We learned today at work that our policy division director, Kathy Frahm, has died. She was my boss's boss, and worked right down the hall from me.

I didn't know Kathy well, and so I'm completely unqualified to write a proper tribute. That is my fault; I don't socialize as much at work as I ought to. But I can say that Kathy had remarkable warmth and dedication, and that I always enjoyed working with her when the opportunity arose. She was well loved at DEQ, and she will be sorely missed by many, many people who knew her.

My thoughts are also with her partner, Steve Frazier, and with her parents, and all those who loved her. What they are feeling right now is something no one should ever have to feel.

I've been deeply shaken since I learned of her death; I'm struck by how sudden it seems. Just this Monday, I was posting a document for her on our website. I taught her how to create a PDF from a Word document, and she said she'd do it from now on. And now she's just gone.

It doesn't seem right that someone can simply be removed from people's lives, that this is a normal and acceptable thing to have happen. It is unfair. I find myself thinking over and over again of the times we spoke, as though I'm trying to reassure myself that she cannot, in fact, be gone; that she will certainly return, and ask me to post the agenda for the October 1st meeting of the citizen board legislation work group. I keep wondering what her plans for the weekend were, what she was reading, where she would have wanted to go on her next vacation. That so much can be so interrupted, never to be fulfilled, must surely be the greatest injustice the world can know.

Update: Kathy's obituary in the Roanoke Times.

Another update: The Richmond memorial service will be at 1pm on Thursday, September 20, at Second Presbyterian Church at 5th and Main.

And an invitation: I know that people are finding this post as they look for information. I didn't expect that, but I welcome it. If you worked with Kathy, or knew her, please feel free to comment here. I know I would enjoy hearing more about Kathy from people that knew her better. Thank you.

Yet another update: The Richmond Times-Dispatch has an article about Kathy.

Tony Gambone,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by Stephen King, you might like to know that Trust the Process: A History of Clinical Pastoral Education as Theological Education will be released on September 28, 2007. You can pre-order yours by following the link below.

Trust the Process: A History of Clinical Pastoral Education as Theological Education
King Stephen
Price: $29.00

Release Date: September 28, 2007

I like that this probably just got sent to untold millions of people.

I wouldn't normally post something just because it's incredibly cool, unless I had something to say. Well, I have nothing to say, and these are incredibly cool:

A Single Sheet of Paper

That is all.

Things are happening here, and frankly, it scares the shit out of me:

• The IAEA has contradicted recent reports of the advanced status of Iran's nuclear program, and has indicated that Iran is cooperating well and making progress. And yet Bush continues to make dire warnings about Iran and nuclear weapons.
• Norman Podhoretz, a leading neoconservative, who "makes Paul Wolfowitz… seem almost a moderate realist," and who recently wrote an essay advocating an attack on Iran, is on Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy team.
• Some Russian bombers recently flew really close to UK airspace. Russia has a pretty good relationship with Iran, because the Iranians like to buy their weapons.
• Syria recently fired on Israeli aircraft.
• Our air force just flew six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles to an air force base in Louisiana that may be a Middle East staging area. They said the nukes were a mistake, but the cruise missiles were on purpose.
• Iran says that the US is behind Kurdish rebel attacks inside Iran.

Let's think about it for a second. In the region, we have Sunni and Shiite factions openly fighting and practicing ethnic cleansing in Iraq. We have Iran, which is Shiite, and may or may not be supporting or participating in the fighting in Iraq. We have Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which are Shiite and openly supported by Iran. We have Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni, and which is the birthplace of Al Qaeda and the home country of nearly all the 9/11 hijackers. We have Israel, which is hated by Sunni and Shiite alike. We have Hamas, which is Sunni, and which does not have any regional ambitions other than the eradication of Israel. We have the Kurds in northern Iraq, who are friendly to the US and not at all to Iran, and who would like to declare independence from Iraq. We have Turkey, which is opposed to Kurdish independence. And we have the United States, which is about as universally hated as Israel, and whose military is stretched thin because of commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Okay, so let's say we attack Iran using air power exclusively, because we can't commit any ground troops to an invasion. Iran, weakened but still capable on the ground, immediately moves into Iraq in force to engage Americans. They also hit Kurdistan in retaliation for the rebel attacks on their soil. Hezbollah and Syria begin to bombard Israel with rockets, because hey, you might as well (remember, Saddam did the same thing back in the first Gulf war). Syria may take the opportunity to overthrow the Lebansese government. Saudi Arabia perceives a problem in Iraq, because the Iranian troops are there, and if they gain access to southern Iraq, they'll be at the Saudis' doorstep. Basra is the main city in southern Iraq, and it's predominantly Shiite, and therefore possibly sympathetic to Iran. So Saudi Arabia sends troops into Iraq. Iraq's government, which is on life support anyway, bites the dust. Meanwhile, Israel is retaliating against Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran with airstrikes, and Turkey invades Kurdistan to protect their interests there.

And let's not forget that Israel and the United States both have nuclear weapons. Oh, and you can forget about oil supplies for the next twenty years while everybody fights it out.

So now you have, incredibly, a far worse godawful mess in the region than the godawful mess we have now. And it's closer to being a reality than you think, folks. The administration wants to invade Iran. They have their contingency plans all set. They know what targets they will hit. Right now, in the media, what you are seeing is the administration attempting to turn public opinion against Iran. They want you to think that the Iranian government is killing Americans in Iraq, and that their acquisition of nuclear weapons is imminent. They did the exact same thing in the run-up to the Iraq war - they said Iraq was behind 9/11, and they said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They were lying then, and they're lying now.

This is real, people. They want to do this. They are trying to do it right now. Do not fall for it. We cannot afford to attack Iran.

Got this email forward yesterday…

LIGHTS ON…..9/11

PLEASE forward this email to everyone in your address book asking them to also forward it. Please join us on 9/11. We have over two weeks to get the word out all across this great land we love and call the United States of America . Let's see how powerful e-mail can be!

On Tuesday, September 11, 2007 everyone in the USA who will be driving a motor vehicle is asked to drive with their headlights on during daylight hours. Though no explanation is needed as to why we are commemorating September 11, we hope more importantly to pay respect to the victims of that day, show our nation's solidarity and show support for our men and women of the Armed Forces. You can help by sending this e-mail on to others!

REMEMBER!

LIGHTS ON…..9/11

So, we'll all commemorate 9/11 by doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with what happened or with anything traditionally considered to be a commemorative activity. That is, we will make up a brand new commemorative activity, one that actually happens to be required by law for truckers and motorcyclists, and for cars in many places, and that is also generally considered to be a good idea and is done by most people already anyway. Thus, it will be entirely unclear whether anyone observed to be engaging in the activity:

• is required by law to do so
• does it all the time anyway
• is doing it by accident, or
• is actually commemorating something.

Not to mention the fact that you can only do it if you own a car. Or the tragic irony of commemorating 9/11 through an activity that burns enormous amounts of fossil fuels, our crippling dependence on which is the root cause of the Middle East policies that angered the perpetrators of 9/11 to begin with.

It shouldn't be so easy.

Remember how you felt in 2001? Speechless and barely able to breathe due to the mind-numbing horror of what you were seeing? Then you spent the rest of the year furtively glancing upward as planes flew overhead, wondering if something else was about to be annihilated as part of the next wave in a massive campaign to make the United States look more like downtown Kabul. Does turning on your headlights account for that?

People are getting shot and blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan because of what happened on 9/11. Americans, Iraqis, British, military personnel, contractors, civilians, men, women, children… it's war, that's what happens. Still think turning on your headlights for a day is enough?

Here's an idea: at 8:46 am, everything stops. We pull our cars over. We turn off our computers and televisions. We hang up our telephones. We stop talking. And we maintain a dignified, respectful silence. We think about the lives that were lost in 9/11 and in the wars that have followed it, and the living people still affected by those losses. We consider the unity that we all felt in the days after 9/11, and the spirit that moved everyone to hang a flag outside their doors. And then, at 10:28 am, we begin our lives again.

Doesn't that seem a more fitting tribute than something you can do with a flick of your wrist?

(To the tune of Yellow Submarine.)

It comes from the sea
It's made of grass
It's good for your brain
But it tastes like ass

That seaweed smell
That you're perceiving
Is the cause of
Your dry-heaving

We're all taking Omega 3 supplements, Omega 3 supplements, Omega 3 supplements
We're all taking Omega 3 supplements, Omega 3 supplements, Omega 3 supplements

The aftertaste
It overpowers
And rest assured
It lasts for hours

Omega threes
Improve your wit
But I'd rather be dumb
Than eat that shit

We're all taking Omega 3 supplements, Omega 3 supplements, Omega 3 supplements
We're all taking Omega 3 supplements, Omega 3 supplements, Omega 3 supplements

Note: to be fair, the supplement in question nobly (and mostly successfully) attempts to mask the noxious seaweed flavor with a cloying, artificial grape syrup additive. However, it appears that they forgot to add the grape stuff to our particular batch. Which is not cool.

Last week we headed out for a vacation up in Ontario's Georgian Bay area. My mom has a summer cottage up there; it's a beautiful region, with thousands of rocky islands covered in evergreen forest. Like most Georgian Bay cottages, ours is accessible only by water; you have to drive a couple of hours north of Toronto to a marina and transfer to a boat to get there.

Last year, we flew into Toronto and rented a car to get us to the marina. It was a good plan on paper, but our luggage missed our connection and had to take a later flight. When it arrived it had to be located and cleared through customs, and by the time we reached the marina, it was getting dark. This was a pretty serious problem because you have to navigate pretty carefully - there are a lot of rocks and shallow places that are hard to see, even in the daytime. My stepdad, who is a pretty accomplished boater, had never taken the trip out to the cottage at night - there's just typically no need to do so.

So last year's trip out to the island was taken at a slow crawl through absolute darkness, with me perching on the bow of the boat sweeping a battery-powered spotlight back and forth and marking the locations of any rocks I saw. My mom relayed instructions back and forth and peered over a navigational chart. It was nerve-wracking, but we made it.

And it wasn't just that trip, either; the last few trips we've taken by air have been disasters - connections missed, hours lingering in unfamiliar airports (try this with a grumpy toddler), luggage misplaced, etc. We've completely lost faith in air travel and its ability to get us there on time with all our stuff.

So this year, we opted to drive the whole way from Richmond. It would mean taking a couple of extra days of vacation, but we wanted to visit my dad in Buffalo and go to Farm Sanctuary and the Baltimore aquarium. Since we have two kids in carseats now, and we'd be picking up my grandparents at the Buffalo airport for the trip, we rented a minivan.

Well, I put 1,651 miles on that Grand Caravan and I'm here to tell you: minivans are the best form of road transportation ever invented.

Yeah, they have a reputation for being uncool. In my opinion, they have overcome it. They're like rolling family battle platforms. The doors open by remote control. There's storage in the floor, much like the Millenium Falcon, and also in the roof and console. The rear seats fold up like Transformers. There's a digital compass/trip meter/gastankometer. There are climate zones, which basically means that Chewbacca can run the A/C so his nose doesn't dry out, while Han can run the heater to banish the unpleasant memory of the carbonite. And it can travel across most of the galaxy without refueling, which helps you avoid potential trouble spots like Mos Eisley. (Seriously, I bought gas in Hamilton, Ontario, and then again somewhere near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I mean, this baby has range.)

Ours didn't even have the fancy stuff like GPS navigation or a DVD system, which would have been even better. I understand that these days, you can pop a DVD into the dash and the kids can listen to it on headphones. This allows you to (gasp!) have an adult conversation, or listen to music that isn't about talking animals.

All in all it was a pretty great trip - the kids handled it well, despite the long hours of driving, and it was a hell of a lot more pleasant than air travel. And it's good to know that we like minivans; if we have another kid, we'll have no choice anyway (other than a large SUV, which isn't appealing at all to us). We were sorry to turn it back in. There'll even be a hybrid Sienna at some point, so that would soothe our liberal guilt further (although we got a respectable 26 mpg, according to the tankometer). Yeah, sign me up.