Josh Philip Ross

Topic: Personal

Back in December, I wrote an essay about how much I liked snow.

That was December.

Now it’s March, and after what was admittedly a mild and unusually pleasant February, it’s snowing again. Only this isn’t that softly falling gentle stuff that piles up into beautiful white blankets over everything. It’s mucky nasty sleety snow that pelts but doesn’t stick, and it’s accompanied by the kind of frantic wind that ensures that the little icy pinpricks get in everywhere, no matter how you struggle to hold them off with your sad little inside-out umbrella. Slush puddles up at every corner, lurking in wait for the shoes you thought you could wear now because it’s basically spring. (Earlier today we watched in horror as a man climbed out an office window across the street, stood unsecured on the snowy ledge, and cleaned the window.)

Spring in New York is the trickster season, the time of taunting from the skies — the time of year when I inevitably start fantasizing about a nice house in the redwoods somewhere north of San Francisco. One day it’s 64 degrees so you take the lining out of your coat, and then the next day it snows. You get a gorgeous Friday and a gorgeous Saturday, so you decide to go for a walk in the park on Sunday and it’s freezing rain. For three months you keep looking at the trees with their little red nubbins of what will one day be leaves, but they’re not leaves yet. No one has done any outdoor sprucing since last September, and the bare trees and underpopulated streets are strewn with garbage.

And everyone is stir-crazy, having been confined to small indoor spaces for months. It’s three days running now that I’ve seen people cursing each other on the subway for the inevitable slights of rush hour: blocked doorways, accidental bumpings. This morning in the Union Square station I saw two women shrieking at each other, faces inches apart. Summer heat waves are more likely to spark collective riots, but nothing beats late winter/early spring for sheer personal bitterness.

There is, however, a payoff. There will come a day — the day — when the weather will change. One day, maybe in May if we’re lucky, maybe in late June if we’re not, the drizzle will inexplicably give way and it will be 78 degrees and sunny. And that first day of real summer is like nothing you can ever experience with California weather. It’s like recovering from an illness and falling in love and discovering beauty all at once, and everyone else is doing it too. Suddenly the world is full of people again, with shapes — one year Jenny overheard one Wall Street type say to another, “See? They have legs again!” People smile at each other in the line at the smoothie bar, they pet each other’s dogs. New York becomes a pleasure again, a sensual street theater, the perfect place to wander for hours.

But that’s all months away. For now, there is muck in the sky, curses in the subway, and another week to go before it’s even spring.

It occurs to me to highlight some of the most interesting elements of the new Iraqi constitution. These include guarantees of health care and social security, the right to privacy, equal rights for women, limits on gun ownership, and a guarantee of not only the rights in this constitution but also “rights stipulated in international treaties and agreements,” which I believe includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And discussion of who can marry whom is notably absent.

Article 12: All Iraqis are equal in their rights without regard to gender, sect, opinion, belief, nationality, religion, or origin, and they are equal before the law. Discrimination against an Iraqi citizen on the basis of his gender, nationality, religion, or origin is prohibited.

Article 13.H: Each Iraqi has the right to privacy.

Article 14: The individual has the right to security, education, health care, and social security. The Iraqi State and its governmental units, including the federal government, the regions, governorates, municipalities, and local administrations, within the limits of their resources and with due regard to other vital needs, shall strive to provide prosperity and employment opportunities to the people.

Article 16.I: Civilians may not be tried before a military tribunal. Special or exceptional courts may not be established.

Article 17: It shall not be permitted to possess, bear, buy, or sell arms except on licensure issued in accordance with the law.

Article 23: The enumeration of the foregoing rights must not be interpreted to mean that they are the only rights enjoyed by the Iraqi people. They enjoy all the rights that befit a free people possessed of their human dignity, including the rights stipulated in international treaties and agreements, other instruments of international law that Iraq has signed and to which it has acceded, and others that are deemed binding upon it, and in the law of nations. Non-Iraqis within Iraq shall enjoy all human rights not inconsistent with their status as non-citizens.

Makes ya wanna move to Iraq.

A new poll finds that Iraqis believe they are better off now than they were before the U.S. invasion a year ago, even in surprising categories like electricity services. The positive sentiments are dramatically higher among Kurds than among the population in general, which is no surprise; but even the numbers for the Arab population are positive. (The poll doesn’t differentiate between Sunnis and Shi’ites.) The pollsters find that “the level of personal optimism is extraordinary: Seventy-one percent expect their lives to improve over the next year.”

Meanwhile in America, 60 percent say they are dissatisfied with “the way things are going in the United States at this time.” But then, unlike the Iraqis, we don’t have a constitution that guarantees human rights, healthcare and social security.

There’s been a lot of chatter lately about how close we’re getting to capturing Osama Bin Laden. The Marines are mounting a major offensive in eastern Afghanistan, caves are being raided, and various sources are making “noose is tightening” statements every couple of days.

I expect that if Bin Laden is captured, it will be a huge boost for Bush. It shouldn’t be.

By September 11, 2001, we already knew that Osama was behind the USS Cole bombing; since 9/11, it’s been clear that he is America’s number one enemy. We have also known (or at least suspected strongly) that since the fall of the Taliban, Bin Laden has been hiding out in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan or western Pakistan. All of which raises the question, why now? Why not a year ago, or two years ago?

The answer is obvious: Iraq. There was a murderer loose in our town, but instead of chasing him down, we went and arrested the owner of a nearby sporting-goods store because we thought he might have guns in it that he might sell to the murderer.

And in the meantime, what’s the murderer been up to? The tally so far is 643 dead in Bali, Istanbul, Karbala, Baghdad, and now Madrid. If we catch Bin Laden tomorrow, it will be too late for those victims.

If, as Bush is fond of saying, his first duty is to keep the American people safe, then why are we only now closing in on the real threat?

Quality time-wasters from Daniel Kleinfeld:

• Learn what Samsung means (requires Flash and sound; it’s all text, but contains adult themes).
• Play a pointless, competitionless, but strangely satisfying video game (flash required, sound makes it better).
• Waste some time word processing by hand.
• See a collection of the weirdest stuff from the auction sites.

With all the talk of American jobs getting shipped to India, it might be worthwhile now and again to take a gander at what it looks like from the other side.

How many of us will soon forget what happened yesterday in Spain? Yet how many of us still remember what happened ten days ago in Iraq?

Because the Iraqis remain strangers to us, it’s easier to overlook their loss, or to see it as part of a long pattern of violence to which they must have become accustomed by now. Or as William Westmoreland put it, “Orientals don’t mourn their dead like Americans.”

But I don’t believe that.

The suffering of each death and each wound is real. The pain and loss of the families is real. That Iraq has seen so much carnage is only evidence of how great their suffering has been and continues to be.

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The UK Guardian has a useful, if depressing, roundup of recent major terror attacks. Some of them took place before we captured Saddam, some of them afterward.

Do you feel safer now?