This is NOT what the Islamic Center will look like.

I don’t know.  I wasn’t excited about the news this week, good or bad.  There was news, sure.  Levi Johnston is seeking public office in Wasilla, so I’m not claiming it was a quiet week.  Not at all.  Primary elections continue to add color to the picture in November.  A flight attendant named Steven Slater gave new meaning to the phrase “You can’t fire me, I quit!” with his profanity laced tirade against a rude JetBlue passenger.  Stuff happened but like congress, a vacation mentality has set in.  Regardless…

There’s a bit of a “my dick is bigger than yours” charade going on near the Korean peninsula.  If you recall, back in March, North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship that killed 46 soldiers.  They won’t claim responsibility but the facts are the facts.  In retaliation, sanctions were put in place and military exercises in the Sea of Japan commenced in July, involving the U.S. and South Korea.  Then last Sunday, North Korea seized a South Korean fishing boat that may have accidentally drifted into their exclusive economic zone.  The following day, the North followed up by firing 100 rounds of artillery into the waters off North Korea’s west coast.  It would be silly if it weren’t so scary.  North Korea has nuclear weapons that they’ve threatened to use should they be properly provoked, and their leader is no less frighteningly ridiculous than Iran’s Ahmadinejad.  Why doesn’t Kim Jong Il get as much press?  North Korea for that matter?  When Bush claimed, after no WMD were ever found in Iraq, that our real goal there was to get rid of Saddam Hussein because of what he was doing to his people, many wondered why we weren’t as benevolently concerned about the North Koreans.  I still wonder, even if I suspect what the reason might be.

Mia Farrow could’ve called Naomi Campbell a big, fat liar while testifying in the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor except that Campbell is a model and has probably never weighed much more than I did at birth.  Campbell claims she didn’t know where certain rough, “blood” diamonds came from when they were delivered to her hotel room in Pretoria after a dinner with Nelson Mandela, which Taylor and Farrow also attended.  Regardless, the trial continues in The Hague and will hopefully come to a conclusion that puts Taylor away for life.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say Taylor is a bad, bad man.

The World Health Organization has claimed this week that the H1N1 virus, better known as the swine flu (oink), is officially quiescent.  Good news for all of us, and an easy opportunity for me to use the word “quiescent”.

Many on the losing side of Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision overturning Prop. 8 still have their panties in a bunch over the idea of gays getting married.  One of their latest arguments is that Walker should have recused himself before trial because he’s homosexual.  I can’t write a better case about how wrong this approach is than the one Jon W. Davidson wrote in the Los Angeles Times on Friday.  Read it.

In business, the nation’s top five for-profit health insurers compensated their top executives a lot of money last year – to the tune of $200 million.  All but one received raises.  The poor guy at Aetna, Ron Williams, went from a paycheck of $24.4 million in ’08 to a mere $18.2 million in ’09.  This, while trying to hit customers with double-digit premium increases because of the rising cost of health care.  Ugh.

Looks like the smog in Moscow is letting up and temperatures have fallen one or two degrees.  Rain has helped clear the air and extinguish the wildfires near the capital as Muscovites toss their face masks in the air, a la Mary Tyler Moore.  You’re gonna make it after all.

President Obama said today that he supports the right of Muslims to build a mosque and Islamic Center two blocks from Ground Zero.  The right is up in arms, naturally, but they have absolutely no argument to stand behind.  I mentioned last week in my weekly wrap-up that I, too, supported their rights but thought further away might be a better idea.  In my mind, as I’m sure in the minds of so many others, was a gold-domed symbol of a religion I don’t understand, in the shadow of the Twin Towers site.  Intellectually, I know it is only a radical, extreme form of Islam that was involved on 9/11 and so I was hardly righteous in my feelings about the subject.  God bless Jon Stewart and his gang who put me to shame.  The Islamic Center will be built in a non-descript storefront and denizens of Manhattan don’t care.  Obama absolutely must support the right of religious freedom in this country, period.  End of story.

Actress Patricia Neal died Sunday from lung cancer at the age of 84.  My fond memory of her was from the Walton’s introduction in a 1971 television movie “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.”  G’night John-Boy.  G’night Patricia.

Producer David L. Wolper, of “Roots” fame, died Tuesday at the age of 82.  Where were you when Kunta Kinte changed the course of television and riveted us for twelve hours over consecutive nights?

Former Alaska senator Ted Stevens died Monday in a plane crash near Bristol Bay, Alaska.  He was 86.  Though controversy surrounded the end of his political career, he was known as a man who thought of Alaska first and everything else second.  He was a leading advocate for Alaska statehood in what year?  Right.  1959.  His first wife, Ann, also died in a plane crash, in 1978.

Let’s see what the coming week brings.

There are few things in life I enjoy more than rain.  I love the sound of it, the smell of it, the way it cleans the air in Los Angeles.  When I lived in New York City, I marveled at the suddenness of a summer thunderstorm, of how floodgates would open in the afternoon and cease predictably thirty minutes later, allowing an al fresco evening to go forward as planned.  I miss autumn in the east, but I really, really miss thunderstorms.

If you live in Southern California, you know that from May to October, there will be no rain.  Sure, anomalies exist.  From year to year, the weather might surprise us in June with an errant sprinkle or two, but we won’t see honest precipitation, the kind you can measure, until well into October, if then.  Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but I’m just a little bit sad during those five months of aridness and sunshine.  My soul belongs near a peat bog, or in a dark bar lit by lanterns.  I come in from the rain and sit by the fire.  That’s what makes sense to me.

Oddly, the meteorological anomaly came this afternoon, July 10^th, where I live in Los Angeles.  After weather warm enough for the girls to put up a snow cone and lemonade stand, clouds moved in and it started to rain.  I heard it first, drops on the plastic pool cover gathered in a heap near the deep end, and then saw it, on the surface of the water.  By the time it stopped, there were actual puddles on our front deck and the girls danced around under umbrellas.  And I thought of Goldie.

She went to camp today.  We kissed her good-bye as she and a few friends joined dozens of strangers headed up to the mountains for a week of activities without their parents.  There’s no communication, save for an emergency.  I don’t think talking to my eleven-year-old about the unusual weather qualified.  But when she finished packing last night, I asked if she decided to put in my bulky raincoat and she answered that the hoodie from school would do just fine.  “It’s not gonna rain.  It didn’t last year,” she confidently told me.

Now, I’m not concerned that Goldie got wet today.  But the rain.  I love the rain.  I’ve brainwashed my children to love the rain.  When it rains, it’s like they have a shiny new toy.  And as their mother, I want to share in the joy.  It took several moments for me to realize that I couldn’t share this today with Goldie.  She was busy sharing it with her friends and camp counselors.  And I was hit with a massive realization that just a few short years from now, when she goes off to college, this will be my reality every day.

In addition to plot elements in “Toy Story 3” and “The Kids Are All Right”, my sister got on the kids-going-away-to-college emotional bandwagon by getting weepy the other day after a text from her daughter, interning in New York City for the summer.  It’s not subtle, these “messages” I’m getting to drink up every moment with my children while I can because soon they will not live with me, even if it leaves me drunk as a skunk.  I get it.  I get it!  I GET IT!

I missed Goldie today, all because of a little, unexpected rainstorm.  Tomorrow, I might find her bed still unmade, just like she left it before she went to camp.  Could be a tough week.