It's Here!

I'm not sure if the voting by you, my readers, had any influence, but the documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell has finally come to the Twin Cities! It's currently playing at the Landmark Lagoon Cinema in Minneapolis at 1:30, 3:20, 5:10, 7:10, and 9:30pm, and since I'm not sure if it'll be here for more than a week, I'm planning to go tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon. Let me know if you'd like to come along!

UPDATE: This is a really, really good movie. It gave me some much-needed hope about Africa.

Dastardly Disappointment

It turns out that The Most Fun Work Thing I've Done in a Very Long Time was for naught: the requirement to include the "we-won't-give-money-to-anyone-who-supports-abortion" clause is included in the Corporation's statutes and is therefore unaffected by the Executive Order lifting the international gag rule. And I'm pretty sure that changing the statutes would take, quite literally, an act of Congress.

Will we never see the end of W's dastardliness?!

The Most Fun Work Thing I've Done in a Very Long Time

So, one of the organizations I work for is going to make a loan to a poor country far, far away. The loan agreement has been being worked on for quite a while, and until recently, the organization was required by law to include the following clause in all its loan agreements:

"[The beneficiaries] will not use funds for any purpose that would violate United States law or policy, . . . including but not limited to the following purposes:
. . . to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions, to pay for the performance of involuntary sterilizations as a method of family planning or to coerce or provide any financial incentive to any person to undergo sterilizations or to pay for any biomedical research which relates, in whole or in part, to methods of, or the performance of, abortions or involuntary sterilization as a means of family planning.

I'm currently reviewing and commenting on this document. And I got to write the following comment: "I believe President Obama has issued an executive order which allows—nay, requires!—us to remove this clause."

It's so nice to be getting my country back.

MPAS Reminder: I wanna go to a movie!

Going 40 in a 20 Zone reports that the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission is holding hearings at the Hamline University campus this week. This strikes me as a good opportunity to remind everyone in the Twin Cities to click on the link at top right of this blog to request a viewing of Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a documentary about a group of Liberian women. I recommend that you request a viewing in St. Paul, MN, just so that we maximize the number of requests in one spot (there's also a request for "Minneapolis Metropolitan Area", so obviously whoever created the list of cities on this site doesn't know anything about Minnesota geography, and at some point, we'll have to try to merge the requests into one).

Humor me. I'm in the midst of a hellish trip back to Paris. Not only did I not make it onto the direct flight from Washington to Paris (I was waitlisted) and end up having to fly through Frankfurt, but after sitting on a sweltering plane for about an hour last night, they finally admitted that, well, no the a/c wasn't working, so they had everyone get off the plane again, until they could figure out what was wrong. So my flight took off about 2.5 hours late, and I missed my connection in Frankfurt, and the next flight to Paris isn't for 3 hours. Good thing I don't have anything important to do when I get home--oh wait, I have to get ready to move in 8 days.

Cancer the Crab is rearing its ugly head again, and you should all do your part to cheer me up by requesting a viewing of this movie! :-)

MPAS: Wanna go to a movie?

MPAS = My Politics Are Showing

I just read this article on a film called Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which won best documentary feature at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival:

"The film is inspiring, uplifting and is a call to action for all of us", Desmond Tutu, Winner 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. Pray the Devil Back to Hell is the extraordinary story of a small band of Liberian women who – armed only with white T-shirts and the courage of their convictions - came together in the midst of a bloody civil war, took on the warlords, and brought peace to their shattered country. The film is compelling testimony to the potential of women worldwide to alter the history of nations.

I think the film sounds very cool and would love to see it. The website has a link where you can put in a request for a screening in your area. Why don't we see if we can get enough requests to have a showing in the Twin Cities?

Click here to demand a viewing of Pray the Devil Back to Hell in St. Paul, MN. I originally started a request for "Minneapolis metropolitan area", but then I noticed that there was already a request for "St. Paul, MN" (someone didn't read my explanation of Twin Cities geography!), so I propose we add our votes to St. Paul. For those not lucky enough to live in Minnesota, just check the list to see whether there's already a request for your city (Washington has 15 requests already; there are 2 screenings booked in New York). I'll also add the request link to my sidebar. E-mail the link, tell your friends!

Ready for Syndication

Well, not really. There is some option about syndication in the blog settings, but since (unlike the comment page configuration :-)) I had no idea what it meant, I just left it on whatever the default setting was.

I have, however, been toying with different themes that I may (or may not) use on Native Observation, so I thought I'd give you a little preview of topic threads that may come up, along with their oh-so-clever abbreviations and acronyms:

• BNT. I confess: "Native Observation" was not actually my first choice for the title of this blog (but just because my baby was unplanned doesn't mean I love it any less!). For better or worse, many of my early ideas were already taken, in some cases by bloggers who, at least at first glance, do not seem Worthy of using my brilliantly conceived URLs. Because I think it's interesting to consider the road not taken (or in this case, the Blog Not Titled), I may tell you about the other titles we might have had. I suppose this theme could also offer the opportunity for guest bloggers who had their own title suggestions to tell us about them, but it's hard to imagine when I might be ready to relinquish that kind of artistic control. I can be a bit Particular at times.
• HYS. Life in a foreign country offers many opportunities for linguistic glitches, and I will be sharing anecdotes of words and thoughts lost in translation, and all the times I have to ask How You Say?
• MPAS. I have strong opinions on many, many things, and this blog is the ideal forum for sharing them. But sometimes, I may have to warn you that My Politics Are Showing (the correct pronunciation of this blog theme is to be "im-pass").
• TIMM. The question I hear most often when I tell people I'm moving away is, "What are you going to miss about France?" It occurs to me that telling about the Things I'll Miss the Most could be a nice way of sharing some of the loveliness of my adopted home.

OK, this is clearly far too cheesy for syndication, but now that the concept is all spelled out in pixels, I guess I'll stick with it.

UPDATE: One more blog theme I'd thought of but forgot to list: OBG (don't worry, Scott, I'm not going to have an entire topic thread dedicated to gynecological issues!). Way back when, in the dark ages before I started this blog, I sometimes sent out mass e-mails with stories about life in France to selected friends. I may recycle some of these Oldies But Goodies for use on this blog. Partly because, in my far-from-humble opinion, some of the messages were funny and deserve a broader audience, and partly because I'm lazy but can claim that reusing old material makes me Green.