On the University Bridge, I saw a group of spindly teenaged boys running light of the burdens manhood will confer on them. They were beautiful—lithe in their new skin and puppy muscles.

Here is where we are: Our laundry tangled and no one noticed until now.

At work with work to do and no means by which to do it, so I'm using the geriatric machine the students use to let loose some of the language that's piling up. The project has brought on a linguistic estrus and the words just flow now. Fragments of things that coagulate in my head are displaced to little slips of paper or are reabsorbed to be conjured in other sentences. It's best when the words are laid in neat, double-spaced rows that fill out the giant manuscript, however.

But I'm away from that for now, working at my other job.

Except not working.

Right.

Tacked on the door down the hall from my office is a copy of a Wall Street Journal article about a judge ordering Unocal (76 gas) to stand trial for alleged human-rights violations committed by the Myanmar government. Unocal and the Myanmar government (military and brutal, as expected) were joint-venture partners. Documents indicate that Unocal executives knew workers were slave laborers subject to imprisonment and execution.

It will be interesting to see where this goes. Of course, I'd like to see Unocal nailed. I'd like a precedent-setting trial that advanced other international labor rights causes. Punitive terms should make it cheaper for U.S. companies to ensure humane working conditions overseas than to face litigation.

I remember learning at Ewha about the Korean women who filed suit against their U.S. employer in the '60s (or the '70s—maybe I don't remember it that well). These were impoverished women who took menial factory jobs to support their childrens' educations. Byzantine local labor laws allowed the U.S. company to forgo installation of safety measures in the Korean factory. The women organized, filed suit, and managed to get the case heard in U.S court. It was the first of such cases, I remember learning. I don't think the women won.

What's amazing is that these women, uneducated and self-sacrificing (they reported placing little value on their bodies, as their bodies had already been used up by age and fecundity), pulled it together and fought the company all the way to the top. Of course, it helped that the abuses were so severe—daily nosebleeds from toxic fumes—they couldn't be ignored. We watched a video about their story, and it was inspiring.