Faux Passion

The result of a lot of conversations lately have been making me think more about passion. Not like sexual passion, but having a love for an idea, one worth committing to.

Part of this has come from me discovering how wonderful it is to be surrounded by people who truly care about what they are doing to shape the world...be it (for me) environmentalism, political, cycling. There is a wonderful feeling being with these people celebrating their passion. And it makes me want to get more involved in those communities whenever they are celebrating their love.

Now this is where it gets a little scattered. (As if it hasn't been already.)


This is where I get to think on all those people who are lacking.

I ended a nearly seven year relationship partly because I realized that the person who I thought was going to help push me be more revolutionary wasn't that at all. He was anti corporate media, & was so against shopping at Wal*Mart that he would only go wearing something offensive. He was going to be a poet, & wanted his MFA to be focused on gender lit.
Where is he now? He works for a bank processing applications. I never bothered to invite him to political events (reproductive rights, environmentalism, etc.) because I was sure he wasn't interested in going, even if it was just to support me.
His idealism was weak. The words seem like they fell short, & ended up being just words instead of thoughts or actions. And that's no good for a person who wants to love more.

But what's more insidious is finding a person who is doing all the actions, & then discovering how expansive the lack of ideals is.

I met this person who seemed like he could be pretty good. He was vegetarian & was very good about having all his products be earth-friendly. Turns out that both of those are just because he worries about what he puts into himself, & not a concern for anything in the broader world. He told me recently about how he felt really conflicted because he wanted to see Tom Morello perform this weekend (because he's pretty awesome), but didn't like that the concert was a benefit for Cindy Sheehan's congressional run. The reason: "I don't like her politics." I know that she's against the Iraq War, what else is there? What is there to be offended by?
Especially with the first part, it just disgusts me to know that someone is going through the actions for selfish reasons & not for some altruistic purpose. Sure, it's better than not doing those things, but it still shows a person that I wouldn't want to hang out with.

How Much--The Ginger Ninjas

How much
How much do I care about peace?
Do I care enough about peace to ride my bike to work?
To not say "it's too far", & instead just move closer and quit when I get there?
To say "Enough is enough is enough. I will not work for The Man anymore."
Do I care enough about peace to ride and ride and ride
Cleaning my mind until I find a real job working for everywhere everyone everything else in the world?
Not real like 9-to-5, real like keeps me alive.
Not real like Peter Jennings, real like Amy Goodman.
Not real like "somebody's got to do it", real like Earth Island Institute, Global Exchange, Doctors Without Borders, South Yuba River Citizens League.
Real like if I don't do it, who the hell will?
Do I care enough about peace to admit that inactions are actions, and all actions are votes, and not voting IS voting, not voting IS voting.
To vote with my mouth, my conscience & wallet, & my ballot while I'm at it.
To buy all organic all the time.
Always.
From sheets to roses to underwear to sprouts.
To cause a commotion at Safeway.
Say, "Let me know when you make the transition, and I might reconsider my decision to never shop here again."
To dig up my chemically-dependent, heavy-drinking lawn & replace it for good with a permaculture garden to share with my neighborhood.
To UPS 40 pounds of corn and 5 thousand gallons of water to my refugee penpal in Rwanda every day for a year before eating one more mouthful of pig, of chicken, of cow.
To build my house out of straw.
Make it small; fill it with compact fluorescents; super-insulate the water heater.
Make certain every splinter of wood is Jay Butterfly certified.
And once I built it, to stay home.
To not fly, to forsake air travel and it's out-sized, suicidal tendencies for warming up the planet; it's insatiable greed for there and here on the very same day.
Fuck those little plastic cups anyway.
Do I care enough about peace to let my fingers to the walking?
Right out the door of the business-as-usual yellow pages and into the national green pages every time the American in me can no longer resist the urge to consume.
To sell half my shit, then give half what's left today...except for the television must be destroyed before maiming the mind of one more little boy.
To have just one kid.
To adopt between one and eighty-eight.
To meditate on the origins of impatience, anger, & hate so that I may never yell at any of them or anyone else I love, or don't yet love.
To spend as much time with them as I do sending interoffice e-mail at my job (real or not).
To remember that the truth has been found.
I can't buy from Exxon without Prince William's Sound.
I can't buy from Chevron without hired helicopters gunning and going to the ground.
Not from Shell and that little thing with Ken Saro-wiwa.
Not from Unocal and their Ivy League pals
Shilling on Nightline, promoting the new Uzbeki-Afghani-Osama-Bin Pipeline.
And therefore to commit to a reduction in internal combustion.
To admit I'm addicted to my automobile.
My own two little axils of evil.
I keep finding myself back at the pump, with every finger on the trigger.
And I know, in that moment, they is me, I am them.
Pushed & sucked & pumped through a dirty oil filter.
Do I care enough about peace to sell my car?
To hitchhike, but refuse to ride in any SUV eight-commuter.
Range Rover, Range Rover, send our black soldiers right over.
Jesus Chrysler Honda Krishna!
I keep finding myself back at the outlet.
Ready to plug something else in or check something else out.
Do I care enough about peace to close the Gap?
Or at least stand in front of the Gap with a picket?
To never set foot in WalMart, Kmart, Waremart, Bi-mart, PetsMart, StarMart, or Starbucks again?
How about Home Depot?
To stop buying, stop buying, stop buying clothes made of oil sewn by 8-year-olds in dark factories on the other side of the planet;
Sold in stores built on wetlands, farmlands, once-quiet-lands, so-far-from-where-you-live-lands.
So hemmed in by asphalt, big trucks, broken glass, & mufflers;
So underserved by public transportation that driving there seems like the only reasonable way to get there;
But which are too cheap to pass up.
Do I care enough about peace to stop buying those clothes?
To shop instead at thrift stores?
To buy organic cotton, hemp, recycled clothes made by people I know who live on my street?
To acknowledge that peace is redwood trees standing.
Peace is worldwide family planning.
Peace is organic peach canning.
Peace is Maya Angelou in the Oval Office, sitting at the big desk.
Peace is live music in my kitchen.
Peace is your grandma riding her bike to the bus, to the farmer's market.
Peace is a living wage for the Columbian peasant who grew my cup of coffee.
Peace is the collective self-esteem of all the world's kids.
And I've got to wonder, if you took all the 10-year-olds in China, America, Afghanistan, Nigeria, & Mexico City & gathered all their self-esteem & put it in a laser beam of light & shot it into the night,
Would it make it to the Lincoln Bedroom?
Would it make it to the moon?
Do I care enough about peace to cut up my Discover card?
Send it back to the bankers who are using my money to finance the Three Gorges Dam?
To displace a million people?
Brown, voiceless people?
To drown the Great Yangtze and 5,000 years of cultural history beneath the largest chunk of cement ever conceived by Stanford University engineers?
To distrust scientists with technological cures for organizational problems, with DNA cures for tomatoes that ripen, and DDT cures for mosquitoes that bite, with nuclear cures for energy problems, nuclear cures for war problems, nuclear cures for nuclear waste problems.
This just in! Top scientists today have just announced that they have found a cure for ignorance!
All the newsmen blared, if Einstein was so smart, why didn't he see we weren't ready for MC to be squared?
To revolt every time some corporation commits an appropriation, steals a word, a plant, an idea, a gene, a famous face, a mental space, a sacred place, a 6th grade class.
Get the hell out of my watershed before I copyright our whole language & trademark your ass!
To boycott their labels.
Never worship their stars.
Carry scissors & markers, & stand in the street offering on-the-spot removal of swooshes from feet.
To educate myself in the arts of resistance by seeking out the real news in Boycott Action News, in WorldWatch, in Mother Jones, in AdBusters, in Yes! Magazine.
To climb & climb, up & up the ranks of the Ruckus Society.
To recycle, but only as a last resort after reusing, retreading, reducing, rejecting, rejoicing, & replacing our throw-away culture.
To carry a plate & cup in a bag on my shoulder
Ready to hold spontaneous nourishment without notice, without needing virgin old-growth disposable tableware.
And when the cashiers say: "paper or plastic?", I say "no, thank you."
To ask questions about everything I demonize, criticize, generalize, jeopardize, canonize, ostracize, memorize, advertise, or super-size.
About everything I say I can't live without.
About everything I stand for, sit for, work for, play for, pray for, pay for...live for.
About everything I eat, buy, do, make, facilitate, drive, consume, produce, wear, think, value, believe, throw away & leave behind.
Do I care enough about peace to light myself on fire on Las Vegas Boulevard?
To walk the talk.
To walk, and walk, and walk.
To walk to the White House.
To walk to Iraq.
To walk to no place in particular, holding a sign above my head that says:
"One Walker for Peace."
Ignoring mind closures and "no trespassing" signs, testosterone-fueled egos & the intentionally blind.
Planting tiny peace seeds in every fertile bare patch of human mind that I find.

Do I care enough about peace to ride my bike to work?

Mothers Are a Dear Thing

I hate hearing that friends' mothers are not doing well. They're in ICUs or fighting inoperable cancers. It's just not right.

Having lived through that pain, I know firsthand that it is not a pleasant experience in the least.

Especially when the children bearing it are still relatively young & could possibly miss out on their mothers being there for important moments in life. Like being there for weddings, or present for support during births...or even just as a comfort after a bad break-up.

This blows.

A Great Loss to the Comedy Community

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- George Carlin, the influential comedian whose routines used profanity, scatology and absurdity to point out the silliness and hypocrisy of human life, has died. He was 71.

George Carlin, here in 2007, kept up a busy schedule, performing as recently as last weekend in Las Vegas.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, died of heart failure Sunday, according to publicist Jeff Abraham. Carlin went to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain, and died at 5:55 p.m. PT.

Carlin performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, and maintained a busy performing schedule, which included regular TV specials for HBO.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

Carlin was "a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats," actor and comedian Ben Stiller said in a statement. Slideshow: The life of George Carlin »

Carlin was often quoted, his best lines traded like baseball cards. "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" began one famous routine. Another pointed out the differences between the pastoral game of baseball and the militaristic game of football: "Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park! Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium."

Then there were the non sequiturs: "The bigger they are, the worse they smell," he observed. Watch Carlin in action »

He filled three best-selling books, more than 20 record albums and countless television appearances with his material. Time.com: How Carlin changed comedy

He appreciated the impact his words made on fans.

"These are nice additional merit badges that you earn if you've left a mark on a person or on some people," he told CNN.com in 2004. "I'd say it's flattering, but flattery implies insincerity, so I call it a compliment."

Carlin was probably best known for a routine that began, "I was thinking about the curse words and the swear words, the cuss words and the words that you can't say." It was a monologue, known as "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," that got Carlin arrested and eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The "Seven Dirty Words" bit prompted a landmark indecency case after New York's WBAI-FM radio aired it in 1973.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that the sketch was "indecent but not obscene," giving the Federal Communications Commission broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency on the airwaves.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," Carlin said. "In the context of that era, it was daring.

"It just sounds like a very self-serving kind of word. I don't want to go around describing myself as a 'groundbreaker' or a 'difference-maker' because I'm not and I wasn't," he said. "But I contributed to people who were saying things that weren't supposed to be said." Watch the impact of Carlin's seven dirty words routine »

In November, Carlin was slated to receive the 2008 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, given by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

"In his lengthy career as a comedian, writer and actor, George Carlin has not only made us laugh, but he makes us think," Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen Schwarzman said in a statement. "His influence on the next generation of comics has been far-reaching."

In a typically wry response, Carlin said, "Thank you, Mr. Twain. Have your people call my people." Watch an appreciation of Carlin »

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, in New York. He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and joined the Air Force, where his misfit ways continued -- he received three courts-martial and several punishments.

After leaving the military, he spent a few years in radio, where he met Burns. In 1960, the pair left to pursue a comedy career in Los Angeles. Burns told the AP that the Carlin of those years was "fairly conservative," but things changed when the two saw Lenny Bruce in the early '60s.

"It was an epiphany for George," Burns told the AP. "The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

Carlin remembered a similar feeling, he told CNN.com.

"[His career] represented a lot of such honesty on the stage, the willingness to confront a lot of sacred cows and expose them," he said of Bruce. "He did it with a great deal of irreverence and with a lot of brilliance."

Carlin went solo in 1962. For most of the decade, he was a conservative-looking presence: clean-shaven, attired in jacket and tie, making his amused observations to audiences on "The Tonight Show" and "The Ed Sullivan Show."

But as the times changed, so did Carlin. He let his hair down, grew a beard and dressed in jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts. It was this Carlin who became a hit with college audiences in the early '70s and made such albums as "FM & AM" and "Occupation: Foole."

Carlin hosted the first broadcast of "Saturday Night Live" in October 1975.

He also appeared in movies, including "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989), Kevin Smith's "Dogma" (1999) and "Cars" (2006). For the latter, he was the voice of Fillmore, the Volkswagen bus.

He starred as a cabdriver in his own sitcom, "The George Carlin Show," which ran from 1993 to 1995. He also played the character of Mr. Conductor on the PBS series "Shining Time Station" and lent his voice to two episodes of "The Simpsons."

Carlin was blunt about his own struggles. He suffered several heart attacks, one at Dodger Stadium during a baseball game. He also underwent treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.

He was relentlessly amused by humanity -- in one of his most famous lines, he pointed out that "if you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America, you're given a front-row seat" -- but refused to consider himself a cynic. He preferred "disappointed idealist."

It all went into his comedy. He was fascinated by language and euphemism, noting that "there's a reluctance to confront reality and a desire to soften unpleasant realities." In a different life, he said, he may have been a teacher.

Which he was, anyway.

"Part of what my impulse is with things I've said or done, I think it is an attempt to demystify these things, to take them out of the realm of the forbidden and the disgusting and the off-base, and to at least bring them into the discussion," he told CNN.com.

He is survived by his wife, Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin. Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997.

Free Bird

Okay, so this is a little more personal. (Which is hard to stomach because I hate blogs of self-centeredness...but I'll justify that this is general enough.)

Almost one year ago I moved halfway across the country in the effort to start my life over with a clean slate. I'd know only two people in the whole state, & would have no pressures on me to be the person that I'd been for I have no clue how long. I was tired of having to be so good & just being so nervous in being judged all the time.

I just don't feel like people are that open to friends of theirs experimenting with the idea of who they are once they've grown accustomed to them being a certain way...or at least not right in front of their eyes anyways.

There were so many things that I had been wanting to do or get involved in, but just didn't feel like I had the support to check them all out. (Not that no one cared about the same things as me, but they didn't have the motivation to do it with me.)

But when you have to go out & learn an entirely new place & find out what you want to do & where you want to try to make friends, I think it helps.

The changes that I've made in the last year have been noticeable.


But, I also have to wonder, how many others are trapped? Trapped in an existence where they are what they are expected to be, but never getting the chance to wonder if they really want to be all that or if they want more. I can't believe that I'm the only one. For a country of people who are stalked by the media for their low self-esteem, can I really believe I was the only one who was suffocated into something less than I am?

No. I don't.

I just wonder how many others will find their way out before it's too late.

Obesity Contributes to Global Warming--Reuters

By Michael Kahn

GENEVA (Reuters) - Obesity contributes to global warming, too.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school's researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.

"We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility," Edwards said in a telephone interview. "Obesity is a key part of the big picture."

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

In their model, the researchers pegged 40 percent of the global population as obese with a body mass index of near 30. Many nations are fast approaching or have surpassed this level, Edwards said.

BMI is a calculation of height to weight, and the normal range is usually considered to be 18 to 25, with more than 25 considered overweight and above 30 obese.

The researchers found that obese people require 1,680 daily calories to sustain normal energy and another 1,280 calories to maintain daily activities, 18 percent more than someone with a stable BMI.

Because thinner people eat less and are more likely to walk than rely on cars, a slimmer population would lower demand for fuel for transportation and for agriculture, Edwards said.

This is also important because 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions stem from agriculture, he added.

The next step is quantifying how much a heavier population is contributing to climate change, higher fuel prices and food shortages, he added.

"Promotion of a normal distribution of BMI would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food," Edwards and Roberts wrote.

(Editing by Stephen Weeks)

Is There Power Left In the People?

After seeing a showing of rare rock video clips at the library, I thought it was only appropriate to go over to the Red Vic to watch "Chicago 10". (imdb article here...watch the videos.)

It was incredible. It really makes me want to go out & find the trial transcripts & read up about the people on trial.


But that wasn't the most important thought that came to me while I was watching it.


While watching footage of policeman beating demonstrators with their nightsticks & shoving them into the police vans & of all the talk of the anger of the masses against the Viet Nam war, I couldn't help but feel that this story is just a little too relevant to now. We're in the midst of another bad war, & with National Conventions taking place this summer in preparation of the election in the fall.

The stage feels similar.

And the question is: What would I do?

Clearly, I don't care enough to the point that I'm planning on taking off work to attend either one of the conventions. But, more importantly, would I show up for an event like the one MOBE & the Yippies planned? Would I stick it out knowing the likelihood of being gassed & beaten & perhaps killed? Do I believe in my voice that strongly, & know that my life's worth speaking my words?
I don't know that it is yet...But I want it to be. I want to be filled with that passion.


But this all supposes that there are people out there who would organize something like that. I'm holding some doubts. There's too much apathy, or working with the system (which would only keep it sanitized anyways), or whatever else excuse there is for people to sit around on their asses & complain about how bad things are but never really do anything about it. So even if I can say "Speaking my opinion is worth the most to me", would there be a movement to welcome me with like-mindedness?

I hope that by the time that I have found my level of sacrifice, that enough others have found theirs & will march with me.

A Developing Cyclist Complex

When I first bought my bike, I was talking to a friend of mine about it. She warned me against becoming one of those "aggravating" cyclists that have a total disregard for cars. I glossed over some of the things I'd already been doing, but tried to essentially tell her "yes, I won't do that."

That's easier said than done.


I do yield to cars when it looks like they're going to beat me through the intersection at 4-way stops (or if they don't see me & it'd be their right-of-way anyways), I don't run red lights (unless it's a T-intersection that doesn't cross me), & I have lights with me when I ride at night.

(Originally, I was going to try to stop at stop signs, but it seems to confuse drivers. Many of them are so used to bicyclists just running them that it actually seems to hold up traffic by not....due to the difficulty of communicating to each other.)


But it's hard not to want to get more aggressive. Lots of car drivers are assholes, & have little regard for me being there. It's more like I'm seen as an irritation just by existing, & have no right to be on the road.

I've stopped counting how many times that I've almost been hit (which is a pretty scary thing since I don't have health insurance). But I have had someone almost make a left hand turn into me into a parking lot, been cut off by a person on a cellphone pulling out, as well as someone pulling into a parking space. I regularly have people drive really close to me when I come up Fulton after work, which is why I now ride close to the dotted white line to force them entirely into the next lane (for my safety). And finally, for the first time, I got swore at last night. Some woman at an stop light yelled at me to get my "bitch ass off the street."

Wow.


It's making me want to get more involved in the SF Bike Coalition, & participate in Critical Mass. I want to really find ways to advocate that I have just as much right to be there as the cars do...& I'm way healthier than them for myself & the environment. (You'd think in a green city there'd be a greater appreciation for those truly helping curb pollution...but I guess not.)


There was also this billboard on Geary that I really wanted to vandalize. (For the record, I didn't.) It really pissed me off about it saying "healthy cars pollute less".


Sure. They do. And the convenient little website on the bottom gives you tips on how to help keep your car "healthy" so that it is better for the environment.

But is that really the answer?

Maintain your car & the world will smile down on you!

FUCK NO!

It might be less, but is that really what we should consider to be good enough?!




So, yeah. I'm getting the cyclist complex. Someone really trying to do some good, & getting looked on as a second-class commuter.




Just see if I don't fight back.

Leaving the Past Behind

It's been almost 5 months since ("presumably") our downstairs neighbors smashed our door in half & stole a ton of my roommate's & my belongings. (Including our TV, DVD player, my CDs, her movies, sugar, flour, tools, clothes, photo albums, CD-Rs...)

It was really shitty. We called up some friends & moved all of our stuff out that afternoon (after the police visited). I got to have the fun of filling out all the police forms & filing for insurance coverage & all.

But as much as it sucked, I still know that in the long run, it was not without an upside. It gave the two of us the chance to move out of Oakland & into San Francisco like we'd been wanting to do. We had set the date for sometime in the summer, but who knows if that is when we really would've.

Because we both have less stuff now, we've been okay with that. We know we don't need to have tons of things. It isn't important, & we wouldn't have the space for it.


And yet, today I tried taking a nap today because I'm exhausted, & I just couldn't because I was thinking again about all the things I had in the stack of burned CD-Rs that were stolen...Like all my papers, my photographs from college, all the e-mail letters from when my (now ex) boyfriend was abroad, my music backups of songs I bought or the tracks I wanted to keep from CDs I ended up selling before moving....Things that are nice to have around. And it's just all gone.

Maybe it's just being broken up over the things that I just can't replace. I've replaced my computer since college, so the files aren't hiding on this one. I have some of the photos on my computer, but not nearly as many as I took. And I've been really broken up over having my photo albums stolen because my dad had given me all of my pictures he had of me as a child, & so there aren't other ones hiding around somewhere.


Still, it would be really nice if I didn't have periodic moments when I daydream about taking them to court, recovering my stuff, or beating the shit out of them (without the obvious repercussions...like jail for me).


Some day?

CNN.com: Running on empty: With less in tank, more get stranded

AP -- Brent Saba had just dropped a church group off at Philadelphia International Airport on Sunday morning and was heading north on Interstate 95 when it happened: His 15-passenger van ran out of gas.

With gas prices hovering at $4 a gallon, motorists are putting less fuel in their tanks -- then run out.

Saba, a 24-year-old church pastor, made it to the shoulder just past the Ben Franklin Bridge and waited more than 30 minutes for someone to stop and lend him a cell phone. Then he waited a while longer for AAA to arrive with fuel.

With gas prices hovering at $4 a gallon, motorists like Saba are putting less fuel in their tanks -- then coming up empty on the highway.

Though national statistics on out-of-gas motorists don't exist, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that drivers unwilling or unable to fill 'er up are gambling by keeping their tanks extremely low on fuel.

In the Philadelphia area, where the average price for a gallon of regular broke $4 on Friday, calls from out-of-gas AAA members doubled between May 2007 and May 2008, from 81 to 161, the auto club reported.

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"The number one reason is they can't stretch their money out from week to week," said Gary Siley, the AAA mobile technician who helped Saba.

"Some of them are embarrassed. ... They say, 'I was trying to make it till Friday,' and they couldn't do it," said Siley, who has assisted numerous out-of-gas motorists.

Saba blames himself for not paying enough attention to the fuel gauge, saying he doesn't normally let the tank get so low. But he said the spiraling cost of gas has led the church to reduce its use of the fuel-guzzling van.

And when he does get gas, he puts in only a half-tank.

"If the prices were lower, I'd probably just fill it up," Saba said.

Research from The Nielsen Co. shows that drivers have been making more frequent trips to the pump but limiting how much they put in the tank.

Convenience stores, which sell about 80 percent of the nation's gas, are seeing fewer fill-ups, said industry spokesman Jeff Lenard.

"When the pump hits a certain dollar amount now, you're seeing more customers stop," said Lenard, with the National Association of Convenience Stores. "They're purchasing fewer gallons."

And that means playing Russian roulette with the gas gauge.

In Dallas, Courtesy Patrol -- a roadside assistance program operated by the sheriff's department -- reports a doubling in the number of daily fuel calls from stranded motorists in recent months. Sheriff Lupe Valdez herself recently came to the aid of a mother and her two children who had run out of gas along an interstate.

In some cases, motorists have gotten stuck in the middle of the highway, creating a dangerous situation, said Lonnie Lankford, a Courtesy Patrol shift leader. "It's just breaking the backs of the people, these gas prices," he said.

Transportation officials in Oregon and Tennessee also report increasing numbers of stranded motorists in need of gas.

AAA Mid-Atlantic, which has nearly 4 million members in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia, reported a 15 percent year-over-year increase in calls from members with empty tanks.

"We're seeing a lot of frustrated motorists who are trying to cut corners, and this is one way they're doing it," said AAA Mid-Atlantic spokeswoman Catherine Rossi. "But they're shooting themselves in the foot, or the wallet, in the long run."

That's because perpetually running on fumes can damage a car's fuel pump -- requiring repairs that make a full tank of $4 gas seem like a bargain.

As for Saba, he was just thankful he made it back to North Philadelphia in time for his 11:30 a.m. church service.

"What I was thinking to myself was, at least the weather's nice," he said. "It was beautiful outside and that made things a lot better."

U.S. Cancels Fulbright Grants to Paliestinian Scholars

U.S. cancels Fulbright grants to Palestinian scholars
By Ethan Bronner
Thursday, May 29, 2008

GAZA: The State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted permission for the students to leave Gaza.

Israel's restriction is in keeping with its policy of isolating this coastal strip, which is run by the militant group Hamas.

The United States consulate in Jerusalem said the grant money had been "redirected" because of concern that if the students were forced to remain in Gaza the grant money would go to waste. A letter was sent by e-mail to the students Thursday telling them of the cancellation.

Abdulrahman Abdullah, one of the seven Gazans who received the letter, was in shock.

"If we are talking about peace and mutual understanding, it means investing in people who will later contribute to Palestinian society," he said. "I am against Hamas. Their acts and policies are wrong. Israel talks about a Palestinian state. But who will build that state if we can get no training?"

The State Department Web site describes the Fulbright, the U.S. government's flagship program in international educational exchange, as "an integral part of U.S. foreign relations." It adds, "the Fulbright Program creates a context to provide a better understanding of U.S. views and values, promotes more effective binational cooperation and nurtures open-minded, thoughtful leaders, both in the U.S. and abroad, who can work together to address common concerns."

Some Israeli lawmakers, who held a hearing on the issue of student movement out of Gaza on Wednesday, expressed anger that their government was failing to promote educational and civil development in a future Palestine.

"This could be interpreted as collective punishment," said Rabbi Michael Melchior, chairman of the Education Committee in Parliament, during the hearing. "This policy is not in keeping with international standards or with the moral standards of Jews, who have been subjected to the deprivation of higher education in the past. Even in war, there are rules." Melchior is a member of Meimad, a small party allied to the Labor Party.

The committee asked the government and military to reconsider the policy and get back to them within two weeks. But even if the policy is changed, the Fulbright scholars in Gaza are out of luck for this year. Their letters urged them to reapply next year.

Israel's policy appears to be in flux. At the parliamentary hearing Wednesday, a Defense Ministry official recalled that the cabinet had declared Gaza "hostile territory" and decided that the safety of Israeli soldiers and civilians should be risked only for humanitarian concerns. Higher education, he said, was not a humanitarian concern.

But when a query about the canceled Fulbright grants was made to the prime minister's office Thursday, senior officials said that they did consider study abroad to be a humanitarian necessity and that when cases were appealed to them, they did everything they could to facilitate them. They suggested that American officials had not brought the Fulbright cases
to their attention.

Still, despite their contention, they argued that the policy of isolating Gaza was working and that Palestinians there were starting to lose faith in the ability of Hamas to govern. Since Hamas, a radical Islamist group that opposes Israel's existence, carried out what amounted to a coup in Gaza one year ago against the more secular Fatah party, hundreds of rockets and mortars have been launched from there at Israel and numerous attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers have taken place.

While Hamas says the rockets are in response to Israeli military incursions into Gaza, it also says it will never recognize Israel.

"We are using the rockets to shake the conscience of the world about Israeli aggression," Ahmed Yusef, political adviser to the Hamas foreign minister, said in an interview. "All our rockets are a reaction to Israeli aggression."

The Israeli closure on Gaza has added markedly to the difficulty of daily life here, with long lines for cooking gas and a sense across the population of living under siege. Israel sends in about 70 truckloads per day of wheat, dairy products and medical equipment as well as some fuel, and permits patients to exit in the case of medical emergencies.

But Israel's stated goal is to bolster moderates among the Palestinians so that Hamas will lose power and even some security-conscious hard-liners said the policy of barring students with grants abroad was counter-productive.

"We correctly complain that the Palestinian Authority is not building civil society but when we don't help build civil society this plays into the hands of Hamas," said Natan Sharansky, a former conservative government official. "The Fulbright is administered independently and people are chosen for it due to their talents."

Sari Bashi, who directs Gisha, an Israeli organization devoted to monitoring and increasing free movement of Palestinians, said, "The fact that the U.S. cannot even get taxpayer-funded Fulbright students out of Gaza demonstrates the injustice and short-sightedness of a closure policy that arbitrarily traps 1.5 million people including hundreds of Palestinian students accepted to universities abroad."

She said that their education was good not just for Palestinian society, but for Israel as well.

Taghreed al-Khodary contributed reporting.