04/23/02 19:39 CEST. Salon has an interview today with Robert Young Pelton today. Pelton is an author everybody should be familiar with. He's most famous for writing the quasi-travel guide The World's Most Dangerous Places (which I read cover to cover a few years ago) and for roaming around the world from war zone to war zone hanging out with unsavory characters of all kinds. Anyway, his take on what's going on in Afghanistan and in the war on terror is definitely worth reading. It's not the end all and be all, but it's a perspective worth absorbing. [rc3.org]

I can't wait to see the new PBS reality show Frontier House. I loved The 1900 House, and this latest one should be triple the fun because it's three families experiencing the American frontier in the 1880s.

From Newsweek: Prairie Home Companions

"It takes less than 40 minutes for the first person to start crying on 'Frontier House.' That’s not so bad, given that “Frontier” is one of those semisadistic PBS shows where mild-mannered history buffs travel back in time to live just like the natives—in this case, like homesteaders in 1883 Montana....

For one thing, the new show features three families, instead of one. That means three times as much history—and three times as much history-induced misery. More important, these are Americans, so you can forget all that British stoicism. Americans whine. Americans cheat. Americans have no compunction about complaining that the frontier is ruining their sex life, among other marital woes. “We’re at divorce level,” Karen Glenn says to the camera in the middle of a fight with her husband, Mark, about who rules the log cabin. “I’m ready to kick him out and just do it by myself.” PBS thought “Frontier House” would be Laura Ingalls Wilder come to life. What it got was 'Little Grouse on the Prairie....'

But it’s hard for the civics lessons to compete with a civil war. As the show moves through its six episodes, the Clunes and the Glenns become the Hatfields and the McCoys. The Clunes—at a disadvantage because they’re a family of six and they’re from Malibu—kvetch about hunger. The Glenns—a family of four from the log-cabin side of Tennessee—think the Clunes are wimps. 'They had beans. They had rice. That’s not starving,' Karen tells NEWSWEEK. 'What I saw in Montana was this spoiled family who was not getting the food they wanted.' The third family, Nate and Kristen Brooks, often get lost in the cross-fire. “We felt like we were in the middle,” says Nate. 'There was obviously some tension, but I’m sure that happened in the 1880s, too....'"

Six months after leaving the 'frontier,' the Clunes and Glenns still can’t stand each other. In an interview, Gordon Clune can’t say anything nice about Karen Glenn. 'There’s something scary there,' he says. 'There’s something very, very sad in her life.' Karen is still smarting about when the Clunes broke away to trade for food with some 21st-century neighbors. 'In the 1880s you couldn’t go across the fence to the modern world to satisfy your needs,' she says. Gordon defends himself: 'We traded for venison and root vegetables that would have existed at the time. That wasn’t so bad. We thought there was no other choice.' Karen begs to differ. 'There’s this one clip where they talk about using peanut butter for mouse bait,' she says. 'There was no peanut butter in 1883.' Perhaps. But on 'Frontier House,' there were plenty of nuts."

The show airs April 29 through May 1, and in Chicago WTTW is showing it from 8-10 p.m. I'm going to tape all of the episodes to watch with the kids!

What Israel Has Done (1) [Daypop Top 40]

God Names Next Chosen People; It's Jews Again.
'Oh Shit,' Say Jews. "Jews, whose troubled, 10,000-year term as God's 'chosen people' finally expired last night, woke up this morning to find that they had once again been hand-picked by the Almighty. Synagogues across the globe declared a day of mourning."

I don't know how much others get it, but this SatireWire.com update touches a bittersweet spot.

"The 13 million “never-marrieds” between 25 and 39 (of which I am one) are a demographic puzzlement. Most of what is known about us is what we’re not doing.Besides not getting married, we’re not staying in our jobs for long, not finding community among our neighbors, not joining our parent’s civic or political organizations, and not going to church all that often. So the question becomes this: If we’re spending a decade or longer after college not devoted to a family, skipping from job to job, and unwilling to don our fathers’ fezzes, what are we doing with this expanse of time and the energy of our relative youth? The popular slacker literature of the early and mid-90s concluded that we were doing a lot of moping – that is doing nothing, selfishly. I doubt it. I think all the assumptions about this demographic group are only glosses for the fact that when we don’t understand some change in society we tend to assume that everything we hold dear is about to go down the toilet.

I have another theory. I believe that in all the belly aching about recent generations avoiding of marriage, we have overlooked the social structure by which our puzzling behavior can be understood. What no one has yet explained is that while we identify ourselves as singles on surveys, we do not live our lives alone. We are primates after all and we require not only constant interaction with other humans but also a social structure that satisfies our need for membership in a group. To fill the growing gap of time we spend in between families, we have created a new type of community. I call these groups Urban Tribes....

While the genesis of the groups might be anything (college friendships, job acquaintances, the shared avocation), Urban Tribes evolve beyond their original focus and become the very center of our lives. In cities, where those of us between families often live alone and change jobs every couple of years, it is our Urban Tribe that provides the place where we celebrate our successes, mark the passage of time with rituals, create rules of behavior and feel protected by membership in a well-defined group. They are our secret for making the hustle of city life emotionally manageable. Single life in the city is no longer a phase that need be concluded quickly. With little fanfare, we’ve added a developmental stage to adulthood that comes before marriage – the tribe years.

The working title of my book is Urban Tribes of the "Never Marrieds" Secrets of Community from an Unlikely Source. I have a year to write it starting fall of 2001. To make it interesting and true I need your help. If what I described above sounds something like your life I’m hoping you’ll take some time to describe your group, either by answering some of these survey questions or by sending me an e-mail with stories of your tribe. Any e-mail addresses or contact information will be passed on to no one. The information you give me will be used as material for my book and this website." [Ethan Watters, via peterme]

Don't forget to read the comments on Peter's post!

NYT Random Login Generator

"Paste the address of a New York Times article, then click "Register and Go!" This is why I love the Internet. We all know everybody lies on registration forms anyway; this just automates the process. (And by "everyone", I mean 26.2% of Internet users in 1996, 51.4% in 1998, and you can extrapolate from there. And even if you didn't lie the first time, you sure as heck did after you got that new laptop, or changed jobs, or had a major hard drive crash, or whatever.)" [diveintomark]