

The excerpts that quote me.

As a new generation of writers, we cannot help but … internalize [the recent] deaths [of significant American novelists], some more deeply, or strangely, than others. This is because these artists […] matter greatly, because we make them matter. We internalized their sense of story structure, if only to reinvent, criticize or recreate what they meant.

“It does have an impact on you [as a generation] that these people are gone,” said GW English professor Margaret Soltan, known for her widely read blog, University Diaries. “They produced a version of the great American novel, but at the same time, it seems to me that you’re from a different world.”

We are from a different world, and our literature – with its adeptness [at] switching scenery and [its] emphasis on the self-reflexive, reflects this, perhaps best embodied in the work of David Foster Wallace …

“I would argue that the basic theme of human existence – everyone trying to organize their life so it’s not painful – that theme has been with us since Shakespeare. The basic dilemma of being is not changing,” Soltan said.

Whether we like it or not – personal preferences aside – these writers are important to us, because we have either read them, been influenced by them, or because we were told that they were important. For this reason, we exist in their shadow. To be relevant artists, we are … either [going to] be influenced by their work or make an informed move away from it.

“The whole question of influence and how powerful[ly] you’re going to be influenced is in play here,” said Soltan … Even the notion of artistic trauma is at play, she said.

“Why does an artist’s life seem more difficult, and does that have to continue to be the model?” she asked.

Must future work depend on the trope of the suffering artist? Perhaps not…

… Backstreets.com. Glad you liked the photo from the Springsteen rehearsal today (scroll down).

Sports Illustrated.

… about what Springsteen will sing at the Super Bowl. Lots of betting going on.

UD already knows one of the songs.

Makes her feel special.

… headline.

She’ll miss a week of class if she goes.

Should she go?

“Normally when you put a large transport plane in the water, most of the time they do not have a good outcome.”

UW RANKED 16th BEST
UNIVERSITY ON EARTH

The Daily, University of Washington