If Japan pays attention to US-China relations, China also knows to pay attention to Japan-Korea relations. This is from the Nikkei:

Chinese newspapers such as The China Daily and The Beijing Times reported on 23 April that China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency has evaluated the agreement between Japan and South Korea revolving around maritime exploration in the area around Takeshima (Korean: Tokuto) as “a result that is to Japan’s advantage.”

Xinhua’s commentary about this round of discussions indicated that, while it appeared that both sides had made concessions, Japan had “snatched up all the rights to take the lead.” It explained that Japan had squeezed Korea by suddenly announcing that it was going to begin maritime exploration and putting its surveying ships on standby, which backed the ROK into a corner.

East Asian governments never seem to tire of accusing each other of being sly and underhanded. What’s hilarious in this case, of course, is that the PRC itself has just caused more friction with Japan by putting a blockade around one of the disputed natural gas fields in the East China Sea. (To close the information Moebius Strip, let’s cite a Korean news source on that one.) Maybe that’s okay because it wasn’t sudden?

Anyway, I’ve been very slack about posting about Japan news lately, so I don’t think I mentioned that Tokyo had, indeed, announced that it was going to start seabed exploration around Takeshima. The dispute that, of course, arose with the ROK was resolved last week:

Japan and South Korea reached an agreement Saturday that says if Tokyo cancels a planned maritime survey near the Takeshima islets, Seoul will not propose naming seafloor topography around the disputed islets at an international conference in June.

Administrative Vice Foreign Minister Shotaro Yachi and Yu Myung Hwan, South Korean first vice minister for foreign affairs and trade, reached the agreement to settle the row over the islets in Seoul after their two-day meeting that started Friday.

Japan will not conduct, at least for the time being, the planned survey strongly opposed by South Korea. In exchange, Seoul gave up a plan to give Korean-language names to the seafloor topography.

So we can look forward to yet more mutual recriminations in the future.

Here‘s how the East China Sea (not to be confused with the East Sea, which is what Koreans call the Sea of J***n) situation stood a week ago:

China has banned ship traffic around a disputed gas field in the East China Sea that is claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo as Chinese workers lay pipelines and cables to tap its resources, Japanese media reported Sunday.

The move is certain to spur protests from the Japanese government, which has been deadlocked in negotiations with China over rights to the undersea energy deposits. The Pinghu gas field lies in an area that straddles a median line that Japan considers the border between the two countries’ territorial claims.

China, however, makes a wider territorial claim that envelopes the entire field.

Chinese maritime authorities have posted a notice that all unauthorized ship traffic will be banned in the waters around the Pinghu field from March 1 to Sept. 30, Kyodo News agency and Fuji Television Network reported.

…

Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both Japan and China have signed, coastal countries can claim an economic zone extending 370 kilometers from their shores. The disputed reserves lie within both countries’ claims, and the United Nations has until May 2009 to rule on the matter.

Bear in mind that no one really knows whether there’s a bountiful supply of natural gas under there–the major issue is that the country whose exploration and development are more advanced stands a better chance of winning when the UN rules, so it’s in the best interests of each disputant to find out as soon as possible.

I hadn’t gone to Omotesando Hills, the latest gargantuan Mori Building project, until this past weekend. Atsushi likes architecture and always has a memorably arch comment about something or other whenever we visit a new place together, so I wanted the first time I saw the place to be with him.

I like Roppongi Hills much more than I’d expected to when it opened. It’s kind of confusing at first, and the architecture is on the anonymous upscale-mall side, but that’s part of what makes it adaptable to all its uses. I have a friend or two in the apartments, and they (the apartments, not my friends) are utterly underwhelming in terms of aesthetics or amenities, apart from the views. But the address has major big-time cachet, and it’s certainly a location that’s easy to get around from.

I haven’t seen the apartments at Omotesando Hills, and the site is smaller and wedged in very tightly among existing buildings, so I don’t think it was conceived of as its own little village as Roppongi Hills was. The main building, which has most of the stores and restaurants, is the kind of structure that architecture critics have spasms of ecstasy over, presumably because they’ll never have to shop there. (And the building was designed by Tadao Ando, so the accolades were probably phoned in even before the groundbreaking ceremony.) The place is claustrophobic and dark; when we got to the top level, I half-expected the ceiling to be dripping with limey water and have sleeping bats hanging from it. And they had this atonal electro-xylophone music playing, loudly, on the PA system–really distracting.

Otherwise, Tokyo’s been doing a lot to remind me why I love living here lately. The weather over the last week has been completely schizo; there was a wonderful, chilly rainstorm–just coming down in sheets–on Tuesday night. The neon and drably colored midnight buildings always look better with a slick of rainwater, and the mist made the cranes and other construction equipment for the new Meiji Avenue subway line look like dinosaurs. The next day was blindingly clear, but sunny in that spring way, and not in the pummel-you-to-the-sidewalk way it will be four months from now. Since then we’ve had one or two cold nights–I’m betting there are going to be a lot of people getting sick right about now because it’s impossible to know whether you’re dressing properly for the weather right now–but for the most part it’s very comfortable.

Atsushi will be home for Golden Week (the first week of May), and we’ll have to celebrate his birthday then even though it’s a few days early. He already knows he’s getting an iPod. He seemed kind of lukewarm about having one…until I showed him my photo library. That did it. Atsushi–I’ve mentioned this, right?–takes pictures of anything and everything when we go on vacation. It’s a cute quirk, but it means a WHOLE LOT of image files. I think he’s pretty excited at the prospect of having them all live somewhere portable.

Of course, I didn’t tell him about the iPod-related annoyances he’ll also be contending with. Seriously, guys at Apple, no seamless play between tracks on albums? Here is what you need to do: Go up to San Francisco. Find yourself a disco queen with an iPod. Ask him how much he likes having gaps between the tracks on, say, Bad Girls .

Then duck.

Whenever there’s an update, I hope against hope it’ll include seamless play. But unless I’ve missed something, no such luck. And trying to cheat by using the fade-out-fade-in function does NOT help. Sigh.

And then there are the remote controls. The suckitude quotient on both of those I’ve owned has been oddly high for a company that’s made its reputation on user-friendliness. The one I used with my old Mini was kind of cool-looking–until you actually pressed any of the buttons, after which the mirror finish was totally smudged and gross. (And that’s my experience as a clean-freak homosexual, mind you. I shudder to think what happened in the hands of the average teenager.) The buttons were also jammed in close together, so it was very easy to misfire and end up jumping forward a track when you were just trying to turn the volume up. The radio remote I have now doesn’t have that problem, but the alligator clip is hinged on the left, which means that when you fasten it to a bag strap, the control pad is angled away from you if you’re right-handed. Kind of awkward. Also, the clip has no gripping power at all. It’s so weak I’ve been thinking about giving it vitamin E supplements. In Tokyo, people are always brushing up against you to get off the train or cut in front of you to a department store entrance or what have you, and the damned thing is constantly sliding off.

Hmm. Anything else to complain about while I have the floor? I guess not really. The bank holiday means that Atsushi will be coming home for the better (in both senses of the word) part of a week. And later in May, a bunch of us will be getting together in New York for a college buddy’s wedding, including some very close friends I haven’t seen in a few years. (Tomorrow would probably be a good time to start looking for a present, actually.) Hope everyone else is enjoying the weekend.

You can bet that when the US and the PRC have a high-level meeting, we hear all about it here in Japan. The top story in the Nikkei‘s evening edition was “Failure to connect on concrete issues at US-China Meeting.” The information about the meeting itself was basically the same as what we’re seeing in the English-language media:

Hu sat down with President Bush on Thursday for what both sides described as constructive talks despite a lack of movement in differences over the Chinese currency or on how to resolve nuclear disputes with Iran and North Korea.

In a dinner speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, Hu acknowledged “differences and even frictions” in U.S.-China relations. But the Chinese leader said he and Bush agreed to take steps to move forward to a more constructive and cooperative relationship.

“I certainly look forward to a future China-U.S. relationship that is more stable, more mature and developed on a sounder track,” Hu said in a question-and-answer session after his speech.

Prime Minister Koizumi’s take has been posted as a quickie:

Prime Minister Koizumi spoke to the press corps around noon on 21 April about the US-China summit, at which no material progress was made on issues such as DPRK nuclear development and yuan revaluation [the original says “revolution”–SRK]: “Nations have their respective ways of thinking. They will not necessarily agree on everything.” Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe spoke to a press conference about the valuation of the yuan. “What’s desirable is the kind of flexibility that reflects the fundamentals of the Chinese economy,” he indicated.

Ooh, speaking of reflecting economic realities, the potential problems with Japan Post privatization are getting more play as the holding company’s operations are gathering steam for real. The FTC is not pleased. Japan Post’s advantages over entrants into its markets have been discussed in more detail before, but the Asahi‘s summary homes in on some of the major problems with mail delivery specifically:

The Fair Trade Commission took shots at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s vaunted postal privatization project, saying the plan in its current form will give the behemoth Japan Post an unfair advantage over private-sector rivals.

In a report released Friday, the anti-monopoly watchdog pointed out a number of items that needed a review, from Japan Post’s vast delivery network to parking spaces.

…

But a number of companies that have entered the business are limited to deliveries during certain time frames and at certain fees. That is because companies intending to start regular mail delivery services are required to set up a huge number of postal boxes and ensure uniform services in all corners of the country.

But many companies cannot afford to do so.

The FTC’s report said Japan Post will have a huge advantage over private companies if it retains its monopoly over ordinary mail delivery services and enters other fields, such as international deliveries of parcels and other items, as planned.

Under the watered-down postal privatization bills passed last year, Japan Post can operate postal and financial services under a government-funded holding company. The government is to gradually decrease the level of its funding.

The FTC’s report said current regulations, such as companies ensuring uniform services all over Japan, must be abolished to allow newcomers to start regular mail deliveries.

The report also said parcel delivery companies and international distributors should be allowed to use, for a fee, Japan Post’s postal delivery network, which covers all parts of the country, after privatization.

Meryl Yourish (via Instapundit) has another post up about suicide bombings–as in, how they work. Even if you’ve already read up on the topic, she’s got some good, if disturbing, reminders of what it means when the news reports “critical injuries” in a suicide bombing in Israel. The comments thread also provides some extremely dark amusement: You will be relieved to hear that while Palestinian terrorists embed nails, nuts, and ball bearings in their bombs to maximize casualties, sometimes use plastic pieces instead because they can’t be detected by X-rays at the hospital, and source their projectiles from “metal shops” that pretend to be dedicated to serving legitimate civilian markets, there is no conclusive evidence that they are soaking bomb components in rat poison to increase hemorrhaging.

Whew.

Nice to have your faith in humanity restored, huh?

I got a similar feeling, as always, from reading through some of the reactions to Monday’s attack on behalf of the Palestinians:

We have never allowed ourselves to justify any operation that targets civilians, any civilians. But every time Palestinians or Israelis face mass murder as a result of systematic Israeli terrorism, and Palestinians react with anger, despair and humiliation, we hold the Israeli leadership responsible, because it insists on occupying the Palestinian people’s lands and on attacking them every day, killing their children, bringing resident’s houses down on their heads, destroying trees and fields right in front of the eyes of the miserable farmers, closing crossings, destroying the economy and killing the hopes of the Palestinians, big or small.

I realize it’s easy to talk this way as an American, but still…don’t these people ever get just the tiniest bit embarrassed at the way their leaders and defenders are always playing the pity card? After decades being swaddled in foreign aid and dandled on the UN’s knee, is it unrealistic to expect the Palestinians to be resourceful enough to find some market niche to exploit and build some infrastructure? Even if they only wanted to expand their economy so they could lay up a stock of real weapons for a showdown with Israel, at least they wouldn’t have to use every second of global media airtime they get to talk about how pathetic they are.

Japan will freeze some of its aid to the Palestinians as a reaction to the Hamas victory in the elections:

The government, in a move that aligns it with the US and the EU, which have announced cessations in aid, aims to force a reversal of Hamas’s policy of armed struggle [with Israel].

The aid cessation will be limited to that which would have gone to new projects to build social capital and infrastructure; the plan is to continue to respond to requests from the Palestinians for humanitarian aid, such as food.

The article mentions Ministry of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso, who usually has something fabulously undiplomatic to say about this kind of thing. No such luck this time, unfortunately.

On a related matter (and for those who’ve managed not to see it linked yet), Jonathan Rauch’s latest National Journal column is reproduced in Reason On-line. It’s about what the T in WOT should be understood to mean. His recommendation, which synthesizes approaches in a few new scholarly works:

Jihadism is not a tactic, like terrorism, or a temperament, like radicalism or extremism. It is not a political pathology like Stalinism, a mental pathology like paranoia, or a social pathology like poverty. Rather, it is a religious ideology, and the religion it is associated with is Islam.

…

No single definition prevails, but here is a good one: Jihadism engages in or supports the use of force to expand the rule of Islamic law. In other words, it is violent Islamic imperialism. It stands, as one scholar put it 90 years ago, for “the extension by force of arms of the authority of the Muslim state.”

Viewing Jihadism as the enemy could make it easier to confront its religious element squarely without seeming to implicate all of Islam. I’m not sure using the word would work quite as Rauch seems to think–even the much-talked-about moderate Muslims could be somewhat miffed by outsiders who try to tell them what one of the central concepts of their faith should mean. But the term certainly gives more focus to our own side of the struggle than “terror.”

It pays to diversify, apparently. Indications are now that Hidetsugu Aneha not only falsified earthquake resistance data for buildings but also fraudulently lent his name and credentials to an unqualified designer…who used them to falsify earthquake resistance data on buildings he designed:

Investigators believe the designer, who did not have an architect’s license, asked Aneha to lend his name and used Aneha’s seal to stamp construction documents he submitted to the municipal government.

In return for lending his name, Aneha allegedly received about 20 percent of the design fees paid by the real estate company–about 10 million yen–from the designer, the sources said.

Using Aneha’s name, the designer drew blueprints for nine buildings, including condos, and five wooden houses. Seismic data for six of them were fabricated, the sources said.

Aneha wasn’t the only party to branch out into more than one form of fraud, says the Asahi:

Police on Monday questioned executives of Kimura Construction Co. on suspicion the company, embroiled in the scandal over fake quake-resistance reports, had falsified financial statements for several years.

…

Under the construction industry law, companies that undertake public works projects are required to submit documents that objectively show their business conditions, performances and other factors to the central and prefectural governments.

Those companies are then ranked based on assessments of their financial conditions and other factors. The scale of public works projects those companies can bid on depends on their rankings.

And let’s not leave out Huser, the other entity that’s seen the greatest gains in infamy since the scandal broke:

According to police and other sources, Ojima had a meeting Oct. 27 last year with Aneha and the president of the private inspection company, eHomes Ltd., at Huser’s main office in Tokyo’s Marunouchi district.

…

The eHomes president said he could not “issue building inspection certificates for four buildings that had yet to be completed.”

But, according to sources, Ojima argued, “I think we can somehow manage the situation by applying anti-quake reinforcing and vibration-control methods.”

…

The day after the meeting, Huser accepted payments from residents who bought units in the Grand Stage Fujisawa and started procedures for them to move in.

“When I heard from former architect Aneha that he had ‘reduced’ figures, I knew he meant he reduced (the buildings’) resistance against seismic forces,” Ojima told The Asahi Shimbun. “But I never knew that he had reduced those figures by 70 to 80 percent.”

The Grand Stage Fujisawa has only 15 percent of the quake-resistance strength required under the Building Standards Law, meaning that it could crumble in a moderately strong earthquake.

The Aneha scandal isn’t the only somewhat-encouraging sign of a new interest in accountability. This Mainichi English report says that Mitsubishi Motors, defective vehicles from which have been implicated in a parade of fatal accidents over the last dozen or so years, has been ordered to pay damages to the mother of a woman who was killed by a wheel that came off a moving truck in 2002. It also, unusually even for English articles in the Japanese press, contains background helpful for those who don’t live here:

“Mitsubishi Motors can afford to pay 5.5 million yen [US $50 thousand-ish–SRK] without feeling an ounce of pain,” Aoki said in a telephone interview. “The legal system must work to provide preventive measures.”

Aoki said Japan’s system for keeping companies in check was so outdated victims of such accidents are usually awarded even less than the damages in Tuesday’s ruling.

Mitsubishi Motors said it will abide by the ruling and apologized to Okamoto’s family.

“We will do our utmost as a company to regain trust, strengthen compliance measures and vow to prevent any recurrence,” the company said in a statement.

The ideas of consumer rights and corporate responsibility are still new in Japan, a conformist, harmony-loving society in which conflicts are avoided and often settled behind the scenes.

Japan’s first product liability law was passed only in 1994, and damage suits are relatively rare. Companies are rarely required to pay more than a token amount. Even when convicted of criminal wrongdoing, executives of companies are generally handed lenient sentences with no prison terms.

Does it get more obscene than covering up defects in vehicles and houses used by trusting people? Well, how about if your racket is to screw them out of their life savings?

Excessive lending has pushed an increasing number of borrowers to bankruptcy or forced them to give up their home or other assets to repay their debts.

The FSA concluded administrative punishments should be imposed against such lending practices after many vicious cases surfaced at Aiful Corp.

The FSA on Friday ordered the major consumer loan company to suspend operations at all 1,900 of its outlets for three to 25 days as punishment for overly aggressive debt-collection tactics and other problems.

The lack of lender liability protection has been an ongoing problem in Japan; given the increase in the percent of aging people who need financial services but don’t really understand how they work, the FSA’s sense of mission is not a moment too soon.

Atsushi was coming home this weekend, so Friday I’d planned to turn in early. But a dear friend had suddenly decided to pack up and go back to his home country, so it would be one of my last chances to see him, and work had been pretty intense over the last week; so I ended up out for a little while. It turned out to be a wise decision. For the first time in a few weeks, I spent an entire night out with the boys when it was just fun–no tear-wiping or advice-giving. You know how things seem to go in cycles wherein the lives of all the people you know get way complicated all at once? It’s not that you can blame anyone (except the fickle, duplicitous guys who tend to be involved in many cases); it’s just what happens. Friday night I was able to ramp down from big brother mode a little and just have a matey good time, and it made it much easier not to attack Atsushi with a litany of frustrations the moment he came in the door.

IKEA is opening a store in the Tokyo area–Funabashi, the first city I stayed in when I arrived in Japan nearly ten years ago, actually. Anyway, for publicity, the company has an exhibit of model rooms in installation boxes along one of the boulevards in Aoyama. Atsushi is a total furniture queen. Not a decorating queen, mind you, just furniture itself. He likes to buy it and then kind of plunk it in the apartment where it seems to make sense and forget about it. I’m one of those people who have to try a new piece in every conceivable position before I leave it sit.

Additionally, furniture was one of our major flirtation props when we were first getting together. He’d just bought the apartment and was moving out of a furnished company dorm room, so there was a lot to buy and arrange. It was the most natural thing in the world for me to throw lines like “Call me if you need help with anything; I only live a few stops away, and, you know, American guys are good at DIY stuff.” As a literal offer, it was complete malarkey. I’m really not bad with stuff around the house–though living in modular-plastic-box Japan for ten years has made me forget a lot–but he was moving into a brand-new building and having everything delivered and installed by Nippon Express. There wasn’t anything to help out with, and we both knew it. But it served as a demonstration of interest, and looking at home furnishings became a staple date activity for us over the first few months. So yesterday was kind of a sweet reminder of that, even if the rooms themselves were, as one might have expected, ridiculously unlivable-looking.

And we got to spend Sunday morning eating breakfast and watching the political yak shows and stuff. This morning’s ration of “and stuff” was a fascinating special about public works boondoggles in Hokkaido. It was a Dogs and Demons classic. If none of the information was really new–I mean, I hadn’t been aware of what was happening in those specific villages, but redundant roads and dams are old stories in Japan–it was still entertainingly presented.

I especially liked the new federal highway planned to run through a village of 5000 in the north-central region of the island. Not only are there already a tangled skein of little-used federal, prefectural, and municipal roadways criss-crossing the area–seriously, this must be the most readily accessible isolated village in human history–but the new road takes the long way around to its coastal destination. The reporter interviewed several truckers, who chuckled that of course they weren’t going to use it because there was already a truck-worthy shortcut to the same city that wasn’t a toll road.

Residents of, I think, Sapporo next talked about snow-plowing, which is performed by three separate fleets of public teams. You have your federal team for the federal roads, your prefectural team for the prefectural roads, and your municipal team for the municipal roads. I was only listening with one ear at this point, but the problem seems to be that the local roads people actually need to use to get out of their houses are plowed after the federal snow removal teams have sailed through, scrupulously taking care of their territory only. So there are both redundancies and non-performance problems.

We had to take off when they started talking about the gajillion unnecessary dams and retaining walls that shackle the rivers. The point that was made–again a known one, but presented in detail–was that the Hokkaido prefectural government had submitted to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport a list of projects that should be shifted to local jurisdiction…and was curtly rebuffed (譲渡が困難 was the phrase highlighted in the document, IIRC) because the projects were deemed to be in the national interest. And, the reporter pointed out, it’s in the budgetary interest of the MLIT to keep as many projects under its own management as possible.

So…bureaucratic self-centeredness: bad. Mischievous, non-nurturing good time with friends: good. Atsushi here for weekend: good. Atsushi having to go back to Kyushu again: bad. I think I made out well on balance, especially since my street is never under three feet of snow. Hope everyone else had a good weekend, too.

Joel at Far Outliers has a post up about the Japanese view of spirituality as mediated through language. As always, it’s an interesting and well-chosen passage.

Around January-ish, there were reports that the ruling coalition was haggling over the definition of patriotism in new education legislation. The two parties have reached an agreement:

On 12 April, the LDP and Komeito reached a broad agreement in connection with proposed revisions to the Fundamental Law of Education, which determines the basic concepts that frame education. The parties agreed on a course by which the expression of “patriotism,” which had been a focal point [for debate], was that [the educational system] “cultivates an attitude by which, along with loving our nation and homeland, [a student] respects other nations and serves the development of peace for the international community.” After an official decision is made on 13 April, the government is on track to submit the proposal to the Diet as early as mid-April.

Why so much ink spilled over this particular negotiation? You never want to freight one of these little episodes with too much Significance; nevertheless, I think the above story does encapsulate some of the broad-brush problems Japan has been encountering in the last decade and a half or so. Is there supposed to be a shift in attitude toward Japan’s resident Chinese and Koreans? Would the educational system change in ways that would encourage children not just to “make contact with” other cultures but actually to immerse themselves in them, even at risk of becoming a little less Japanese? And what about the possibility of allowing more immigration? The point here is not to fantasize that thorny issues could be solved or micro-managed through a change of phrasing in a federal education policy. It’s just to point out that people pay attention because they know that the question of patriotism in the public schools touches on issues that go far beyond just what teachers and textbooks say in the classrooms.

Added five seconds later: It’s also worth noting this part, from the same Nikkei article:

The Fundamental Education Law currently in effect was ratified in 1947. The government and ruling coalition originally looked into revising it based on indications that “it has not responded to changing times.”

In this PC era, you respond to changing times by vaguely invoking the “international community,” I guess.

That’s sad. June Pointer has just died of cancer.

The Pointer Sisters were utterly charming in a way that’s nearly impossible to conceive of now. Just about everything they released had some element of randiness in it, but it was good-natured, sweet-tempered randiness. They delivered the line “Jump for my love” as “Make the effort–I’m worth it,” not as “You’re my slave–now act like it.” Try to imagine that from, say, Destiny’s Child. Pop divas nowadays, especially on the R&B end of the spectrum, have a way of careening between unassailably hard and drippily vulnerable. (And yes, I’m aware that, much as I continue to admire her, Madonna had a lot to do with ushering in that state of affairs–at least the former part.) The Pointer Sisters challenged their men without being cynical or…what’s a good word?…flinty, maybe. They teased, but they never taunted.

And the outfits! Good grief. Unfortunately, there’s a certain kind of gay man with unresolved woman issues who likes to laugh at women who try to do glam and don’t get it right. Whether the Pointers were wise to that in any explicit way, I don’t know; but they were able to amuse you with their looks without making you want to laugh at them. They were three all-American girls having a good time playing dress-up with as many shiny things as they could throw on at a time. There was no pretension to puncture. Who could resist their sense of fun?

Especially when the singles it accompanied were so great. (This, dear children, was back when a pleasing melody was considered as important as a catchy rhythm track.) The Pointer Sisters had gusto, they seemed to be enjoying themselves, and they were in on the diva joke without overworking the irony. They were never going to be the most technically accomplished, the most android-beautiful, the best-selling pop stars. But one of the great things about America is that you’re not condemned to the same life as the hometown folks if you’re not born with the best connections or the best talent or the best bone structure. You’re allowed to pack up your very good-ness and see how far it will take you when spiked with aspiration. The Pointer Sisters used their resources to give a lot of people a lot of joy. It’s good to know that June had two of her sisters with her when she died. RIP.