by Leanne Ogasawara

“If God allowed you to go back in time to spend the day with one famous historical person, who would you choose?”

He pondered this question in a rose garden. And as he happily ran through his various candidates– “Plato or Socrates in downtown Athens; or how about Nietzsche or the young Rimbaud?” — his mind lingered lazily over Cleopatra, “Ah, but one day would never be enough…”.

I had, in the meantime, already made up my own mind. For almost in an instant I had decided who I would choose. To meet Proust would have been delicious and the sight of John the Baptist incredible, and yet, in the end, I knew I could not really top the allure of Voltaire. In terms of a day spent, I just have to believe that Voltaire really had what it takes. I mean, he kept Madame du Châtelet happy for decades in her grand chateau, right?

We know at Cirey, the two lovers would spend their days absorbed in the respective studies. Working at opposite ends of the vast chateau, it is said they passed notes constantly during their days spent working apart; liveried butlers would deliver handwritten love-letters on silver platters whenever one of the lovers had something to say to the other. In the evenings, though, Madame and Voltaire would always come together to dine. Oh, can you imagine the sparkling conversations? Those dinners alone make him worthy of a wistful sigh.

I love Voltaire. And, like a favorite landscape, Candide is a book that I seem to return to again and again. Maybe like a lot of people after Japan's deadly earthquake in 2011, I found myself thinking about the book's opening chapters, when the luck-less Candide– along with the syphilitic Pangloss and the sailor from the boat– were shipwrecked; washing up on Lisbon's shores just moments before the city was struck by the infamous mega-quake of 1755.

As if the earthquake wasn't enough, the mega-quake was followed by fires and then a great tsunami that caused the complete destruction of one of the world's greatest cities of the time. Indeed, the human suffering was so terrible that the disaster sparked philosophical and religious debates on the nature of Evil that continued across Europe for a long time afterward; Voltaire's Candide being perhaps among the most famous.

In one of the vivid scenes of the novel, as Candide is lying there trapped under the rubble, he begs for wine and light. The sailor has gone off to pillage– but what of Candide's companion Pangloss? Well, our man Pangloss is too busy philosophisizing to be of any real help. Though thousands have perished, he tells his friend lying under the rubble, still everything is just as it should have been, for: “How could Leibnitz have been wrong?”

How indeed?

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by Sarah Firisen

So who has the right be wed?
Who deserves a marital bed?
Should just Jack and Jill
Marry at will?
We’ll wait for the ruling with dread

But what really here is at stake?
Will the value of wedded bliss break?
Is it really the case
That gay weddings debase
The vows that the rest of us take?

Are we hetros doing so well?
Is straight marriage doing just swell?
Why does their right to join
Kick my vows in the groin?
Why’s this the right's end of days hell?

Can’t we just all relax and agree
That gays and lesbians have as much right to be
Miserably wed
Stuck together till dead
Bickering, depressed and sex free

Maybe unlike us they’ll find a way
Actually together to stay
Maybe theirs is the course
That won’t lead to divorce
Despite what the right-wingers say

By Liam Heneghan

What kind of happiness does technology procure then? And why do people remain both enthralled and unsatisfied by it? (Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life)

To be a friend to many people in the complete kind of friendship is not possible (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII)

There is a nice moment in Desmond Morris’ documentary The Human Zoo where, as he ponders the means by which the human animal deals with dense urban living, he hoists his address book and declares: “This is his [the urban dweller’s] personal tribe!” No doubt if he were writing the documentary today he would make the same point by recourse to his Facebook page.

Facebook provides us a convenient mnemonic device for keeping track of family and acquaintances. More than this, of course, it offers the means to friendship itself. We can carry out a range of cordial tasks on Facebook: we can post, comment, like, poke (does this even exist anymore?), chat, re-share, or indeed, if we incline to do so, quietly monitor the lives of our friends.

Assuming that the nature of friendship has not budged much since Aristotle wrote about it in the Nicomachean Ethics, this means that in order for Facebook to serve be a one-stop companionship-shop it must allow for friendships based upon use, pleasure, and finally should facilitate the mutual exchange of well-wishing between the virtuous. There is more to say about this, but at first pass this can translate into commercial acquaintanceships, mutual affinities between those who share an interest, and finally the reciprocation of mutual respect between people of fine character – besties, in other words.

One of the implications of Facebook use, according to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, is that is slows the decay-rate of friendship. Facebook allows us to collate intimates from the fragmented geographies of our contemporary lives and to sustain contact with friends from our past with whom we might otherwise only have sporadic contact. In doing so, Facebook may be, in fact, just one of a progression of technologies that allow us to keep track of our personal human networks (our “tribe”) when these extend beyond the so-called “Dunbar’s number”, that is, those 150 people predicted to be within the “natural” limit of our information-retention ability. Dunbar’s observations were based upon a supposed general relationship between the size of a primate brain’s neocortex and the size of the average social group. Dunbar’s Number seemingly finds support in analysis of social aggregations of hunter-gatherer tribes, military units, and even Christmas card networks. Lending further support is Facebook’s own assessment that the average number of friends per account is between 120 and 130.

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by Jalees Rehman

Nietzschean, Heideggerian, fascist, anarchist, libertarian, brilliant genius, blabbering nutjob – these and many other labels have probably been used to describe Peter Sloterdijk, who is one of Germany's most widely known contemporary philosophers. He has achieved a rock-star status in the echelons of contemporary German thinkers, perhaps because none is more apt than Sloterdijk at fulfilling the true purpose of a public intellectual: inculcating his audience with an insatiable desire to think. His fans adore him; his critics are maddened by him. Few, if any, experience indifference when they encounter the provocateur Sloterdijk.

Sloterdijk achieved fame in Germany after publishing his masterpiece “Kritik der zynischen Vernunft” (English translation: “Critique of Cynical Reason“) in 1983, but his hosting of the regular late-night talk show “Das Philosophische Quartett” on the major German TV network ZDF for ten years turned him into a cultural icon and a household name. I realize that it might seem strange to non-Germans that philosophers instead of comedians can host TV talk shows, however Sloterdijk would probably be the first to agree that there isn't much of a difference between a true comedian and a true philosopher. Not only do we Germans have TV philosophers, we even enjoy the TV gossip and cockfights that they indulge in. When the ZDF network decided to get rid of Sloterdijk and replace him with the younger, more handsome and less thoughtful philosopher Richard David Precht, they start engaging in reciprocal mockery and name-calling.

Unfortunately, Sloterdijk is not quite so well-known in the English-speaking world and this may in part be due to the fact that much of his oeuvre has only recently been translated into the English language. It is no easy feat to translate his writings, in part because his playful mastery of German words is one of his signatures. Sloterdijk is a wonderful story-teller who weaves in beautiful images and puns into his narration, many of which are unique to the German language. His story-telling also makes it difficult to understand some of his texts in the original German. One may be enthralled by his stories, but after reading a whole chapter or book, it is quite difficult to condense it into a handy “message” or “point”. Sloterdijk is a professional digressor, going off on tangents that are entertaining and exciting, but at times quite frustrating. He shares his brilliant insights on a broad range of topics ranging from metaphysics to politics with his readers, but he also offers practical advice on how we can change our lives as well as bizarre and pompous statements.

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—on the occasion of an unexpected email from an old
friend who'd abruptly withdrawn from conversation
some years earlier without explanation

Rapprochement

Just wondering if worlds seen from a distance
really are smaller than they are
.
Could it be that when we sleep
the world we leave goes on without us
.
Maybe you remember the old days
when greenhorns multiplied their joys
and were thoughtless as a new moon
.
Is it possible that, from upstairs,
everything is seen through a rose window
crisp as Venus or is nothing to be seen between us
.
Perhaps, in your wintering,
you needed to spend some years
on an island being tuned
when suddenly you cleared your gears
and thought I might be snow shoveling
this morning on the cusp of spring
.
I wanted to ask if maybes still exist
or if tomorrow is so sure a thing
.
So, are you still counting coup
on the enemies of the morning dew
.
I hadn’t heard, so thought I’d start a new tale
of thoughts that may never have been played,
thoughts naked as the first babe born today
.
Have you noticed something odd
—that nothing ever changes but the color
of the feather in the hat band of god
.
Could I
ask
.
Would you
answer
.
What the
fuck
.
And why the unworn soles of the shoes
on the tongue of the dancer —bad luck?
.
When did you say you last caught
glimpses of the ghosts you fought
.
I never asked, but I suspect
you’re still stuffed with words,
a cornucopia of clever corkscrews
in our alphabet
.
Possibly it’s a mistake,
but even god's not perfectly awake
.
For what it’s worth breakfast’s the best meal of the day
The sun’s a fresh egg, the clouds white albumin
—ahead? a day with plenty of time and space to stew in
.
Guess I could just jot something down
recalling our bridges of contention
with their steel beams and tenuous
cables of suspension
.
If it’s not too much to ask (you asked
—the paper being so unreliable these days
and TV a joke)
how’s the weather?

Fine , and yours?
as fine, I hope

by Jim Culleny
4/1/13

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

Torkham, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, felt like an utter release— as if we were random things, a fistful of summer insects set free in space. This, of course, was before the Soviet war. I was in elementary school.

Dwarfed by the standoffish ice blue mountains on the road to Torkham, we loved the bridge one must drive under twice, once before and once after a loop. Where Peshawar of the ‘70s was a nest of “jhoola parks” with stone slides, school routine, snack bars, badminton for girls, street cricket for boys, Torkham was a rush of freedom.

Sunlight hit the rocks here in a way that kept shadows minimal, the boundlessness was the essence of the place and a contradiction to the bitterly disputed Durand line, the artificial boundary that stared you in the eye with a chilling animosity, and worse to be reprimanded by the guards that it was forbidden even to straddle the rope that marked the border and to declare proudly as we did: “look, look, this is how to be in two countries at once!” Afghanistan was silent and unfriendly in the distance as we stood sobered and chastised for mocking the sanctity of the divide that the miserable rope represented. This corridor between countries, this no-man's land demanded veneration as if it had an invisible flag and a soundless anthem of its own. It filled us with awe and a little disgust until the frowning guard gave us a watermelon to make up for spoiling the moment. [Photo shows the author at Torkham in 1977.]

My brothers must have enjoyed the treeless, rugged mountains, the wide embrace of the sun, the cool wind whipping, shalwars swelling like sails. I preferred to gaze at this generosity of grayness, angularity and sun from the café window. There was only one café, with nothing on the menu except for Coca Cola and tea sandwiches but the place was magical and never felt lacking in anything. Peshawar being desperately short of tourist attractions, my father used to bring his overseas guests to Torkham. We came here so often that my younger brother served as a perfect tourist guide, somehow communicating to the Japanese, British, or American guests all the tourist worthy aspects of a place more historical than any of us realized then.

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by Misha Lepetic

“Fish is as natural in Fulton Market as they are in their own briny element.”
~Harper's Magazine, 1867

Followers of the New York City food scene have recently been galvanized by yet another all-too-predictable brawl between, on the one hand, real estate developers and the city and, on the other, scrappy entrepreneurs bent on preserving another endangered aspect of New York's urban heritage. In this case, the contested site is the Fulton Fish Market, whose fishmongering operations had already decamped to the Bronx back in 2005. Since then, two sizable waterfront buildings have remained astonishingly, unconscionably empty. In the meantime, the New Amsterdam Market, founded by Robert LaValva, has grown its following with increasingly successful seasonal, weekly markets, conducted in the shadow of the old fish market for the last seven years.

Not only has New Amsterdam Market been steadily expanding since its 2005 inception, but LaValva's vision is decidedly more ambitious: to re-occupy the former market buildings and create an urban market as worthy of New York as Reading Terminal Market is of Philadelphia, as La Bocqueria is of Barcelona, or as Les Halles once was of Paris. This unstoppable force has, unsurprisingly, run into the immovable object of what we may call the “city-developer complex.”

But in order to understand what it would take to recreate the Fulton Market, it is instructive to look back to its genesis. Markets tend not spring wholly formed from the minds of expert city planners, visionary mayors, or magnanimous philanthropists; nor do they manifest themselves in some sui generis manner from self-organizing associations of merchants. They are messy affairs, constantly contended and never fully secure. What, then, drives the creation – and maintenance – of a successful urban market?

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by Syed Tasnim Raza

This is a response to the article “A Cardiac Conundrum” by Alice Park in the March-April 2013 issue of Harvard Magazine. The article mostly discusses a new book: Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care by David S. Jones, which I have not read, so the following comments are only in response to the article itself, which may or may not represent the book exactly. I am a heart surgeon and I will limit my comments to the parts of the article referring to coronary artery bypass graft operations, not to angioplasties.

The author indicts coronary artery bypass operations, which are performed widely by claiming that they “provided little or no improvement in survival rates over standard medical and lifestyle treatment except in the very sickest patients.”

Let me start by giving a little historical perspective, slightly different then the author's recalling. Until 1896, surgeons were too afraid to even attempt suture of the heart. In that year Ludwig Rehn of Frankfurt repaired a stab wound to the heart of a young man, who survived, thus beginning the era of heart surgery. From then until the 1950's most attempts at heart operations were largely unsuccessful. It is only after the development of the Heart-Lung machine (John Gibbon 1952) and it's further improvement at the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic, between 1955 and 1960, that the modern era of heart surgery began. Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), which is blockage of coronary arteries by atherosclerotic plaques and can result in a heart attack was recognized mostly by indirect methods or post-mortem, until 1958, when selective coronary angiography was developed at the Cleveland Clinic. Before then it was the symptoms of CAD namely angina which was clinically recognized and attempts at surgical treatment for angina had been made since 1930's including denervation of the heart, surgically causing inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart (pericardium), hoping that it would result in formation of new blood vessels (Beck's operation) and in 1960's implantation of Internal mammary artery into the muscle of the left ventricle with the hopes that new blood vessels would form (Vineburg operation). All these operations were unsuccessful and are of historical interest only. It was only after selective coronary angiography was possible in 1958, that Favalaro developed the operation that is now referred to as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG, pronounced cabbage) surgery. The first successful operation was performed in late 1967. The results of this operation were such a vast improvement over any other treatment then available that it was taken up by surgeons everywhere and by early 1990's over half a million such operations were being performed annually throughout the United States.

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ON RECEIVING FATHER
AT JFK AFTER HIS LONG
FLIGHT FROM KASHMIR

As I open my arms wide, he extends his hand.

by Rafiq Kathwari

More work by Rafiq here.

by Rishidev Chaudhuri

In much of modern casual cooking the separation between animal and vegetable is excessively rigid: meat dishes are big slabs of flesh, and vegetable dishes lack any trace of meat. But there are many reasons to trouble this distinction, especially if you want to eat more vegetables and less meat (for ethical, health, environmental or aesthetic reasons) but don't need to stay away from meat entirely. Adding animal fats to vegetables allows for rich flavor without using a lot of meat or going through the trouble of constructing elaborate secondary sauces. And the combination scratches a particular spring itch: days are cold and warm, the sky is alternately wet and sun-drenched, and vegetables start to proliferate, hinting at the exuberance to come, but the evenings are brisk enough to demand robust fortification (no simple tomato salads, sublime as they can be).

Good and convenient fats to use with vegetables are poultry fat (chicken or duck), rendered bacon fat, butter and cream. You can also use beef or lamb fat, which are harder to find without a butcher, and veal fat if you're feeling decadent. And small fatty fish (like anchovies) are wonderful with vegetables, but that's a subject for another post.

Unsurprisingly, bacon fat emerges when you cook bacon. To make the process smoother, you can add a splash of water to the pan when you put the bacon in, which allows for gentle heating while the water heats up and boils off. Eat or reserve the bacon and strain and store the fat for later use. Poultry fat is often sold relatively cheaply but you can also accumulate fatty bits of chicken or duck (like the skin and the fat inside the cavity) in the freezer, and render it when you have enough. This is quite straightforward: trim away any attached bits of meat and cut the fat into small pieces; put it on low heat with some water and let it render out, stirring occasionally to make sure the non-fatty bits don't burn. Once the fat is liquid and the water has cooked off, strain it and store in the fridge. You can also render beef or pork fat in a similar way.

As a start, you can use these fats instead of oil when making salad dressings. If you're making a vinaigrette (mix vinegar or lemon juice with salt, mustard, etc. and whisk in fat with a fork), try using melted duck or chicken fat, or some rendered bacon fat, or even brown butter instead of part or all of the oil. This is delicious tossed with a simple salad of greens, and makes an excellent weekday lunch. Of course you could add refinements to your salad; possibly the best is a poached egg (or, equivalent but simpler, an egg boiled in its shell for about four minutes till the white is mostly set and the yolk is runny).

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by Tom Jacobs

I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelops us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego. —Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry that I could not travel both… —Robert Frost

No, I'm kidding. At least about the second one. One has to choose epigraphs carefully. Even if Bobby Frost was onto something there, it's too hackneyed and clichéd and infinitely deployed at every commencement speech to ever be retrieved from the abyss of misuse. It's not his fault. It's a good poem though, and although he could never have foreseen it, the sentiment strikes waaaay too many of the notes that are appropriable by those who might misuse it, who might tend to want to give advice. Even me. Even if he's spot on. So no Bobby Frost. At least not right away. Maybe later.

Our heads are space-traveler's helmets. ­How strange it is to think that, although we all lug about with us long and complicated social histories, histories that are totally invisible but very heavy—to think that all of this is contained in a rather thin and delicate envelope that reveal nothing about who we really are.

These are a few things and life lessons that I think I might have learned.

I think of Luke Skywalker. I think of old Luke Skywalker. The fella from Tatooine. The father we never found.

I recall going to see the 20^th anniversary re-release of Star Wars and loving it and then walking out of the theater feeling oddly sad. Actually not sad; full on melancholy, rather; the kind of anxiety and profound unhappiness that rattles at your very sense of who you are and might become or could have been. At the time I couldn't quite identify the source of my sadness and melancholy. Eventually I did. Here's what I came to understand and what continues to reverberate:

When I first saw Star Wars, I was five, but I was old enough to recognize a hero when I was one. Luke Skywalker was, what, maybe 21? The age of a hero. Not to old, not too young. He would always be 21, eternally and forever on film. By the time I saw the re-release in 1997, I had aged and had surpassed the heroic age of 21, even if Luke had not. I found myself to be older than Luke, who would remain 21 forever. And however many times I had envisioned it happening in one shape or another—the notion of some mentor tapping me on the shoulder to point out that I was, in fact, and whether I realized it or not, a rather remarkable Jedi-like individual, one who had a role to play in the larger intergalactic battle between good and evil, between right and wrong—it never quite happened, at least not in the shape or form that I had anticipated. No Obi Wan ever tapped me on the shoulder. The hero's journey that I imagined for myself never quite emerged. Which is not to say that it hasn't happened.

I had always imagined the dramatic moment, the decisive cut, the transformative moment when everything changes (the moment when Obi Wan takes me to the cantina and I realize that I'm on the threshold and that if I go out, and if I return, I will not return in the same form or shape… Everything will change).

Life is far too subtle for that sort of thing. Too discrete and full of nuance and ambiguity. I think we all are, potential Jedi Knights, even if we continue to wait for Obi Wan Kenobi to come. Maybe he has already come and tapped and asked, even if we never understood or recognized it at the time. I think he probably has.

In the spirit of someone who is constantly looking for his own Obi Wan Kenobi, here are some thoughts from someone who knows nothing and is adviceless. Or maybe that's not exactly right. I have learned a few things. No doubt these are obvious and well-known to you. No matter. Let me re-iterate and re-galvanize.

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by Omar Ali

I recently wrote a piece titled “Pakistan, myths and consequences”, in which I argued that Pakistan’s founding myths (whether present at birth or fashioned retroactively) make it unusually difficult to resist those who want to impose various dangerous ideas upon the state in the name of Islam. The argument was not that Pakistan exists in some parallel dimension where economic and political factors that operate in the rest of the world play no role. But rather that the usual problems of twenty-first century post-colonial countries (problems that may prove overwhelming even where Islamism plays no role) are made significantly worse by the imposition upon them of a flawed and dangerous “Paknationalist-Islamic” framework. Without that framework Pakistan would still be a third world country facing immense challenges. But with this framework we are committed to an ideological cul-de-sac that devalues existing cultural strengths and sharpens existing religious problems (including the Shia-Sunni divide and the use of blasphemy laws to persecute minorities). Not only do these creation myths have negative consequences (as partly enumerated in the above-linked article) but they also have very little positive content. There is really no such thing as a specifically Islamic or “Pakistani” blueprint for running a modern state. None. Nada. Nothing. There is no there there. Yet school textbooks, official propaganda and everyday political speech in Pakistan endlessly refer to some imaginary “Islamic model” of administration and statecraft. Since no such model exists, we are condemned to hypocritically mouthing meaningless and destructive Paknationalist and Islamist slogans while simultaneously (and almost surreptitiously) trying to operate modern Western constitutional, legal and economic models.

This argument is anathema to Pakistani nationalists, Islamists and neo-Islamists (e.g. Imran Khan, who believes a truly Islamic state would look something like Sweden without the half-naked women) but it is also uncomfortable for upper class Leftists educated in Western universities. Their objections matter to me because they are my friends and family, so I will try to answer some of them here. These friends have pointed out to me that:

1. India is not much better.

2. The US systematically supported Islamists in Pakistan and pushed for the suppression of leftist and progressive intellectuals for decades.

3. Colonialism.

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by Mara Jebsen

Or, I Did AWP All Wrong, And This Is What I Learned:

Every year, thousands of writers collect at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs convention. In some great origami-like structure, panels and panels unfold in every direction, and lovers, rivals, business partners and strangers rub shoulders (and egos) in a heady atmosphere of nerves. The scale of it, the booze of it, the ambition, and the camaraderie of it, taken together, give the “emerging writer” an occasion to a) lose her mind b) consider the ickiness of networking; the fascinating collisions between the inner lives of artists, and the surprisingly high costs of costly educations. Here is a sort of dream log-book of my not entirely representative experience, and a list of take-aways.

Initial Impressions:

Bus

New York is far behind me, and the bus has clunked down heavily in Boston. Here, the entirety of the available air is taken up with snow that arrives sideways, softly in drifts. The first thing I do, made immoderately confident by my new smartphone, is stride trenchantly off to the wrong convention center; one at which no conventions are being held; one I will find out later is near the airport, and which I sense is near the airport, because of the eerie white nothingness of the landscape, and the deepening sense of ‘wrongness’ growing in my stomach. Snowflakes are matting against my glasses. The hand holding my little weekend bag is red—and I wish I hadn’t come. Off in the distance is a parking lot in front of a hotel, manned by a warmhearted guy in a little toll-booth dealie. I approach him through the blizzard for hours, and when I get to him he chuckles: “You look like you ran away from home.”

This feels correct. Trips that you worry about bring out the superstitious side in most of us. “Is this an auspicious start?” we ask. “Are the signs good?” Being lost is a bad sign. This nice man is a good sign. Already I’m off-kilter and have entered into the zone I call “the agony of interpretation”; the one that will mark two of my three days at AWP. For some reason, the stakes feel high, as though what happens in the next three days will define my attitude towards the literary world that simultaneously allures and repels me, a world I and so many other hope to join.

The man pulls out a series of ever-larger maps, and eventually rights me like a little wind-up toy so I'm ready for Take Two. All my urban slickness rubbed off, I find I'm cowed by the cold and austere geography of Boston.

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by Maniza Naqvi

Perween, once, I heard you called pyar. A play on two words, perhaps, love and friend: pyar. It was a perfect term of endearment for you. Your friends, those, who love you, those, who worked with you, those, whose lives are better because of you, those, for whom you are pyar—are devastated.

I too am devastated and I too am shattered even though I am at the margins of the golden circle of friends and comrades: my teachers, my role models, that very special group of mainly architects and urban planners in Karachi. A very special small group with thousands upon thousands of concentric intertwining circles created in three decades of careful planning and organizing and teaching, thousands of students and practitioners who will collectively defeat the assassins' conniving mean spirited brutality and act of murder.

There will be much written about you and some of it is here, here, here, here, here and here.

I remember in 1987 meeting Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan in Orangi when I worked in Karachi. And after spending an hour with me he directed me to you. So I climbed the stairs up to your office on the rooftop of that slim three story house whose interior was painted a hospital blue and there up there as though it were a bird's perch– I met you.

Perween Rahman—a slender young woman, long hair down to her shoulder blades, boney, gaunt—dressed that day in a slate colored shalwar kameez, silver bangles jangling on her wrists keeping time with the rhythm of her voice—a dust colored landscape of an architect's tools of trade spread out around her: maps, rolls of drawings, a large drafting table. I can never forget that moment–up there on the rooftop–the settlement of Orangi all around–the hills right there—clay colored. Welcoming, happy—graceful, passionately focused Perween Rahman with a tinkling voice…..so completely content and excited with her work—completely in her element, in her place, with her world spread out all around her, planner of all she surveyed, completely committed to what she was doing–changing the lives and living conditions of an entire locality—and later the entire city and towns and localities around the country–then an experiment in self help, self finance and governance in the times of a military dictatorship when the country was afloat and awash in foreign aid.

Perween it was clear then as it was in all of the last three decades, that you were having the time of your life! The first time I met you I could not help notice the sound of your voice as though your whole being and body were one instrument which sang because it was in its element, in the right place, bent to the purpose and meaning of what you loved. Your whole being hummed and sang and pulsated, breathing in the city spread around you, breathing it in and breathing out to it your commitment and love.

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by Carol A Westbrook

Obesity has become an epidemic. Over 55% American adults are overweight. We have always regarded this as a self-imposed condition, blaming gluttony, lack of discipline, or a sedentary lifestyle. But as a number of recent books have pointed out, it is not how we eat, but what we eat that causes obesity. What we are eating is a normal American diet.

Why stop obesity? Isn't it okay to be fat, as long as you are fit? The answer is that the health consequences of this epidemic are not due to being fat, per se, but eating this diet. Our normal American diet is leading to increases in diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease, and possibly some cancers, in addition to obesity.

Yes, eating the American diet is making us fat and sick, and shortening our lives. It has become our most pressing public health problem. Let's consider what is wrong with the modern American diet, and what we can do to change it. And we'll see how energy independence may contribute to the solution.

What is wrong with the modern American diet

Years ago, you ate what you liked, stopped when you were satisfied, and didn't get fat. This is how our biology is put together in an ideal world. Nowadays you must continuously count calories, exercise, and diet merely to maintain your weight. The biologic mechanisms that prevented us from overeating have not changed. What has changed is the food.

We may think we are eating the same food that we always have, but in fact we are not. Our diet has changed more in the last generation than it has since we first climbed out of the trees and became omnivores! Our biology is optimized to subsist on a diet containing a wide variety of foods, but it doesn't deal well with our current diet because we are no longer eating food. Up to 70% of what we now eat is processed food or, as I prefer to call it, synthetic food.

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by James McGirk

Going West is an adventure. Maybe not as much as was when you had to take a covered wagon and float across the Mississippi and shoot bison along the way for food, but still, it’s a thrill. My wife and I decided we’d had enough of New York City. She’d been there almost fifteen years, I’d been there ten, and as ostensible creatives it seemed foolish to work 90 hours a week before we even began our “real work.” So we scraped together as much money as we could, borrowed a bit more from my folks, and piled our belongings into a 20’-UHaul—which is about as long of a truck as you can drive without needing a special license or a third axle. Our cats, we chased down and crammed into pet cages. We strapped the three of them into the seat between us, a tower of cat cages, and set off. Destination: Oklahoma.

Half an hour in, one of the cats pissed himself and it dripped all over the other two and my wife’s trousers. I had to admit that I felt a bit defeated. I could rationalize leaving the city as much as I liked, but it hurt to go. Coming there I had a vision of success: a sleek penthouse perched high above midtown and the sort of artsy, exciting life you’d imagine accompanying it—something with awesome city views and sleek modernist furniture and lots of restaurant dining. I’d wanted that life since I was a preteen. And after ten years in the city I never even came close to living it. And it’s hard to abandon a fantasy, but it was harder still to imagine ever being able to afford to live a comfortable life in New York, let alone a luxurious one. Oklahoma, on the other hand, was completely alien to me. Not quite the South, but not the West or Midwest either. We had a few connections out there and the cost of living was so much lower. If we were serious about making a life for ourselves as artists, why not go somewhere completely new?

The first day, the cab reeked of piss and the cats yowled every time we went over a bump or revved the engine too hard for them. We drove south. The weather was fair, cold but clear and not too windy. I hadn’t realized there was a trailer mode that automatically engaged when you started the engine. The truck kept trying to compensate for a non-existent load. The brakes were touchy; the acceleration so slow it was frightening trying to catch up with traffic after merging onto the freeway. Cars and trucks would race around us–it took minutes until we were going as fast as everyone else. We made it as far as Winchester, West Virginia that first night and found a comfortable inn to stay in. The manager let us bring our cats in. We let them roam free the room—a huge mistake. For the hotel and us.

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