11.20.2001
There really is a weight-loss pill called Anorex�.
As part of the New York Times' continuing effort to have each and every article relate to 9/11 somehow, this article from the fashion section focuses on how the Ladies Who Lunch just don't have it in their heart to shop any more. Thanks to Debbie for pointing this one out. Excerpts follow:
"I would not like to be a retailer right now," Marian Rivman, a public relations consultant, said. "Ever since the attacks, I have no heart for shopping. The whole notion that we have too much is totally confirmed when you know you have sweaters you put away two years ago and forgot and the news is full of people in Afghanistan climbing mountains with their feet in rags."
Ms. Rivman's wardrobe concerns have veered sharply toward the pragmatic, or at least toward clothes that can seem that way in unreliable times. "The first thing I did was check my shoes," she said. Almost anything not suited to running for one's life was tossed.
Even Dara Perlbinder, an Upper East Sider who moves in a sphere where wardrobes are strategized with war room precision, and where the two least often heard words are "last year," found herself suddenly "not caring as much," she said. "I feel like I already have lots of things in my closet I can wear," she continued.
Soon after the terrorist attacks, Barbara Heizer started mining her closet. "I found myself saying, `What do I need that for, I've already got so much?' " Ms. Heizer, a freelance editor and writer, said. Seated beneath a 1970's Andy Warhol portrait of her, in her TriBeCa loft, Ms. Heizer wore a pair of decade-old Manolo Blahnik equestrian- style boots, a "very old" but revamped Donna Karan motorcycle jacket and a 1996 Chanel dress. For some time now, she explained, so-called vintage clothes have seemed to her "much cooler than anything coming out in the stores."
When this reporter called Amy Fine Collins, a fashion writer whose deeper purpose might be confirming the need for an International Best Dressed List, she said, "You dialed the right number." Speaking from a cellphone while having a pedicure, Ms. Collins said that, since Sept. 11, she had been "having recurrent dreams of going into my closet and discovering clothes and shoes there that I had entirely forgotten about."
It is, Ms. Collins said, "an entirely fresh thrill." It is also, she went on, something that actually occurs.
In mid-September, on one of "those insanely surreal blue skies days," Ms. Collins explained, she had left the house not wearing one of many Geoffrey Beene outfits that have caused some people to refer to her as the muse of that particular designer, but a cotton striped blouse and a straight narrow linen skirt and low heels, a little ladylike uniform, the kind of clothes she might have pulled from the closet in her dreams.
The response on the street to Ms. Collins is always worth noting, since few people can approach her stylization in both grooming and dress. In this case, however, Ms. Collins was startled to find that "so many people stopped me on the street." The reason, she concluded, was that "there is this desire now for some kind of simple feminine uniform" to replace "the kind of aggressive, chaotic, androgyny" that characterized the spirit of capital fashion with a capital F.
"The last thing anyone wants to see right now is camouflage or any kind of savagery expressed in clothes," Ms. Collins said earnestly. "Let's face it. You can't play at camouflage now. Either you're fighting for civilization or you're not."
About a mile from my house in South Minneapolis is the multi-colored high rise apartment building featured in the opening credits of the Mary Tyler Moore show. Minnesotans are fond of pointing it out to visitors to town, along with other MTM landmarks. What they don't tell you, however, is that it was designed to be low-income housing. Rather than the spacious, luxurious apartment Mary lived in alone, these apartments are small, and house large families of immigrants. Nowadays, they are home to hundreds of Somalian families who have come here to work several jobs in order to support themselves and families back home.
The families in Somalia live mainly in small villages and depend on receiving the money from American relatives in order to survive. Because there is only one Western Union office in the whole country - located in a city - it is difficult for families to receive the money. So the American Somalians create small businesses that will wire the money to Somalia, and deliver it to the villages. And the American government has now decided that some of this hard earned money is being skimmed out of the pot in Somalia and transferred to Al Queda networks. I have no idea whether this is true, but I can tell you that we're not talking about people with a lot of money here. These people can only afford to live packed together in high rises. Can their minimum wage paychecks really be enough to warrant our worry?
The FBI came to our food cooperative by mistake. They saw the one Somalian employee and figured they had the right place. A friend who was working there at the time said after the FBI realized their mistake, they used the co-op's bathroom for their breaks as they proceeded to raid and shut down the small business sharing the same building. Five businesses in all were shut down that day, leaving the Somalian community no way to get their money to their families in time for Ramadan. All money in the process of being transferred was frozen, and now appears to be lost. Welcome to the melting pot.
The next day, our Senator from the left, Wellstone, announced he was going to save the Minnesota Twins by going after the evil baseball empire. What about the rights of his citizens? He helped sign into law the bill that was largely unread, allowing the FBI to go after pretty much whomever they want. Meanwhile, our govenor, ex-pro-wrestler Jesse Ventura is freaking out over his personal security. It seems he believes he is the most visible governor in the country, and thus, at the greatest risk of danger. He proposes adding eight to ten more body guards, tightening security around his press conferences (no more of those pesky reporters allowed in here!) and a multi-million dollar rennovation to the governor's mansion. [NB: As our nation's Governor Most Likely To Open a Can of Whoop-Ass, I would think he has less to worry about.] What about the safety of his citizens? Minneapoliis a hub city for Northwest Airlines, one of the largest airlines in the country.
Today, I taught theater to a class of first graders, largely Somalian. At one point, a little boy came up to me, grinning, and said, "You look just like one of the bad guys on TV!" My first thought was Bush? Cheney? Do all white guys look alike to him? Then he said, "Did you fly the airplane into the building?" I was stunned to reaize that to him, I look like a terrorist. [NB: Chris has a beard.] I heard an expert on the radio defending the Japanese internment camps of World War II, and calling for a similar strategy today. What would I look like to him?
We can take some comfort in our recent election, though. In the largest political upset in Minnesota, our incumbent mayor was usurped by a former newspaper editor running independant, and three city council positions were filled by Green Party candidates, making Minneapolis one of the Greenest cities in the country. [NB: Let's just hope they don't have to fly anywhere.]
This is a hilarious take on the media's coverage of "the war on terrorism. " I think it's a bit unfair toward NPR, which has had great reporting in my opinion, but CNN and the BBC deserve all the abuse one can heap on them.
"Good evening, and welcome to 'All is Lost,' the nightly public affairs program of National Public Radio and the BBC. Tonight, we discuss what has been called America�s war against terror. I am your host, Perfectly Modulated Voice of Reason.
With me, in our Washington studio, are: Fabled Newsman Who Was There When Saigon Fell ... Scientifically Trained Impartial Scholar ... and Bureau Chief of Second-Rate Regional Monopoly Newspaper Who Is Desperate to be Hired by The New York Times. From London, we are joined by our European affairs analyst, Loathes America and Prays for its Swift Destruction."
Read the whole thing here. Especially their European analyst. Those Brits are so funny.
Brown skin + health background + nosy parker neighbors = FBI raid
Pa. Officials' Homes Raided in Anthrax Case
No One Is Arrested, FBI's Searches Turn Up Little of Significance in Chester
FBI raids on the homes of three Chester, Pa., city officials of Pakistani descent appear to have turned up little of significance, law enforcement officials said yesterday.
The raids were conducted Monday by about 30 FBI SWAT team members, some in protective biohazard suits, who jumped from black sport utility vehicles and rushed the homes with battering rams. They set up decontamination tents for hazardous materials, but sources said they did not find any equipment used to grow or process anthrax bacteria.
Chester Health Commissioner Irshad Shaikh, 39, said he answered the FBI's questions but has "no idea" what the agents were looking for when they searched the three-story home he shares with his brother, Masood Shaikh, who works in the city's lead abatement program. "They came and asked some questions and I cooperated fully," Shaikh said in a telephone interview.
The third Chester official, city accountant Asif Kazi, 39, lives in a brick row house a few blocks from the Shaikh brothers. He said the FBI asked him about anthrax and other biological agents and swabbed areas of his home.
Kazi added that the agents told him he had been seen dumping a cloudy liquid on the ground behind his home and handing a silver canister to someone. The liquid, Kazi told the Associated Press, was soapy water from a clogged sink, and the canister was a food dish.
Kazi's wife, Palwasha Jalawam, 38, told the AP she was cooking breakfast when armed agents broke down the door and held her at gunpoint. Among other items, she said, agents seized her prescription for Cipro, an antibiotic she takes to treat endometriosis. Cipro is also used for treating anthrax infections.
Shaikh, who graduated from medical school in Pakistan and is a part-time instructor at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, did not criticize the agents. "I think the FBI was doing its job very professionally," he said, adding, "They can come in the house any time they want."
. . . .
Despite the praise from city officials, Gloria Campbell, who lives with her husband and five young children next door to Kazi, is concerned for her family's safety. She said the Kazi family, who moved in last ummer, are "very nice people" and "mannerly." But after watching federal agents aim a battering ram at their house yesterday, Campbell said she was "up all night afraid, because I don't know what to think now."
And some residents are angry that the FBI would not give more information about the investigation. "I think we deserve answers," said Elizabeth Williams, who lives across the street from the Shaikh house. "It's an unjustice to us when the FBI says they don't have to tell us what's out here."
[NB: Apparently, staring off into space is enough to get you kicked off a flight these days.]
