Sunday in Fredericton

Well, it's been quite a week. I haven't had the time or energy to post, but, on a quiet Sunday morning, I thought I'd take a moment to say a little something about my adventure here...

I arrived on Tuesday evening and, having met up with another sociologist at the airport baggage claim, had a nice dinner before settling in at the UNB residence hall. I got up Wednesday morning and, sitting at the desk, turned to the left only to hear a loud "pop" in my left knee. I couldn't walk at all. I hopped to the car, hopped into the res life office, hopped out of the car at Shoppers Drug Mart. A guy helped me hop up the steps. A woman brought me a wheelchair - it's located in a clinic building - and I wheeled myself to the home care counter. I bought myself a pair of crutches and then, having consulted with P, drove myself to the hospital. Good thing I had rented an automatic. Thus began my first adventure with Canadian health care. I had planned to write a more detailed entry about it, but, as above, have been tired and busy.

In brief, I spent seven hours in the ER. But, unlike most of you, I will get to pay for it because I don't live here yet and NB has a three month waiting period. As much as I hate to say it, the experience was quite dreadful. After being checked in, I was offered no ice and finally asked for some water. Fortunately my angel-winged realtor showed up and went to get lunch from the hospital canteen. I was moved from the waiting room to one of the little curtained beds at 2:30 and waited in there until 4:30. I was ready to leave - I was in quite a state - and the nurse convinced me that I would be seen soon. The problem was that with triage, my injury not being life threatening or "dire," everyone kept getting prioritized ahead of me. I watched people come and go all day. Finally, around 5 pm - I had arrived at 10:30 - I saw the doctor. He was wonderful. Torn meniscus. Basically he confirmed what I suspected and confirmed what I would have done as treatment. I had gone because I was concerned that if I were wrong, ignoring it for a week could complicate the healing.

Now, as dreadful as my seven hours in the ER really was, in a way it was all worthwhile. Here's why. When I was getting checked I was asked, "Are you married?" I was able to say, simply, "Yes." It was really quite something. For three years I have answered that question with, "Yes, but it's not recognized here" - meaning the US. But, I was simply able to say, "Yes." She then asked for the name and contact info of my next of kin and when I gave P's info she asked for "relationship" and I said, "Uh, spouse, I guess." It was surreal. And, of course, even in little Fredericton, there was not a flicker of confusion, etc. It was really something...

So, I got to show up at the Wednesday evening opening reception on crutches. Nice.

I spent all day Thursday at the conference, had a nice dinner out with a couple of guys I'd met - one from Denver and one from Montreal who is moving here. Then, on Friday... crash!

Long story short - the appraisal on the plans for the house didn't come in high enough due to the extra cost of green building. I'm not going to go into the details except to say that we're now dealing with another lender and working on the "Plan B" (C?) for if that fails. One appraiser I know said, in essence, if you were doing this in five years, no problem. It's the penalty for being an early adopter. NB Power, the provinces, the feds, are offering all kinds of incentives for green retro-fits, green building, etc., but the banks haven't caught up. In the US, and apparently in some parts of Canada, "green mortgages" allow for the additional up front cost of green building, but not CIBC. So, I spent all day Friday with the builder, the (former) lender, the realtor, a new bank, etc. Stay tuned. But, heavens, if I encounter another road block...

In the good news category, my presentation on immigration went well; I located a storage unit for our stuff; and I got a PO box so we now have our first Canadian address. Yippee!

That's it for now. Just thought I'd check in. Oh, and my knee is improving dramatically. On Wednesday I couldn't put the slightest weight on that leg and today I can, carefully, actually walk crutch-free. And, it's sunny and dry! Things are looking up!

Hope, after all?

California ban on same-sex marriage struck down
www.cnn.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a much-anticipated ruling issued Thursday, the California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.

Several gay and lesbian couples, along with the city of San Francisco and gay rights groups, sued to overturn state laws allowing only marriages between a man and a woman.

"There can be no doubt that extending the designation of marriage to same-sex couples, rather than denying it to all couples, is the equal protection remedy that is most consistent with our state's general legislative policy and preference," said the 120-page ruling.

It said that the state law's language "limiting the designation of marriage to a 'union between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples."

With the ruling, California becomes the second state to allow same-sex couples to legally wed. Massachusetts adopted the practice in 2004, and couples don't need to be state residents to wed there.

Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Connecticut permit civil unions, while California has a domestic-partner registration law. More than a dozen other states give gay couples some legal rights.

Seven other jurisdictions around the world have legalized same-sex marriage: Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, South Africa and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec.

San Francisco officials in 2004 allowed same-sex couples in the city to wed, prompting a flood of applicants crowding the city hall clerk's office. The first couple to wed then was 80-year-old Phyllis Lyon and 83-year-old Dorothy Martin, lovers for 50 years.

"We have a right just like anyone else to get married to the person we want to get married to," Lyon said at the time.

One issue before the justices was whether San Francisco's laws carried legal weight when the rest of the state banned same-sex marriages. Gay rights advocates argued the state was violating their civil rights by limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. The state law in question is the Defense of Marriage Act, Proposition 22.

Oral arguments in the case in March lasted more than three hours, a sign of the political and legal issues at stake. Six cases were consolidated.

Groups saying they were promoting a pro-family agenda had vowed to fight a statewide law allowing same-sex marriage.

"The government should promote and encourage strong families," said Glen Lavy of the Alliance Defense Fund. "The voters realize that defining marriage as one man and one woman is important because the government should not, by design, deny a child both a mother and father."

An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is likely. The federal high court has never addressed the question of same-sex marriage.

Insanity

The New York Times
May 14, 2008

Italian’s Detention Illustrates Dangers Foreign Visitors Face
By Nina Bernstein

He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was “a totally Virginia girl,” as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington’s home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper.

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Mr. Salerno’s case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States — problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.

“We have a lot of government people here and lobbyists and lawyers and very educated, very savvy Washingtonians,” said Jim Cooper, Ms. Cooper’s father, a businessman, describing the reaction in his neighborhood, the Wessynton subdivision of Alexandria. “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”

Each year, thousands of would-be visitors from 27 so-called visa waiver countries are turned away when they present their passports, said Angelica De Cima, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, who said she could not discuss any individual case. In the last seven months, 3,300 people have been rejected and more than 8 million admitted, she said.

Though citizens of those nations do not need visas to enter the United States for as long as 90 days, their admission is up to the discretion of border agents. There are more than 60 grounds for finding someone inadmissible, including a hunch that the person plans to work or immigrate, or evidence of an overstay, however brief, on an earlier visit.

While those turned away are generally sent home on the next flight, “there are occasional circumstances which require further detention to review their cases,” Ms. De Cima said. And because such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.

Government officials have acknowledged that intensified security since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has sometimes led to the heavy-handed treatment of foreigners caught in a bureaucratic tangle or paperwork errors. But despite encouraging officers to resolve such cases quickly, excesses continue to come to light.

One recent case involved an Icelandic woman who was refused entry at Kennedy Airport because, a dozen years earlier, she had overstayed her visa by three weeks. The woman, Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, was deported Dec. 10 after what she described as 24 hours of interrogation and humiliating treatment — locked in a cell and barred from making phone calls. The Department of Homeland Security later issued a letter of regret.

In questioning Mr. Salerno, customs agents seemed to suspect that he intended to work here. Ms. Cooper, a copy editor for an educational publication, said she was in the airport lobby when an agent called to ask about Mr. Salerno’s income and why he visited so often.

The youngest son of a prosperous contractor in Calabria, Mr. Salerno helps out in his brother’s law firm in Rome and is able to visit the United States several times a year. Neighbors said he joined volunteers in refurbishing the Wessynton recreation center in 2006, then became one of its summer attractions, kicking a soccer ball with the kids and playing tennis with the adults.

“He just is a very open, fun and helpful guy,” said Christopher M. Porter, a resident of Wessynton.

Ms. Cooper said that at the airport, when she begged to know what was happening to Mr. Salerno, an agent told her, “You know, he should try spending a little more time in his own country.”

Another agent eventually told her to go home because Mr. Salerno was being detained as an asylum-seeker.

“The border patrol officer said to my face that Domenico said he would be killed if he went back to Italy,” she recalled, voicing incredulity that, in his halting English, he could express such a thought. “Also, who on earth would ever seek asylum from Italy?”

Twelve hours later, when Mr. Salerno was granted a five-minute phone call, he called Ms. Cooper and denied saying anything of the kind. Instead, he said, the asylum story seemed to be retaliation for his insisting on speaking to his embassy.

After being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was taken to the Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Va., where he ended up in a barracks with 75 other men, including asylum-seekers who told him they had been waiting a year.

Ten days after he landed in Washington, Mr. Salerno was still incarcerated, despite efforts by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and two former immigration prosecutors hired by the Coopers.

“He’s just really scared,” Ms. Cooper said in an interview last Thursday. “He asked me if Virginia has the death penalty.”

Luis Paoli, a lawyer hired by the Coopers, said there was no limit on detention while waiting for an asylum interview. But even after officials agreed the asylum issue had been a mistake, Mr. Salerno was not released.

“Now an innocent European, who has never broken any laws, committed any crimes, or overstayed his visa, is being held in a county jail,” Ms. Cooper wrote in an e-mail message to The New York Times last Wednesday, prompting a reporter’s inquiries.

Less than 24 hours later, immigration officials intervened and arranged to deliver Mr. Salerno to Dulles, where last Friday he flew to Rome. Ms. Cooper, who said she was now considering moving to Italy, was by his side.

Mr. Salerno was still shaken. “In America,” he said, “there are so many good people and beautiful people that don’t deserve to be showing these terrible things to the world.”

Food

Greetings from Tucson where it will, no doubt, be in the low 90s this afternoon...

Although most of my energy is going into wrapping up the semester and getting ready to leave for Canada - one month from today!! - I'm reading a couple of interesting books I wanted to post about. The first is Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, co-authored with her husband, Steven L. Hopp, and eldest daughter, Camille Kingsolver." Of course if you read the book you'll agree that I would be remiss if I didn't mention younger daughter Lily, an active participant in the process.

Kingsolver, who lived in Tucson, for about 25 years, moved with her family to Virginia in 2004. They had spent summers there for a number of years but decide to make the move permanent, partly for reasons of family, partly because the land would enable them to be more self-sufficient in terms of gardening, animal raising, etc.

As P and I make the effort to do more buying only in season, local, organic, talk to 7YO about why it's important, etc. and talk about being able to start a garden in NB, this book was a wonderful read. I find her writing just wonderful, the stories inspiring, and the recipes, well, I look forward to trying some of them!

The second is called, "The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old Macdonald's Farm, and Still Eat Meat," by Catherine Friend. I picked this up yesterday while at the bookstore with my mother - our idea of a great Mother's Day trek. Anyway, as someone who hasn't eaten lamb or veal in decades and can count on one hand the number of times I've had a hamburger in the last five years, but knows that we may eat more meat if we're trying to eat local, I was intrigued by the premise. Seeing that she farms in Minnesota with her partner of over twenty years, Melissa, made it a done deal. I started it last night and highly recommend it. I don't know that I could ever pat a lamb on it's head and have it for supper that Sunday, but it's well worth reading and thinking about. This morning I checked out her blog, Farm Tales. Even if these issues don't interest you, you ought to take a look just for the photographs!

I've also started, but not yet inished, Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals." And, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation." Schlosser's book was the required first year student summer reading text a number of years ago and it what got me thinking - and acting - more intentionally about food.

So, there you have it. That's what I'm reading.

Quick Update

We finally got the amendment removing the contingency in the purchase agreement. But, we're still waiting on a letter from the buyer's bank so that we can break ground in New Brunswick.

After reading this article in yesterday's Pioneer Press, I'm even more thrilled to have a purchase agreement of any kind. Still holding my breath until closing, but thrilled nonetheless.

And, while they're talking about flurries here tonight, at least we're not on the St. John where Fredericton is dealing with this:


None of the folks I know are in the areas outside of town that are so badly affected. Thank goodness.

And, then there are those who make the very best of a bad situation:

Tomorrow I get to attend the Living Green Expo. I've been waiting for months! It is just wonderful!

Other than that it's crashing toward finals, grading, thinking about packing... and counting the days!