In a recent literature review, the prevalence of asymptomatic atrial fibrillation was estimated to be between 11% and 43%While is well established that atrial fibrillation leads to a significantly greater risk for stroke, asymptomatic atrial fibrillation is also associated with specific CV and neurologic sequelae

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[going up] microemboli / micro-ischemic lesions; cognitive impairment; CHD mortality [going down] QOL, exercise capacity; general health

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In addition, electrical and physiologic remodeling associated with asymptomatic atrial fibrillation can adversely affect overall cardiac function, leading to persisent atrial fibrillation, ventricular dilation, and, ultimately, cardiomyopathy.The disease burden of asymptomatic atrial fibrillation is expressed not only in reduced patient QOL, but in an increase in hospital and patient monitoring costs.

Still, some war memorabilia remained in Karlsruhe. The former SS and Wehrmacht barracks now housed the American, French and Canadian occupation troops. There was a huge mound of debris in the city park near the zoo, a feature of nearly every German city. The rubble of war - bricks, cobblestones, stones and, no doubt, a few bones - had been collected and bulldozed into a free standing dune. This ugly mesa was as big around as a football stadium and looked down on every other natural feature in the area. In the spring, it sprouted the thin, pale, lime-colored grasses, scrub plants and bushes that are the pioneer plants of devastated areas.

At the center of the city was the devastated Altstadt, Karlsruhe’s old town. There are Altstadts at the heart of most German cities. Destroyed and rebuilt again and again after wars, floods, riots, fires and civil disasters, they retain their medieval feel no matter how recently reconstructed. This Altstadt still bore the marks of the war’s bombings. The old buildings were tottering, often just silhouetted skeletons haphazardly propped up. Others leaned crazily against each other, buttressed by flimsy scaffolding like the Vienna of The Third Man. Even the shakiest ruin was inhabited.

From the narrow streets, one could see dioramas of dissected rooms open to the elements and the inquisitive gazes of passersby. It was jarring to see the homey, kitsch floral wallpapers exposed to open air. Apartments and rooms were served by temporary exterior stairs that wound around these desiccated shells like a Gothic etching.

The Altstadt was off limits to GIs. Amis like me had to sneak into them to enjoy the carnal sins available there for less money and less hassle than in the “authorized” districts. The ban was due to the twin dangers of falling bricks and the Altstadt’s inhabitants themselves. For the most part, they were petty criminals, stateless refugees, squatters, fugitives, prostitutes and their agents, communists, students and artists. Basically, those who could afford to live only there.

The Altstadt had become my headquarters. I made a bee-line for it with my first pass. I knew where it was from the mimeographed warning letter issued by the Post Commander to all new assignees. It stressed the dangers (and penalties) for anyone caught within its bounds. If the MPs stopped me, I planned to speak only German to them. They’d leave me alone because they had no authority over the locals. It never occurred to MPs that a GI could speak colloquial German.

I had been born in Germany. My ancestors had lived in a small Hessian village for more than three hundred years. After Hitler came to power, the fact that we were Jewish made us decidedly unwelcome, and we fled to America. I was barely three years old.
In order to hang out in the Altstadt, I had disguised myself by wearing typical German clothes from the C&A department store in Frankfurt. This was ironic, since the local Germans would kill for American clothes; anything American was preferred to the clunky domestic fashions. My German outfit featured dark green, wide-wale corduroy pants and a gray felt Bavarian sports jacket. I covered my military haircut with a Navy watch cap that no GI would ever wear. The final touch was a Texas bolo tie. A fashion anomaly, contemporary German men had adopted this western US accessory. They didn’t realize that GIs wore them as a protest against the Army dress code that required some neckwear when in mufti off-base. The Germans thought that bolos were the latest American fashion statement. My deceptions functioned on several levels; the MPs assumed I was a “kraut” and never questioned me. I, on the other hand, seldom revealed that I was Jewish to the locals because I was wary of any residual anti-Semitism.
Thus camouflaged I became a regular at a cozy local Gasthaus, a café called zum Edelweiss just across the border in the off-limits zone. I was comfortable there, knew all the regulars and loved the creamy local brew. I seldom missed a Wednesday evening when they served fresh homemade liverwurst: two big, coarse, black-speckled grey sausages split open, warm and greasy, smothered with caramelized onions and topped with vinegary potato salad flecked with bacon. Liberally slathered with grainy mustard and washed down with swigs of that cold creamy Pilsner beer, the liverwurst surpassed anything on base and cost 2 deutsche marks, about half a dollar.

When I wasn’t eating liverwurst or the excellent egg bedecked natur schnitzel with spaetzle, I was sitting at the bar where I could see the door and get first dibs on any fraulein who might wander in. Despite my German clothes, the girls knew that I was an American, an ami. I had learned not to speak German to them. The girls who went out with GIs were by far the best looking, but were looked down upon by German civilians. Any girl who went out with GIs was considered a prostitute, which was essentially true. In self-defense, the girls rejected anything German, especially German men. Early on, when I had spoken German to them, they were confused. Was I German or American? So they had avoided me. Now, because I kept it secret that I spoke German, I could sit and listen to what they were saying about me. Eavesdropping in plain sight was quite an advantage.

It was from my vantage point at the bar that I fell in lust with Elsa the minute she walked in. My first impression was of a cloud of iridescent black curls flowing over a scarlet ribbon. The curls formed a frame for an oriental porcelain doll’s face with scarlet butterfly lips. She had a strong, straight nose, and sad, almond-shaped Egyptian eyes. She was in her twenties, a trifle plump and vulnerable-looking. I sensed she had secrets, and that, along with her availability, attracted me.

She sat down at a corner table, but before the waitress got there, I ambled over and offered to buy her a drink. She ordered an egg liqueur. When it arrived, she sipped it quickly and then ran her small, pink tongue around the bottom of the parfait glass, licking up the remains of the bright yellow syrup. Very sexy. She said that she was meeting her “friend” and wouldn’t be able to spend any time with me that evening, but before her friend arrived, we made a rendezvous for the next night. I was surprised when her “friend” turned out to be a German in his 40’s, tall and blond: an Aryan. Elsa introduced him as Horst and we shook hands. That brought me up short. Horst’s hand was the roughest, most calloused hand I had ever touched. I wondered if he had leprosy or some skin disease like sclera derma.

“My hand startles you,” Horst said in precise Oxford-accented English. “I have a photo finishing company. They are so rough from the burning of the chemicals.”
Elsa was quiet. When they left together after a few minutes, I asked Oscar, the bar’s owner, about them.

“Elsa is auf der strich [on the stroll]. She comes in once in a while.” Oscar told me, “Horst is either her pimp, her husband or her lover.” In postwar Germany there were all sorts of convenient relationships between all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. Nothing surprised me anymore. Especially after Pirmasens.

Some months before, I had picked up a girl who came from Pirmasens, a small, rural village about 15 klicks north of Karlsruhe. I had driven her home to a farmhouse in my second-hand Mercedes 170 and she had invited me in. By the light of a lantern, she led me to a primitive wooden box-bed in a darkened room. I took off my clothes and we made love under a huge feather quilt. In the morning, I woke up and looked around. I was in a peasant farm house. She was still asleep, but an older woman who turned out to be her mother was at a wood stove preparing breakfast. The mother saw I was awake and brought me a glass of apple juice. I got out of bed and dressed. She and her mother insisted that I sit and have breakfast with them. Her brother, a young man in his twenties, came in from outside and joined us at the table. Coffee, fresh eggs, thick bacon and black bread. It was bizarre, to say the least, but I went with the flow. When I left, I gave the mother some money and a few packs of Marlboros and drove, bemused, back to base. No one to whom I told the story, American or German, believed me. Such things just didn’t happen. It was too surreal.

Now I had met this beautiful woman who was undoubtedly a prostitute. She was with a strange, well-educated German with deformed hands who might have been her husband or her procurer. It intensified my sexual fantasy. I thought about nothing else all day at the Army Post Office unit where I worked until I finally got to zum Edelweiss that evening. Elsa arrived about twenty minutes after I did, looking as lovely as the night before, her body straining a trifle against her close fitting black lace dress. She did her egg liqueur thing again, licking the inside of the glass even more slowly. She told me that she was originally from Berlin, but was now living in the Altstadt. Her English was not very good, but, as usual, I didn’t tell her that I spoke German.

She worked as a secretary in a small government office that printed and distributed the decisions of the German Supreme Court in Karlsruhe. Like most Germans, she didn’t speak about the war. The Nazi years were a taboo topic and I knew not to ask about them. Occasionally, when I had established some trust and intimacy with a German who had lived through the war, he or she would open up a little and tell nightmare stories of terror, starvation, flight and the Wagnerian climax that marked the last days of the war. Of course, no one had been a Partei member.

After she had lapped up two more egg liqueurs and the blood was pounding in my ears, I proposed that we go to her place. She agreed and matter-of-factly named a price. No problem; I would have paid her ten times as much at that moment. She led me by the hand into the very heart of the Altstadt, down crooked streets that even I had avoided. We passed rats and feral cats and a yellow three-legged dog. Finally, we arrived at a particularly rickety ruin, but, rather than climbing the jury-built scaffold-like staircase, she guided me down a flight of stone steps into a dimly lit basement seraglio. It had a Gypsy air about it; Oriental rugs and Kilims covered the walls and floor. The entrance hall was defined by a cliché curtain of hanging glass beads. She lit some candles and a gas mantle, and offered me a glass of red wine. I lowered myself into a velvet arm chair and watched as she moved around the dim room. We chatted about my job in the Army Post Office and she asked me, wistfully, about New York and America. Again, I sensed a deep sadness in her. It only added to my heat. I got up, wrapped my arms about her, and we fell toward the small bed. It was covered with a red and black gypsy rose printed shawl that served as a bedspread. We undressed in the muffled gloom, and she gently satisfied my needs.

Afterwards, while she was stroking my chest, my heart jumped as if I had touched an exposed high tension line: in the dim light I saw a blue blur on the inside of her left forearm. Instantly I recognized it as the tattooed numbers from a concentration camp. I gasped, but said nothing. She hadn’t noticed my reaction. Was she a Gypsy, was she Jewish, a survivor, a DP, but still in Germany? Who was she really? My head was spinning. I kissed her, dressed quickly and left, after making a date to meet her on Saturday for a picnic in the park.

We met at the main gate near the zoo entrance. In the daylight she looked tired, but, if anything, even more beautiful. She put her arm through mine and we strolled past the rowboats on the small lake and followed the cobbled path around the brooding hill of rubble. It was an early, unseasonably warm spring. The winter-damp earth was steaming slightly as the sun warmed it and the slight breeze whistled lightly in our ears. Occasionally, I caught a whiff of the natural fertilizer that nearby farmers used. We spread the Army blanket I had brought on a small patch of grass and unwrapped and ate the crusty bread, hard sausages, local cheese and delicate Moselle wine that I carried in a military gas mask bag.

Then I put my head in her lap and closed my eyes. She laid her left arm over my chest and leaned back against a tree with her eyes half closed. I caressed her arm gently, casually pushing back the sleeve of her pink cardigan sweater until the number was revealed. She started, and jerked her arm away. I told her quietly in German, “Ich bin Jude.” [I’m Jewish.] I told her about my family, how we had escaped from Germany just before the war in 1937. As I spoke, her eyes brimmed with tears. She was silent, collecting her thoughts.

Then, slowly, she began to talk about herself. She spoke quietly, mechanically, in a flat voice, telling the story as if it were about someone else.

Her family had actually lived in Vienna. They were middle class Jews, not religious. Her father had been a typesetter at one of Vienna’s many newspapers. When the Anschluss, the annexation, by Hitler took place, they hadn’t been concerned; they were Austrians, assimilated. She was only eight and the horrors of the racial laws and the persecution had built up slowly, gradually. Then, as the war had started she and her parents had become state enemies. They were transported, separated, sent to different camps and would never see each other again. As a beautiful, nubile adolescent she discovered that her survival depended on her own resources, and her only resource was her sexuality. Just a teenager, she quickly learned that by pleasing her tormentors, she could survive, and even gain a few privileges. Eventually, she came under the protection of a young SS lieutenant who fell in love with her. He took her from the camp and hid her in his house for the duration of the war. He used her, obscenely and perversely. When the Russians came and liberated the camp, she and the lieutenant, now a captain, fled together to West Germany. The tables had turned. As an SS man, a Nazi, an officer at a konzentration lager, he was now being hunted and she was protecting and sustaining him. She earned money for their needs the only way she knew how, as they made their way slowly to the Western Zone dodging Russian denazification squads and living a fugitive existence. As story trickled out, I understood Horst’s calloused, chemically-abused hands: he was destroying his fingerprints.

Now Elsa became agitated. She must have realized what she had just told me. She had spoken aloud words she may never have consciously thought before, perhaps to the only Jew she had met in a dozen years. My mind was racing. Suddenly, I understood what she had had to do in order to survive. Her life now was a compound of guilt, gratitude and denial. She was bound to the man who had both saved and exploited her.

There was no number tattooed on my arm, but that was only because I had been lucky; if we hadn’t escaped when we did, we probably wouldn’t have survived. Now, I was back in this tormented land, with someone who had lived through the war and who had done what she had to in order to survive. In my mind I saw the skeletal images of the liberated survivors. Millions of people had suffered incomprehensible agonies Now she made me see that these had been real people, whose stories, unlike hers and mine, had ended in the camps.

Without another word she rose and left me sitting there.

I would never see her again.

My wife Supalak and I were on our way home, waiting for the D2 bus that would take us from Dupont Circle to our apartment in Glover Park.

There was a palpable sense that something had changed in the cool April air at the north entrance to the Dupont Circle metro escalator. Or, to be more precise, there was a larger sense of something missing.

There were some obvious clues - a bouquet of flowers pinioned to a lone, scraggly tree, itself encased within its city-box of sidewalk concrete. Other flowers had been stuck into the surrounding dirt like multicolored stalks of grass. Near the tree, occupying its own space, empty and significant, was a long fold-out table with a rash of signatures and scribbles. A message on the table implored people not to write anything bad about “my father.”

Supalak was the first to notice these clues.

“Ben, Ben … he’s dead! Baba is dead!” she called out as she ran toward me.

“He” was Sakhi Gulestan, the “Birdman of Dupont,” the turbaned, bearded and weather-lined stalwart who sold umbrellas, sunglasses, and scarves to the tourists and the forgetful commuters among the hustle and bustle of the city, rain or shine, the peddler of paraphernalia always present with a varying array of season-specific material.

All at once, this passing felt as large and strange as if a member of the family had died, a particularly mute yet memorable figure who occupied an almost daily presence in our lives. How many of these people do you come to know over periods of time wherever you live? They are part of an extended family, and we should honor them.

I had known about Gulestan since the late 90’s when I first came to DC and began commuting to Dupont Circle. He was always there at the north entrance when I headed up Connecticut Avenue in the morning, and was always packing things away as I headed back to the subway ride back to Takoma Park. He was so familiar by his presence and so “un-DC” (an Afghani man in full tribal dress amidst power-suits) that he inspired me in my writing for a DUCTS Trumpet Fiction piece about a reporter who makes up a false story about the merchant and is latter confronted by him and his wife.

We knew a lot more about Gulestan after we moved back to the city in 2006. Supalak gets all the credit for this. She broke the bubble of fantasy and began chatting with Gulestan, and at least one of his sons, in between her daily waits for the D2, and had even brought me over to introduce me. I didn’t bother to mention the fiction story to him. Perhaps I should have.

She was fascinated with his daily labors, the smile on his face, and the way that he seemed to easily converse with passersby. She also felt a strong connection to him simply as a fellow member of the “American immigrant club,” the club with no dues and yet all the pressures of language, culture, and expectation.

On that early April day, we knew only what we read on the table, and we headed home, a bit sad, wondering at details. We heard nothing for several days, but more flowers appeared, and people continued to add their sentiments to the table. Supalak wrote hers in Thai. Thankfully, the son’s request was honored.

A few days later, the table vanished and a bright yellow piece of paper appeared, wrapped with heavy masking tape around the tree, holding the yellow and purple flowers hard to the trunk.

“He was here for 25 years. He was known to some as Mohammed/Baba, and others as Gulistan. He was rich in heart even if poor in pocket and shared what he had with people and animals everyday. He passed away on March 29^th, 2008. He was loved. He was a light. He is dearly missed.”

The same week, the City Paper, the local weekly freebie known for its “Savage Love” sex advice column and street-level journalism, followed with an obituary, a full two-page spread of pictures shot by a local documentarian who had been following Gulestan.

We learned this from the obit. Gulestan had met his wife, an American, in Afghanistan, when she traveled there from Nepal. The couple emigrated to DC, in the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and he began selling items in Dupont in 1983, and had indeed been at the same location for over 25 years. In a city that prides itself on its constant turnover, he was a veritable anchor.

As a sign of his good character, he was known for what he gave as much as what he sold. In the evenings, he would walk about the local eateries and collect leftovers (especially bread) and then distribute it to his family, to the area homeless, and lastly feed the birds with it. In the article, Gulestan was quoted as saying that his time with the birds was his most sacred part of the day. In the end, he died quietly in his rented box truck, leaving behind a wife and several children. It was a very informal obituary, and it raised as many questions as it did answers, but it was also fitting in its style. The article said more with its collage of pictures of his daily activities than it did in words, but still managed to carry some poignant quotes, such as the following:

“There were points where Mohammed was feeding hundreds of people who had nothing,” says Tim, who didn’t give his last name and describes himself as a homeless veteran. “I can remember when I first met him when I came into this town in 1986. He said, ‘My friend, you’re hungry.’ He left for a minute, and he came back and fed me.”

Gulestan carried a larger sense of community with him, and lived with a kind of nobility in his corner of the city, helping others, raising his own family, and every day watching the workers move in and out of Dupont like some sort of choreographed dance.

When I reflect on his passing, I think of both the larger picture and small.

In the larger sense, I treasure the unnoticed in DC, the less-than-famous, the monuments and statues that you stumble upon, the smaller museums that exist in the shadow of the huge Smithsonian, and the good-natured Sakhi Gulestans that toil for so many years in obscurity among the self-promoting politicos and high-paid lobbyists who get all the ink.

In the smaller sense, I will miss seeing him, the colorful and lively presence he brought to Dupont Circle, and the chance that I finally had to separate fiction from fact. I think he deserves a statue, a plaque of some sorts to join the millions of others that are in the city, something small but elegant, which you may walk by and not notice, but then find one day like a gem, and marvel over.

A month later, grass has grown up to cover the flowers that once held sway at that lonely tree, but a black, plastic milk crate, a former stool for Gulestan, sits somewhat majestically amidst the green. The yellow note, sheathed in plastic, and topped by a circle of plastic, purple flowers, continues to hold strong against the traffic and rain.

The motivation?

Look at me.

In that case, six high-school girls assaulted a 16-year-old cheerleader as two male classmates filmed it. The idea was to post the video on YouTube.

There was the Arizona 14-year-old who set up a camera to film herself bashing a chair over the head of another girl, knocking her unconscious for her Web audience, real or imagined.

Three teenage girls in New York filmed themselves beating up a 13-year-old girl to post to YouTube, and MySpace.

A group of middle-schoolers, ages 12 to 14, assaulted a classmate in a parking lot, filming it for the Website Photobucket.

Look At Me.

It’s just the latest example of the increasingly run-amok mentality of the 2000s. The 1970s gave us the Me Generation. Welcome to the 2000s, the Look At Me Generation.

From celebrities who’ve done nothing but get themselves in front of as many cameras as possible (hello, Paris) to personal grooming (nice mohawk, dude) to style (it says WHAT on your butt?), the 35-and-under group seems to want nothing more than to be noticed. For any damn thing at all.

Consider television (yes, you have to). The top show of the decade, by far, is devoted to showing us … us, showing off. And if you think for a second that “American Idol” is a winner because it’s original or different, consider some of the other shows that have led the ratings in the past eight years: “Survivor,” “The Apprentice,” “The Bachelor,” “Big Brother,” “The Amazing Race” and “Fear Factor.”

LOOK at me.

What do they all have in common? You, or people like you, showing what morons they are in exchange for the chance to be seen. Oh, yes, there may be a carrot dangling from that stick — a recording contract or a cash prize — but how many winners are there compared to the number of wannabes auditioning for these shows each season? The real pull is the chance to make it to prime time, no matter what you have to do to get there. What’s more embarrassing, eating grubs or sucking up to The Donald? Name your abuse.

There have always been game shows that fed off the narcissistic and/or stupid. Remember “The Dating Game”? “The Newlywed Game”? Did anyone ever show even an ounce of talent on the show that provided “American Idol” with its framework, “The Gong Show”? No, but that didn’t stop them from auditioning.

But those shows were oddities. On them, the viewing public tuned in to see how dumb people would be willing to appear to make a buck. Today, such programs dominate the ratings and we tune in wishing it were us taking verbal backhands from Simon Cowell.

And if you can’t even make the cut for “The Biggest Loser,” maybe you can be a video star anyway. How much talent goes into an appearance in a “Girls Gone Wild” video. I can name two things that’ll get you there (no, not THOSE two things): timing; and a complete lack of shame.

The former is simply a question of being in the right place when the cameras start rolling. It’s all luck. But the latter is important here, because it’s common to all these endeavors, and its widespread existence is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Look at ME.

Thank Bill Clinton for that one. When the most famous man in the world can go on TV and flat out lie about having sex with an intern, then weasel out of it and continue to mug for the cameras, rather than step down in shame and skulk away quietly, what does that tell us? That the age of modesty and accountability is past. From now on, anything goes. The Bush administration has taken that to new heights, but so has a whole generation not involved in politics.

Not that Clinton did this all by himself. It’s been building for years. You could see it in the fashions inspired by Madonna (Really? Wearing your underwear on the outside is a good thing?) and the lyrics of hip-hop, which are often pure ego. It was a driving force in the exponential proliferation of tattoo and body-piercing shops. “Body art” isn’t an expression of individualism. Here’s a reality TV show concept for you: Let’s try to find the one remaining twentysomething woman out there who doesn’t have a small-of-the-back tattoo.
It’s all just another way of saying:

Look. At. Me.

Yes, television and other media have certainly aided and abetted our growing national narcissism, but as in many other areas, the Internet has exponentially increased the opportunities to show off.

It started with e-mail and list serves. No longer did the cost of stamps and the time spent duplicating letters keep you from reaching the masses. In one fell swoop, you could send your message to anyone - or any number of people - online. And what was one of the first things we all learned to send? Viral videos, of course. As soon as nerds and techies realized photos, then video, could be digitized and compressed, the Star Wars Kid was born.  (See it here).

According to Web legend (and who doesn’t believe any legend spawned by the Internet?), the geeky fat kid with the makeshift light sabre didn’t actually mean for anyone to see his self-shot masterpiece, but “friends” uploaded it to a Web site and the rest was history. Nevertheless, once people saw the kind of audience a bad video could attract, they were off and filming.

(By the way, the same happened in porn, with disastrous effects to the industry. Once America got a look at Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, couples everywhere realized they could film their own nasty selves, and not only could they watch it instead of paying for porn, hey, it might be a kick to post it online and let other people watch, too. And they have. So who rents porn videos anymore?)

But the Internet allows us to show off in far more ways than by reproducing amateur versions of Christy Canyon’s greatest hits. Bandwidth and memory advances have made it possible for anyone to create their own Web site, or to hook into sites that allow them to pour their own content into pages built on templates. And what is that content about?

The people posting it, of course. MySpace, FaceBook, and myriad chat and social networking sites are all about telling people what you like (or don’t), what you want (or don’t), and how many other people you’ve told so far.

And if networking sites don’t give you enough opportunity to spout off about yourself, start a blog, a vlog, or better yet, a podcast. The Internet is brimming with chances to call attention to yourself. It worked for Matt Drudge, Perez Hilton, Tila Tequila, and it could make you a star, too.

LOOK AT ME.

Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t it what we all want? To be noticed, acknowledged, confirmed? Isn’t that what this trend is all about? Validation? It seems as if more and more people are more and more concerned with their own agendas than with being a working part of a greater society.

Most people, whatever their personal needs and challenges, used to at least pay lip service to the idea of a common good. It’s what makes society work. People who put their own egos first were once called selfish or antisocial. Now they’re celebrated (We’re looking your way, Bill O’Reilly).

Could an entire generation be growing up lacking the vision, the ability to think through the logical implications of an “every man for himself” world?

Actually, it could. Consider again the Me Generation that came of age in the 1970s, the Baby Boomers. It’s their children who now constitute the Look At Me Generation. Celebrated as a collective group with a selfish, me-first attitude, the Boomers reached adulthood as the first generation raised on TV, the greatest dumber-down in history.

It makes perfect sense they would pamper and spoil their own kids, as extensions of themselves. And now, the Look At Me Generation has grown up with movies on demand (via the VCR and now, the DVD and DVR), video games, even more TV (via cable and satellite offerings), cell phones, specialty magazines for every taste and fetish, and, most importantly, the Internet - a medium through which they can reach anyone at any time.

The result? “Jackass,” “The Simple Life,” Judith Regan, sports stars with posses, attack-oriented talk radio, a culture in which people are famous primarily for being famous, karaoke, a new celebrity sex video every month and, yes, gang assaults perpetrated for no other reason than to show your friends (and strangers) the video.

All hope is not lost. Perhaps the trend has reached its zenith. With our nation at war in two countries (as of this writing) and our president waging war on truth, justice, the poor, the press and the English language, many young people today seem to be becoming more civic-minded.

Maybe it was 9/11, maybe the divisiveness of our political atmosphere, maybe a backlash against their peers who are staging elaborate wedding dances to film for YouTube, but whatever the reason, there seem to be a lot more environmentally conscious, ready-to-volunteer young people out there today.

But there’s another trend that’s also disconcerting; the increasingly graphic violence that passes for entertainment in our culture. From “Kill Bill” (a personal affront) to “Grand Theft Auto: Whatever” to Eminem, entertainment for our youth is more and more based on killing, maiming, raping, stealing and gang culture.
It does not bode well for the 2030s, time for the Are You Looking At Me? Generation.

sir, when it is cold in the desert
when, in the dripping abattoirs,
the sometime angels are with you…
nature will deflower
all arbitrary and huge acts
the precious, cornered, and delicious

This, with too much sunshine for November,
clutching coffee cups which make a mockery of scale.

This, an impulse which can be taken home
to the grey-building, Lemsip streets
to line the herbal-tea, double-duvet winter
and make it through
till spring.