What are you doing this weekend? Do you think escalating the war in Iraq is a bad idea? May I suggest a visit to the nation’s capital Saturday? Assemble on the National Mall, between 3rd and 7th Streets, at 11 am. Rally 11am-1pm. March will kick off at 1pm. If you’ve never helped fill up the Mall, it’s an experience I highly recommend. Sarah and I hope to see you there. For more information, see the United for Peace and Justice website. Give your legislators something to think about while they’re deciding, as Chuck Hagel put it, whether they might not be better suited to selling shoes than leading the country if they can’t manage to speak out now. Democracy and freedom begin at home.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m looking for an 80’s sf novel to replace Neuromancer in the literature class I teach most summers at Virginia Commonwealth University. I’ve just read Haruki Murakami‘s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World and liked it almost as much as his Kafka on the Shore, which I plan to teach in an urban fantasy class. Hard-Boiled etc. is actually a science fiction novel with a cyberpunk trope, though a decidedly odd one, published in 1985. Science fiction, IMHO, can use all the odd it can get. Like Gibson and Blade Runner, which I plan to show, it draws heavily upon Raymond Chandler. Set in a Japan seen through the eyes of a character steeped in American culture, it makes an interesting companion to the cyberpunk west steeped in Japanese culture which is the mainstay of American cyberpunk. Anyway, it’s now on the shortlist for the slot.

I can scarcely believe it. Just as I was about to write about Frank Hargrove, the Republican lawmaker in Virginia who told black Virginians to “just get over” slavery, John Warner, our senior Republican Senator comes out against President Surge and says he’ll vote for the Senate resolution opposing escalation. Opposing the Prez isn’t just for the left anymore. Way to go, John!
As for Hargrove, he made a factual error in his claims. He said that none of the lawmakers now sitting had anything to do with slavery. Ever hear of Jim Crow, Frank? Slavery: The Sequel? I’m younger than Hargrove, and I remember the Whites Only signs and all the other trappings of American apartheid. Slavery didn’t end with the Emancipation Proclamation.  State-supported oppression lasted well into Hargood’s adult life.