mad mad mega super (I [heart]) uber-props to Time

so here's to Time magazine's POTY: People of the Year. for those of you who need to dig your heads out of whatever it is that is so engrossing as to render you ignorant in the midst of a mass American trend toward awareness of and concern for global issues (aside--for instance, the people who put the Kashmir Quake on page 8B of the Buffalo News--end aside), Time's People of the Year award went to U2's Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates for their three-pronged assault on world health and poverty issues.

so, right next to yet another "I'm-Bono-can-you-hear-the-theme-music?-Strike-a-serious-thoughtful-pose!" slew of the ever-camera-aware (and ever-wearing-a-different-set-of-flamboyant-shades) U2 frontman's pictures are Bill and Melinda Gates. And (thank God for a break from Bono's studied meaningful glances, good for pushing AIDS initiatives AND selling iPods) Bill and Melinda have this wonderful expression on their faces, one I recognize from long experience with my homestay partner Mike.

It's the look of completely futile curiosity as the western mind tries to build bridges during catastrophic cross-cultural shifts: it pretty much played constantly on Mike's face (and, as I'm sure he can attest, rather dramatically on mine) as we grappled with inadequate language skills, exciteable interpreters, physical exhaustion, emotional bombardment, and massive non-parities. and, of course, poverty.

In retrospect, it's a charming look, and Mike's was probably a lot more composed and patient and less prone to vacant stares than mine. But I got to watch him, and not me, so he gets the bad press. At any rate, there's the capitalist megabillionnaire who has little badges that you can wear in his house so that the house knows where you are and where you are going and adjusts the lights accordingly, taking into account the time of day to soften or brighten things up and makes sure your selection of music follows you from room to room. And I've heard he has a "trampoline room..."

So there's Gates in a mudbrick house in India with that loopy look in his eyes, trying to figure out what the interpreter is saying and asking questions about land ownership and inheritance and local economic flows and governance peculiarities, scrunching his eyes together and trying to figure out what happens where and how those effects ripple through an entirely different, and much more lively third-world system. And Melinda's sitting beside him trying to explain with that patient look in her eyes, and their travelling slacks are wrinkled and they flew in just a few hours ago. on the private jet...

Go Bill. and props to Time for an issue half-devoted to some really excellent things that people, from billionnaires to Catholic priests to New Orleans scuba divers to Indonesia guys without last names, are doing in awful situations.