Various states of undress

New Year's Revolutions

2012-01-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

I resolve this year to take more chances as opportunities come up. There have been too many times when I didn't take an opportunity because I was too afraid or because I wanted things to be just so. I waited so long without making a decision that the opportunity was lost. I have missed out on the kind of opportunities that I'd been waiting for for a long time, chances to make a difference in the world, relationships that would have made me happy, choices that would have saved me money.

I also resolve to get a handle on my social life, which is a brutish entity apparently separate from myself, because the two of us are in a constant battle. I have learned that my shyness, anxiety, and chronic loneliness is so extreme that it interferes with my ability to make new friends. I have an even more difficult time growing close friendships, which I can count on one hand. The rest of the world has access to deep, meaningful relationships and I'm trying to communicate in Morse code. I'm taking steps to learn some skills that have broken down over the years as I came to expect rejection, and some that I never had in the first place.

On that note, I'm also learning how to distinguish between realistic friendships and ones that I have built up in my head, and how to let the superficial ones go. I don't want to be anyone's friend because they pity me, and I don't want people to lead me on. I think I'm a pretty awesome person, and I want my real friends to think I'm awesome too, not weird, not creepy, not a burden. I've nearly buried all those "out of sight, out of mind" friendships, those "he's/she's not into you if he/he isn't calling you" friendships. I want to spent my time on people who identify with me, not waste my time on people who would rather be somewhere else.

Here's to a new year.

Project 50 Restart: June

2011-07-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

"Looking for Alaska" by John Green
"Looking for Alaska" is about Miles, a boy who moves, in his junior year, to a boarding school in Alabama and into a culture of have and have nots, pranks, and plenty of vice. Now that I think about it, I'm sure that there was just the same amount of vice among students at my high school in rural Oregon, but I was a naive good girl, so I knew nothing about it. Miles meets and falls in love with a beautiful, wild and crazy, but untouchable girl named Alaska (she picked the name herself). They spend a lot of time alone together because Alaska doesn't want to go home for holidays. Along with Miles' roommate, "the Colonel," their friend Takumi, and Lara, the girl that Alaska chooses to be Miles' girlfriend, they have a good time pulling pranks and talking about famous last words.
The first part of the book has an ominous "# of days before" countdown, so you know something big is coming. I won't say what it is, but I cried, just a little, and not many books can make me cry.
From there, the book turned into something similar to Paper Towns, with a mystery to solve, and it was only then that I saw the similarities between Alaska and Margo in the first half of the book. Both are amazing yet wounded girls, making best friends with the nerdy boy. I found Alaska a little bit cheesy and forced sometimes, especially her claims of militant feminism, while the boys define her by her insatiable appetite for sex.
I think the book gets its strength from is base around Miles' World Religions class and its relation to his fascination with famous last words. It's this this that makes the novel not just a romp of high school hedonism and trajedy, but depth and inspiration and encouragment for a young adult reader to think about more than just what they want out of life. B

"Judgement of the Judoon" by Colin Brake
This Doctor Who novel features the Tenth Doctor on his own. It's got a brain teasing plot, but it got a little bit thin in places on its representation of Tennant's Doctor. It played a little too much on the "lone alien explorer" bit. I thought that the sudden humanish transformation of the Judoon guard's personality was a little bit weak too. C-

"Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth" by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson is in trouble again. He and his friends have to battle monsters and tricksters through the infamous Labyrinth to find its inventor, Daedalus and find a way to defeat Luke, the half-blood camper who's allied himself with the Titans threatening to bring down Olympus. He gets in a bit of a mix with his friend Annabeth when he asks a gifted mortal girl to join their quest. The ending didn't end like I thought it would, but it did end exactly like it should. B+

"Martian Time-Slip" by Phillip K. Dick
This story reminded me a little bit of the Martian Chronicles, but not enough for me to hate it for that. Its fractured plot that jumps back and forth between several characters gives the novel about a time when 1/6th of the human population has schizophrenia its own fractured feeling. Arnie Kott, a big boss in the Mars black market, subscribes to a school that says that schizophrenics have pre-cognition, and he wants one of these fortune-tellers on his payroll. He chooses an autistic orphan boy who doesn't communicate, and tells his machine repairman to create a system that would allow him to tell the future to those who would use it. His theory is that autistic people operate on a faster timeline than other humans, and that normal speed communication goes by too fast for them to understand. I can't tell the rest without ruining the plot, but I found the book and the way it addressed mental ability absolutely fascinating. A-

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by JK Rowling
I adore this book, just for Gilderoy Lockheart. He's so flawlessly over the top, I cheer everytime he shows up. I think the reactions from his fellow teachers are the best because they're so UNCOMFORTABLE! It's the third time I've read it, and I still laugh my head off. A

"The Larion Senators: Eldarn Sequence Book 3" by Robert Scott and Jay Gordon
I thought that all was lost for Steven Taylor and Mark Jenkins after "Lessek's Key," but there was enough hope for one more book. Except that it was really awkward. Mark's bits were half in an inescapable dreamworld, and half about killing people. Steven Taylor gets nerdy with math, and Hannah has awkward pity sex with someone else. Why is sex always out of nowhere in these books? I was mildly disappointed with most of the book, with just enough intrigue and magic to keep me going. C

Project 50 Restart: May

2011-06-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

“Bagombo Snuff Box” by Kurt Vonnegut
This is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories which had previously been released in various magazines. The introduction, an ode to the bygone days of magazine fiction, is as worth reading as the stories themselves. It’s a good variety, with some stories ending quite pleasantly, but most ending in that state of fallen discontent that is the common experience of being human. There were three stories about the same man, a self-centered band teacher who cared about his own goals rather than the lives of his students, and got his comeuppance every time. A+

“Les Miserables, Volume 1” by Victor Hugo
Although Hugo can get a bit wordy, this was a wonderful book. He really takes the time to craft characters and events, waiting for just the right moment for it to all come together. I knew enough about the story to watch him build up the life of the priest, then use him for one moment of grace. It’s a short moment of biblical proportions, and the theme of redemption and turning from evil keeps coming up. Hugo describes Paris with such affection that I’m considering going there again, even though it didn’t treat me right the first two times. Here’s hoping I can find the second rest of the book. I think there’s a British conspiracy against it on account of Waterloo… A-

“The Two Towers” by J.R.R. Tolkien
It took me a long time to get through the second book in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. It reminded me of Harry Potter and the Extended Camping Trip, I mean Deathly Hallows. How many times can you describe the troupe bedding down for the night and trading off on watch? The fellowship is thoroughly separated now: Merry and Pippin are captured by orcs, Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas meet up with the Riders of Rohan, and Sam Gamgee faithfully follows Mr. Frodo on the trek to Mordor. There were a couple of highlights in the long, dense, repetitive text. My favorite part was where we get to meet the Ents, a tree-like race that drink with their feet and care for Merry and Pippin after their escape from the orcs. And of course, anything with Gollum tends to liven the story up a bit. C+

“The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss
This book was recommended by the president of the Harry Potter Alliance as the next big thing in fantasy. It starts in an inn where the barkeeper is a famous magician in hiding, so depressed by his losses in life that he refuses to claim his identity. A traveling scribe recognizes him, and convinces to tell his real life’s story, the truth as opposed to the fables that everyone tells about Kvothe the Bloodless. Kote (Kvothe) finally consents, and most of the rest of the book is told from his point of view, starting with his childhood as part of a kind of traveling gypsy family. He learns a bit of magic (and shows a lot of talent) from an old arcanist who joins their troop, whose last advice before leaving the troop is that Kvothe to go to the University to become a real arcanist. Kvothe longs to know the names of things, the secret names that put them under his control. Terrible events take Kvothe’s family from him, and he spends several years roughing it in the big city before pulling himself together and attending University, which reminded me a bit of Harry Potter and a bit of the Edge Chronicles. The story carries on to the point where Kvothe is apprenticed to the Master Namer of the University. There is a love story throughout, which was as frustrating to me as a reader as it was to Kvothe, who can’t manage to keep her. I just don’t see what could have been so special about this woman who clearly didn’t give a care about him. I would like to read the rest of the trilogy, but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to find the other books. This one was hard enough to find in a bookstore. A-

“Dambuster” by Robert Radcliffe
The title of this book stood out to me, because my grandpa, a Lancaster bomber pilot, mentioned it as the title of a movie when he was telling me all he remembered about Lancs. Dam busters are the popular title of the RAF crews who flew special missions to destroy key dams in Germany during WWII. This book is a novel, but features a lot of technical explanations about just how difficult this kind of mission was, from the size, shape, and casing of the bomb that they needed to use, to the extremely low, straight flying they had to master in order to get just the right angle. If the wings tipped just a tiny bit, the plane would skim the water and the whole crew could perish in a crash. Despite my hardline stance against war, I was interested in finding out about the planes that my grandpa flew. I had a couple of problems with the storytelling though. Periodically, Radcliffe will stop the story and give a running total of who had died and how they died and how many crews were left, which got repetitive. The story centered around a pilot who had had a tryst with a girl as a teenager, who had his child and disappeared from his life at the pressure of her family. They reunite just as the dam buster mission is getting ready. The thing is, their story is never finished. The pilot is captured, then escapes, and his love interest knows that he’s alive, but the novel ends with another list of the dead rather than their reunion. Could have been better. C+

“Relative Experience” by various authors
This book is a collection of essays by Quaker parents about parenting and Quakerism and where the two meet. It was published in 1994, so it is a bit odd to read about parents raising their children to support nuclear disarmament… it seemed a little bit 1960s, but I guess the Quaker peace witness is that important that the message carries on. It’s good to read how the Quaker view of peace and non-violenve forms the discipline of Quaker parents, an internal battle that I’m sure most parents experience, but these had a clear doctrine to keep them at peace. I got it from the Quaker Center library where I’ve been attending because I had been thinking a lot about being a parent and just wanted to read something by parents. B

“The Book of Rubbish Ideas”
I’m trying to read books which will get me into an Earth-saving mindset, so I won’t have to keep reading the same things over and over, that they will just be second nature. This book encourages readers to think about the waste that comes from the things that they buy, where it came from, where it goes, and how long it takes for it to go away. Plastic is bad, people. The author goes through the house room by room and gives tips on how to reduce household waste in each. She has some pretty creative ideas on what to do with the rubbish as well. B

“How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything” by Mike Berners-Lee
This is a list, from smallest to largest, of the carbon footprint of our choices for electronics, food, transportation, clothing, and recycling. Some things were obvious, like that locally grown organic food in season was low-impact. Air-freighted out of season produce can have the impact of several transatlantic flights. Heavy stuff. His statistics are not always exact. Tracing and measuring all the ways that a product can impact the environment can be difficult, and there are several places where the author says that he just couldn’t be bothered to track everything, which was a bit off-putting. But I think he achieves his goal to give readers a “carbon instinct,” figuring out just how much their extra effort to make eco-changes matters in the big scheme of things. B+

Project 50 Restart: April

2011-05-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

"I, Claudius" by Robert Graves
I got this book to take with me on my holiday to Mallorca, where Graves wrote the book. It's a retelling of Roman history from the point of view of crippled, stuttering Claudius. While I love a good unreliable narrator--historian Claudius presents "only the facts"--I wish I'd had another book to read. If I wasn't so bored on my vaction, I probably wouldn't have finished it, as it is very repetitive. C

"The Surgeon of Crowthorne: a tale of murder, mystery, and the Oxford English Dictionary" by Simon Winchester
I think all English majors have a nerdy affection for the OED. When we were set loose on OED Online, we often forgot our projects and spent nights pouring over the origins of our favorite words. Simon Winchester is a bit of a sensationalist historian (I couldn't get through his book on Krakatoa) but the tale of a criminally insane man and his contribution to the most prestigious work on the English language wrapped me up. I think we all have a little fascination with madness and insane asylums... As well as a history of the OED, this piece of Victorian history shows the ways that the world was changing regarding treatment of mental illness during the years that Dr. Minor was at Crowthorne. A-

"A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village" by Lemony Snickett
This episode has the Baudelaire siblings chasing a vague clue in search of their friends, the Quagmire triplets. With no willing relatives to be their guardians, a number of towns have signed on to the axiom, "It takes a village to raise a child" and the Baudelairs chose the custody of the village of V.F.D. The clues in this book are particularly clever and even as an adult, I really enjoyed playing detective along with the children. Of course, the ending isn't perfect, and the Baudelaires flee to... A-

"A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Hostile Hospital" by Lemony Snickett
Thsi book takes an unexpected turn from the mystery of the Quagmires to the mystery of the fire that killed the Baudelaire parents and just what the name "Snickett" has to do with it. He's becoming my favorite unreliable narrator. The hospital houses the worlds most counterintuitive filing system and is frequented by Volunteers Fighting Disease, who force heart shaped balloons on patients and ignore their actual diseases. Dark humor at its best. A-

"The Frugal Life" by Piper Terrett
Faced with the prospect of living as a poor college student like I never have before, I got this book in hopes of discovering some cheapskate tips that I didn't know before. I didn't, really. Some things didn't apply to my college life because it's a UK author. Some things didn't apply because I'm a vegetarian. It did bring up some ideas that I hadn't really thought of before, like foraging in the woods for food (proceed with caution: ONLY IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING) and it does have some good tips for eating well on the cheap. However, I'm used to living without extravagance, so not a lot of things in this book were new to me. B-

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" by JK Rowling
I told myself that I would reread these while I was in England, and with 3 months to go, I'd better get started. Starting with the first book again puts me back in that state of 11 year old wonder like Harry experiences when Hagrid tells him that he is a wizard. I forget about those iconic details from the first book, like the flying keys and potions test guarding the Philosopher's Stone. It still makes me wonder how powerful the teachers must be if even 11 year old first years can pass the tests... A

Project 50 Restart: March

2011-04-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly two months since I finished some of these books. Good thing I wrote down the reviews by hand then instead of now.

"The Eyre Affair" by jasper Fforde
I was given this book for Christmas, with a note that said "to be enjoyed in peace and quiet." I didn't manage to accomplish that , but I did read a lot of it during a day of 7 hours on trains. The novel is a literary detective story, set in an alternate 1985 where literature is such a big deal to the mainstream that there is a special branch of government intelligence to investigate literary crimes. One of these literary criminals plans to change the literary world by stepping into Jane Eyre and taking the heroine hostage.
I found that the actual plot took a backseat to the scathing literary humor. For example, my favorite part was when the main character goes out with her ex to see Richard III...performed in the style of Rocky Horror Show, with the audience shouting out lines and putting on sunglasses and dressing in costume. Ridiculous names like Braxton Hicks and Jack Schitt just add to the hilarity. It's great for the literary buff or ex English major. A

"Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
This was a read treat to read. Gaiman maintains a high fantasy effect not only by the story (half-Faerie boy goes in search of a fallen star to win the girl of his dreams) but by sticking to flawless high fantasy language. Reading it was like rolling around in magic and possibility. The only thing that I found difficult about it was having to follow three interwoven (but oh so masterfully woven) story lines, but the book was short enough that they came together quite nicely. A

"Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
I started reading this because it was a request by my partner in a reading craft swap. It's a complex but humorous story about the Apocalypse. Even though it was written by two authors, it's not really obvious where one stops and the other starts. I did feel that the book climaxed too early and left a lot of fussing around at the end. Mm, well, at least their later works were OK. B-

"The Sign of Four" by Arthur Conan Doyle
This was the second Holmes novel written by Conan Doyle. It begins (and ends) with Holmes in a depressed and drugged state, the dramatic opposite of his manic behavior when on a case. In walks Mary Morstan, who needs help solving the mystery of her long lost father. Someone has been sending her single pearls for some time, but it's unclear whether it is out of goodwill or as a threat. Somewhat awkwardly, Watson instantly falls for the woman, and spends the rest of the novel mooning over her. Holmes manages to pull together enough random clues to form the real story, involving India, prison, treasure, and murder. I loved the beginning and the end, and the rest of the story kind of paled in comparison, and still had the "after the fact" tell-all trope that is in other Holmes stories. B

"Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes" by Albert Jack
We learn and cheerfully recite nursery rhymes as children and teach them to the next generation, never worrying about what they mean. But many of these poems and songs have history, some political, some medical, and some far too gruesome for children. This book is exhaustive. It covers a huge number of rhymes and cross references them to others that are connected by theme. i recommend this book to anyone interested in history or children's literature. A

My job is painful

2011-04-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

Augh! I've been threading a loom with linen thread that is really rough. It's meant to be for linen placemats. But it's so rough and tough that in tying up the end of the warp to the stick, pretty much the last step before the resident starts weaving, (as seen in this picture)I wore small but really painful blisters on the outsides of my pinkies and the inside of my pointer fingers. I'm very happy working in the weavery three days a week, but it does hurt sometimes!

Project 50 Restart: February

2011-03-19T11:59:00.001-07:00

Mockingjay by Susanne Collins
I didn’t like the other books in this series, but I REALLY didn’t like this one. It’s hard to get behind a heroine who always makes the wrong moral choice. Katniss and Gale fight to lead the resistance and Peeta is supposed to have been brainwashed by the Capitol to hate Katniss with a murderous passion. I just didn’t buy any of it. The ending was the worst, with key people dying indiscriminately, and then after all the horrors, “love conquers all” and they live fairly happily ever after. Honestly, it was weak as a story before this book, but Mockingjay was proper pitiful. D-

Dubliners by James Joyce
God, it’s good to read something literary for a change. I’d been reading such simple YA fiction for so long that it took me a while to get my brain used to the language and keep on the look out for metaphors. Dubliners is a collectipon of short stories (set in Dublin, of course) so it’s easy to pick up, read one, and get a whole narrative in 20 minutes. What I love about Dubliners is it’s romantic but depressing reality. None of the characters really end up getting what they hope for and the stories end with this delicious post-modern sadness that makes you feel like you’ve read something that matters instead of “good fun.” A-

Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
This is the first Holmes story which was a big hit for ACD after he sold the rights to the only publisher who would take it. It stirs something expectant inside to read about Holmes and Watson’s first meeting, knowing the volumes of stories that come after. I’m beginning to see the pattern in these novels, where Holmes solves the story with apparently little proof, then we get the backstory, in this case, set in the American West, that gives all the evidence. I liked this one better than Valley of Death. B+

Vox by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
This is not a book in the series that you can pick up without having read the previous book, “The Last of the Sky Pirates.” Ook Barkwater manages to return to Sanctaphrax, having been captured as a slave. He finds a number of bizarre shady characters in service to Vor Verlix, the once powerful most High Academe, driven mad with revenge for the goblins, shrykes, and Guardians of Night who drove him to his pitiable state. The Librarian Knights hatch a plan to escape their hiding pace in the sewer, which gives a chapter or two of intense action, but overall, I felt like the book was lacking structure as a whole story and leaning too much on the reader’s previous experience with the Edge Chronicles Series. C+

The Stealers of Dreams by Steve Lyons
This doctor Who novel features the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack Harkness. The author really captures Nine’s personality to a T. I can see Christopher Eccleston’s performance throughout the whole book. The trio land on a planet with a number for a name and a police force that institutionalizes purveyors of fiction. Writing groups operate in secret because stories are considered highly dangerous. Those who indulge eventually go “fantasy crazy” and lose touch with reality. The book is expertly crafted with a plot twist at the end that I totally didn’t see coming. Fantastic! A-

Off beat mama

2011-02-25T12:01:00.000-08:00

I think a lot about being a mother. A lot more than I talk about out loud or than other people probably think I do from my appearance and personality. I've wanted to be a mom since at least five years old (I also wanted to be an astronaut and a doctor, but that's a different blog post) and at 26, my biological clock is ticking louder than Big Ben. And I don't just want to be a mom; I want a huge family, maybe five kids.
Two things threaten my natural motherhood: the fact that I haven't had so much as a date in 5 years and a hormonal condition called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome of which infertility is a common symptom. Even before my diagnosis, I've been pretty comfortable with the idea of adoption, you know, since I want five kids and don't really want to overpopulate the world. I don't really care that much about being a wife anymore, although it would be really nice to have a love life to go along with my family. I am more and more interested in single-parent adoption.
I don't talk about adoption all that much because people get weird about it. My own mother only brings up the problems that our adoptive family friends have had. My condition doesn't give a promising future for IV fertilization, and I don't feel right about it anyway, not with all the parent-less children out there for whom even one parent would be better than aging out of foster care.
I worry about reception from my family. I worry that my parents would not think of my children as their real grandchildren. I worry that all they would try to do is talk me out of it instead of supporting me and preparing themselves just like they would as if I were pregnant. I am afraid no one will take me seriously, as if it were a phase I'm going through instead of a constant internal battle that's been raging for years. I am afraid that they will think I'm not mature enough, that they will only express doubt instead of confidence in my parenting ability. I have enough doubts, thank you! But so does every expecting family. I've been blessed with lots of nuclear families in my life, but why should I bear the barren curse of my namesake (Hannah) just because I don't have a husband? I have so much love to give, and I feel like it's a waste if I don't get to fulfill the only thing I want out of life at the cost of everything else.

Project 50 Restart: January

2011-02-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

I really left off this project of writing reviews for every book I read. I've been reading a lot of young adult series, so a lot of them have been kind of the same. I'm not sure if I got to 50 books last year, but I have read a lot of books in the first month of this year, so I'm off to a good start.

"The Valley of Fear" by Arthur Conan Doyle
The first part of this Sherlock Holmes novel was perfect to read on a train ride to London through the snowy English countryside (and I finished the book in Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthplace). As per usual for Holmes and Watson, the murder of a well liked man in the country is not quite what it seems. But when the mystery is solved, the book continues with a lengthy back story that appears a little redundant. I haven’t read many Holmes mysteries, but I assume the back story is a set up for the next book, which is the last of Holmes adventures. Nevertheless, it was half a book without Holmes and Watson, and after spending the first half of the book with them, I missed the characters and never took to the strangers. B-

"The Hickory Staff" by Robert Scott and Jay Gordon
I didn't have any real reason for picking this book at the library, other than that it had regular humans in a fantasy world, which was what I was writing my NaNo novel about. I started it, then had to put it down for November. Then as soon as I picked it up again, I found that the method the authors used to get their Earlings into Eldarn was almost exactly the same as the method that I had used. I was really excited to read it after that. It was an all right story, which kept fragmenting and following different characters in different places for almost the entire book. Mark and Steven are two friends from Colorado who find a portal to another world that is torn apart by magical and political strife. A Gandalf figure leads them around trying to find a way home for Steven and Mark as well as a way to defeat the evil magician threatening Eldarn. The fragments that follow different people are a bit disorienting, and you never get to stay with any one group for long enough to really figure out what's going on. There are random forced flirtations and sexual scenes that seem like they're just thrown in because a fantasy needs love and sex right? And it's lengthy, a 700 page monster with two more books in the series. I might read the others if they happen to come in at the library, but I'm not in a rush. C

"Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan
I used to be really into ancient Greek gods as a teenager, so I thought I would be really into this book about the half-blood son of a god. Actually, I felt like I was reading something that I had read before. Percy thinks it’s just impossible that gods could exist even after he’s been shown that they do. It’s one NO WAY! moment after another for a while, yet he has an encyclopedic knowledge of Greek gods. When Percy tells the reader that he has ADHD and dyslexia, then finds out that they are actually symptoms of his hero blood, battle ready and hardwired for ancient Greek (???), yet he keeps referring to “my ADHD acting up,” which was a little odd. I liked the idea of a learning disability making him more able as a hero, but the author didn’t really follow through. C

"The Hunger games: Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins
Like the first in the series, Catching Fire is written in present tense, which reads like fan fiction to me. It’s extremely difficult for me to put down a book like that then come back to it. The story was really intense though, and since I didn’t like having to restart and adjust my brain to present tense, I finished it in three days. After winning the violent Hunger Games, where young people are forced to fight to the death in submission to a totalitarian government, Katniss Everdeen should be living a comfortable victors life. But because she and her District 12 ally, Peeta, both won the games by threatening a “both or none” suicide, the Capital senses rebellion and keeps them under tight control. Katniss knre that their display of solidarity against the unfair Games would mean she would have to toe the line, but she never expected that she and Peeta…(no spoilers!)
There are times when the author throws in misfit lines, especially Katniss’ suspicions of…everyone seem like something I might have written as a teenager, and it’s not really something I like reading. But I want to find out what happens to Katniss, so I’ll give it points for capturing my attention. B-

"The Sorceress: Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel" by Michael Scott
I think I've finally figured out what bothers me about these books (I've read two other books in this series). Every chapter, EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER ends with a cheesy cliffhanging one-liner. It's like reading David Caruso from CSI: Miami. It was the same old thing, famous figures popping up as immortal humans and Sophie and Josh wrestling with the pressure of being the supposed "twins of legend." Are we to trust Nicolas Flamel or not? Meh, I'm kind of getting bored with this series. C

"Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters" by Rick Riordan
In the second of the Percy Jackson series, Percy learns that he has a brother. Through magical dreams, he also learns how he can save the sickening Camp Half-Blood, poisoned by a traitor. He starts off on a rebellious streak that I think will carry through the series, a hero that can't take orders when he gets it in his system to go save people. He still kind of leans on dyslexia and ADHD, and I'd really like to see Percy own himself as a half-blood. It's a good quest too, and ends with a great cliffhanger. B

"Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse" by Rick Riordan
This book went pretty quickly, with a couple of new pretty flat characters coming in who instantly find their places in the story, carry out their tasks, and are finished. Percy is now 14, and starts getting interested in girls, just as his best prospect gets carted off. A quest to get her back? Oh yes. I think that this book relies a little heavily on the Oracle's prophecy, but then the characters seem to forget it when it's most important. More like an Oedipus Rex "aw, I knew that was coming" moment. It's the first time that I've seen the author appear to plan anything, setting the stage at the beginning of the book and waiting until the very end to resolve it. The underlying plot to defeat Luke and Kronos carries on though, so I'll be reading "Battle of the Labyrinth" soon. B-

Project for Awesome time!

2010-12-17T14:22:00.000-08:00

Here's the video that I've made for the Project for Awesome about the Camphill community where I'm living and working this year. Project for Awesome is a day when youtube promotes videos made by people who care about charity rather than kittens playing piano. Here's my video:

Santa Claus is coming to London

2010-12-13T12:43:00.000-08:00

This Saturday I went to london with a resident from my house. We didn't go to shop or go to a museum or a West End musical. We went to sing Christmas carols. Her family is part of a non-profit that takes disabled children on pilgrimages to Lourdes in France, and they were raising funds by singing carols in a shopping center in London. It was all pretty fun (right up until I lost my voice) but the best part was when we were singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." We were about halfway through the song, and I looked up, and coming down the center of the shopping center was a flash mob of HUNDREDS of people dressed like Santa. They danced right up to us, gathered around and started singing along. It could not have been timed better. It was simply magical.

They passed out vouchers for free hugs from Santa with a website on it, so I looked it up and apparently it's an annual "Santacon" by bringstuff.com, which just organizes flashmobs in London. Bring Santacon.

Riiiight...who is this really?

2010-11-22T12:32:00.000-08:00

At the dinner table the other day, one of the residents was wearing what could only be described as a COSBY SWEATAH. I asked him if he was familiar with Bill Cosby, and he wasn't, but neither was the coordinator who would have had much more opportunity to encounter him. And when I said that he was an American comedian, he took cheap shots, "There is such a thing?" It stung a little, because, I mean, you just don't take cheap shots at Bill Cosby, but also because he had absolutely no idea who he was, and that would never happen with someone his age down to mine in America. Being somewhere that doesn't know how they should say "Jell-o pudding pops" suddenly feels very lonely.

NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 7

2010-11-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

I'm way behind on word count, and it took me three days to work out the Rube Goldberg device, but I finally killed the evil governor. Now I just have to get my main character down from the top of a burning fortress and introduce the evil governor's flamboyant brother, who is, of course, the real villain in this story. I don't really like my writing, but this year I have a lot better stuff that I can edit into the story taht I want to write when I'm not racing for word count.

New Anglotopia article

2010-10-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

I am now a columnist for Anglotopia.net, a blog for and by Anglophiles (Brit lovers). I had been hanging around the forums for a while and offered to write articles while I'm in Milton Keynes. My latest is about Camphill Milton Keynes, the community where I live and work. You can read it here http://www.anglotopia.net/british-identity/living-in-the-uk/dispatches-from-milton-keynes-camphill-mk/. My other articles can be found under "Dispatches from Milton Keynes" in the Columns...column.

I've been having some strange dreams as I get used to England. Last night I had two: the first involved me driving a semi-truck (I think they call them lorries here but that might just be pick-ups) through the streets, then, unable to stop it, drove through a hospital, up and down several flights of stairs, then back onto the road where I finally figured out that I was driving on the right hand side of the road and everyone was just being polite and getting out of my way. I was very careful going around the corners in the hospital before I realized that it was a dream and I didn't have to worry about crashing into anything with the trailer. In the dream just before I woke up, I dreamt that Camphill was having a raffle for coworkers, but they hadn't told any of the coworkers (I swear this would happen in real life. We learn about our trainings the morning of) and I showed up just in time to be the first winner...of a can of Diet Coke (This would never happen in real life. Camphill is all about healthy, organic food, at least in principle).

Foreginers love Rice Krispie Treats

2010-10-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

I was going to make s'mores for my cultural presentation about America in my co-worker group (all of my co-workers in England are from different countries and I'm the only one from the US) but the American food stores didn't have Jet Puff Marshmallows, which is a problem because British marshmallows are too solid to get heated up in the middle when you roast them. So I used the marshmallows to make Rice Krispie treats. I was being silly and passed them around as "a delicacy from my country" but everyone was super impressed and wanted to know what I called them.

Thank the Queen for NHS!

2010-09-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

I've been in England for a little over a month now. I've already been registered with NHS (I can do that because I'm a worker here), had a urine test, and got all my paperwork. Yesterday I got a call from the office about my test results, telling me I had a UTI, which I suspected, but it wasn't bothersome enough for me to go in on my own. During the same phone call, they told me that they had a prescription ready for me to pick up and take to get some antibiotics. I went the next day and walked away with a week's worth of antibiotics. Total cost to me: 0 pounds.

On the other side of the pond, I had been on a "reservation list" for Oregon Health Plan (health care for low income people) since February or March, kept calling in to see if I'd been "chosen," sent in an application without approval from the lottery, and got denied. Last week, my parents got a notice letting me know that I had been picked from the reservation list for OHP.

God bless America, and God save the Queen.

London backvlog

2010-09-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

When I arrived in London, my friend Dave picked me up and we had two days of mayhem before I went to Camphill

Sad news, Project 50 Redux: July and backvlog

2010-08-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

I have some very sad news. My cat, Whiskers, died very suddenly and without apparent cause just before I moved out and came to England. It was the last thing I thought would happen right as I was about to take off on my big adventure, but I appreciated being able to lay her to rest with the friends who had been her family for much longer than I was. I miss her so very much. She was the most beautiful cat who slept next to me (if not on top of my head) every night. I could say something general about the loss of a pet, but I feel that would do an injustice to her memory, so I would just like you all to go hug your pets and tell them that you love them.

I've been lax in putting up my reviews because of moving, my cat dying and not feeling like it, going to England, being without internet, etc etc.

“That Takes Ovaries!:Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts” edited by Rivka Solomon
I found this while browsing the feminist section of the library. I feel like I’m constantly on my quest to figure out what kind of woman I want to be. This book definitely had a lot of ladies to live up to. There were tales of women who stood up to men and boys who rated their bodies. There were stories about ladies who risked their lives for what was right. One of my favorites was about a group of 50 women who raided a porn store. It was told by a woman who had survived incest by her father, who found a magazine with a young girl with a lollipop or something titled “Daddy’s Little Girl.” These ladies tore the place apart and escaped into the night. I cheered for them. A

“Being Single in a Couples’ World” by Xavier Amador and Judith Kiersky
There were parts of this that kind of opened my eyes to some things I’ve been wrestling with about being single, like wishing that I could land some guy that other people thought was a real catch. Except that all the people in the book would give up the pretty decent mates because there might be something better out there and I don’t really get that chance. It also opened my eyes to what bothers me about the “friendly fire” that I get for being nearly 26 and single. For example, I’m leaving for a year in England and at least three people, when they found out, said, “Bring back a man.” You know, in 5 years, I haven’t found one here, so what makes a person think that I’ll spend my time trying to get a lover over there? Grr. Anyways. Friendly fire. Even though the book was kind of helpful, I found the therapists’ retelling kind of annoying and insulting, because of course they ask their clients leading questions because they think they’ve got them all figured out. C+

"Papertowns" by John Green
The biggest criticism I have for this book is that it started out like a Babysitter's Club book...probably a major slam to the author of youtube fame (I heard of John Green through the vlog he does with his brother Hank, "vlogbrothers"). I was nearly ready to put it down, but after he finished pointing out the six or seven major players and best friends and other best friends, the book got much better. It turned into a story of teenage revenge, initiated by apparently unattainable Margo Roth Spiegelman, with apparently nerdy childhood friend Quinton coerced into the role of midnight chauffer. It's poetic, it's mean and at the end of the episode, you're left wondering if you're supposed to be cheering for Margo or squirming. Then the book takes a quick turn into a kind of scavenger hunt as Margo runs away from home, leaving behind clues to her whereabouts. This was the part that drove me to finish the book in a day: I love a good chase. The ending was a little post-modern and ambiguous for my tastes, but, you know, if you're into that kind of thing. It might help to know that one of John Green's favorite books is Catcher in the Rye. B-

"The Edge chronicles #2: Stormchaser" by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
The second in the series introduces the floating academic island of Sanctaphrax, chained to the working class city of Undertown. Twig is just setting out on his adventure with his recently discovered father as a member of the sky pirate's crew when a father/son conflict crops up, one that is brutally unfair to a boy raised in the woods. Before they can really resolve it, they are separated and the story focuses soley on Twig and the remaining crew. I liked the pace of this book a bit better than the first because while there was not a new perilous creature popping up every chapter, the story still did a lot of meaningful "meanwhile back at..." that kept it moving ahead and me very interested in how the stories were going to collide. B+

"The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #1" by Michael Scott
I heard about this from someone involved in a youtube collaboration channel. It stood out to me because Nicholas Flamel was mentioned in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but on a quick search, I found a lot more to the myth of Nicholas Flamel. So it was a little strange to read this book and find one of the characters, a 15 year old boy with a twin sister, doing exactly the same thing, looking Nick Flamel up on Google. The book is thick with mythological references, almost stiflingly so, but familiar enough or explained enough that I was satisfied to have nothing but this book to read during three days of bussing back and forth to the Oregon Country Fair. A book of fantasy and magic is top notch reading when you're riding into the country to flit around in the woods with adults in fairy costumes. It sets the stage well for the first of a series. B

"Three Cups of Tea"
This book was not written by Greg Mortenson, which is positive in that it keeps him from tooting his own horn, but was disorienting when I started, thinking I would get a personal account from the man who trekked around Pakistan building schools for mountain villages. Nevertheless, it's an inspiring "get off your butt and do something" kind of story that I fully appreciate. I don't really like thinking of Mortenson, a guy who devoted himself to such a noble cause as a stressed out administrator, but trying to do good in the world is not always easy, and it's a reality check but not a deterrant to a young idealist like myself. There is another book about Mortenson's mission out there, and I would very much like to follow up on this account. A-

"The Edge Chronicles #3: Midnight Over Sanctaphrax" by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
With a brand spanking new crew, Twig sets out to find his father, stuck in the middle of the Mother Storm. They are united for just a few moments, then ripped apart once again. Twig falls conveniently close to Sanctaphrax, is conveniently spotted by the Professor of Darkness and is conveniently spared by the vulturous white ravens. After a brief delay wallowing in madness, Twig pulls himself together for a mission to recover his crew. At this point, Twig turns into an commanding captain, when I think he should still show a little bit of his boyhood meekness. I get a little bit wary of stories in which people refuse to stand down, and this makes others realize that the person deserves their respect. It's a little bit weak, but the overarching story continues to be quite good. B-

And here's the last vlog I made in America. Next: London

I started a vlog

2010-07-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

It's what the kids are doing these days. The channel is the same as my blog address. Crank up your sound to 11 because I have a really quiet voice.

Project 50 Redux: May, June Backlog

2010-07-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry that I've been so lax in posting new book reviews. I feel like I haven't been reading very much at all, so it doesn't occur to me to write reviews.

May
"A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Austere Academy" by Lemony Snickett
I plugged along with this series even though I was getting kind of bored with it, but this book did not disappoint! There was an actual cliffhanger involving some new characters, two triplets at a boarding school to which the Baudeliere children are sent. I'll keep reading this series after all! A-

"A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Ersatz Elevator" by Lemony Snickett
I think the vocabulary in these books is getting more advanced as the series goes on. This was probably the first time since Book 2 that I was kind of afraid for the orphans' lives because the action was pretty intense, and the problem from the last book was still not resolved, so we'll be seeing the triplets again. B+

"Are All the Giants Dead?" by Mary Norton
This was one that I read out loud with one of my students that I watch after school/during the summer. It's kind of a fairy tale, except that it borrows characters from multiple fairy tales, ages them, and throws in a boy from modern times who gets to the fairy tale land apparently by way of a dream and a journalist guide. I found the story kind of wanting for new material, especially in the first part of the book. And of course, it's all a dream, so there's that old ending. C

June
"The Edge Chronicles: Beyond the Deepwoods" by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddle
This is another one that I read out loud with my student. It's nicely illustrated by Chris Riddle. Twig, raised by woodtrolls in the Deepwoods knows that he's not really a woodtroll. When he is 13, his mother tearfully tells him that she found him in the woods and raised him as her own, and that he needs to leave their home. On his journey to find his destiny, he runs into dangerous and wondrous races and creatures in the Deepwoods. What I liked and also disliked about this story was that EVERY chapter had him happening upon some other form of danger. The poor boy doesn't get a rest until the end when he finds out who he really is. It's a good start though, and there are several in this series that I'm going to keep trying to read. A-

"1984" by George Orwell
This was one of my favorite books in high school, especially because of the concept of Newspeak. I love how you can tell from the first sentence that something is just not right in this distopia. The story is thick with warnings about control of the media, control of the police, prescribed jobs and behavior. Upon rereading it, I could tell that Winston was doomed the whole time. If anyone has never read it, I kind of consider you a poor human being. In the 2008 election, the term "Orwellian" was used a lot by people who didn't get it, even from my own grandmother, who had never read Orwell. I found that really sad. It's a wonderful frightening book. A

You've got 12 hours to make me a very happy lady

2010-07-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

I've recently become involved with the HP Alliance, a non-profit collaboration of Harry Potter fans from all over the world who band together to fight evil and injustice in the world. It's like Dumbledore's Army for real! We work towards improving literacy (collecting 55,000 books to send to underserved areas), campaigning for human rights, and recently raised $123,000 dollars to fill FIVE cargo planes full of supplies to Haiti after the earthquake. It's an incredible organization full of caring people who are committed to making significant changes in the world.

Right now we are entered in a contest to win $250,000 from Chase Giving. Even if you can't come to my super awesome birthday party, you can give me a great present by taking about 10 seconds to vote for HPA on Facebook so we can get some serious funding to do some serious good.

Here's a little video about HPA:

And here's the link that you need to vote. Thanks guys!

All The Single Ladies (and single men)

2010-05-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling the sting of being single a lot more lately. It's May, so wedding season is coming up, and my engaged webfriends are talking about their bridal showers and arguments with the DJ and the drama that their FHs and FMILs are making (that's "Future Husbands" and "Future Mother In Laws" for those of us who don't live in the world of family acronyms. First comes FH, then comes DH, then comes DD and DS in a BC.) At church, I am the only adult who is not married, much less with children. The pressures of marital roles don't apply to me, so I pretty much have nothing to talk about besides work and crafting and my cat, which just makes me sound like an old cat lady. At work, I'm the only single person who doesn't have kids. I haven't heard from many of my other married friends since fall.

I don't mind being single right now. I mean, I'm going to England for a year, and I'm really glad that I don't have to leave anyone behind. I just wish our kind were not so invisible in the world, the single non-parent. There's a Mother's Day, a Father's Day, wedding anniversaries, date nights, play dates, where those people receive praise and love and surprises because they've got the privilege of being attached to other people, but single people who live alone throw their own birthday parties. There's an Offbeat Bride site and an Offbeat Mama site, but an Offbeat Singles site would just be an online dating site for hippies and ex-punk rockers. I don't know how to have a good time as a single person since my friends moved away or got married because the only information out there for single people is how to get un-single. Maybe that's a plus but it's really not what I'm looking for.

I'm glad I'm not going to a big church right now because this is how it would work: If you're single, 1. something is wrong with you and you need to go to the meat market group to get un-single, and 2. while you're at it, you've got nothing better to do with your time than to serve the married people and parents so they can get a much deserved break. I liked hanging out with middle schoolers then and I hang out with high schoolers now, but the pressure and obligation for single people to take care of other people's kids while they go get their spiritual fix is intense.

I don't think that most married people recognize the special needs and internal struggle of single people (looking or not), or the way we get excluded from the common experience of home life and children. I'm reading a book about singleness and how we get unhappy with being single because of our marriage script. From youth we mark off an age at which we would like to be married. For me, I passed that marker on my last birthday, nearly four years since the end of my last relationship. My mother was 28 when she got married, and I feel like if I get there, it's all over. I watched my four older cousins marry at increasingly younger ages, so now I feel like it's my turn. We get an idea of the kind of person we want to marry. I wanted (and it's really common for people who are shy and insecure to get this idea) someone that other people thought was just the coolest, so they would be jealous and wonder how someone like me could land someone so great. I want children more than I want to be a wife, and with every new year, I feel like that chance is being taken farther from me. I wish there was a way that married or engaged people could learn to be more...considerate? That's not the word I'm looking for...just more aware of all that we go through.

Project 50 Redux: April

2010-05-13T23:03:00.000-07:00

“A Scanner Darkly” by Philip K Dick
This was a good, gritty, slightly futuristic book about drugs and drug investigation and where they meet in one man. As the main character’s brain gets more damaged by Substance D, his sense of himself as one person dissolves, and he starts to see himself as a separate person from two different points of view. The only thing that I think keeps it from being a really good book is that it goes on for just a few chapters too long. When I came to the part that I thought was a good stopping point, I was disappointed to find more and it kind of ruined the ending for me, and really didn’t add anything more to the story. B-

I also read “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix again. Did I really only read one new book this month? I’m slipping.

Project 50 Redux: March

2010-04-04T01:49:00.000-07:00

“Schuyler’s Monster: a Father’s Journey with His Wordless Daughter” by Robert-Rummel Hudson
Schuyler (pronounced Sky-ler, I couldn’t make myself think that through the whole book) is the author’s daughter, who was born with a brain deformity that caused her to be unable to speak. The family spent several years just trying to get a name for her condition, which the author calls “the monster.” Even though he emphasizes his daughter’s fascination with movie monsters and how much he loves her even though she is different, I have to admit that I was pretty uncomfortable with him calling her condition a “monster”. I did like to read about her parents championing for her to get what she needed in school, despite doubting speech therapists and penny pinching school bureaucrats. I’ve read a lot of book by parents of children with autism, but this one was really interesting to me because I’m particularly interested in working with children who are non-verbal. A-

“A Child Called ‘It’” by Dave Pelzer
I saw Dave Pelzer speak a few days after I graduated high school, a few days after I’d broken up with my high school boyfriend, who was abused by his father-figure and wallowed in it. I remember that trying to express what Pelzer had overcome in himself to survive against a veritable Eeyore fortress was frustrating. I’d never read the full account of the inhumane abuse he endured as a child, singled out from his brothers as his mother’s scapegoat, narrowly escaping death sometimes by pure will not to let her win. It makes me admire him as a person so much more now. This book is not light reading. It’s horrible to think that a parent could torture a child so much. I think that it’s important for people to know these things though, especially people who plan to become parents or for people who work with children, to repel that evil-ness away from their relationships with children and to recognize signs of child abuse. A

“Wicked” by Gregory Maguire
This novel is based on The Wizard of Oz, but follows the birth and life of Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West. Elphaba is born with green skin, to a mother who cheats and an ultra-pious father. She is sent away to school where she meets Galinda and a troop of other characters with “Wizard” connections like a Munchinlander and a Winkie prince. Following a violent incident at school, Elphaba leaves and gets involved in a conspiracy, things go wrong there, she leaves, and eventually she owns the role of Wicked Witch of the West. I felt like I was maybe supposed to feel sympathetic towards Elphaba, but she was so bitter and closed off, without any real hidden gems of virtue in her at all, that I never did like her. But I never got fond of Galinda either, because she was so shallow. I kind of felt the story did a bait and switch with Elphaba’s love life, and I didn’t understand why the author chose that character for her lover. It was interesting to see where this alternate story lined up with the Wizard of Oz sometimes, and sometimes it was overwrought. It’s good, but had some flaws as a story. B-

I also read “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” again this month.

Project 50 Redux: February

2010-03-15T22:55:00.000-07:00

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
This is a graphic novel-style non-fiction memoir by a woman who grew up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Her parents were Communists and many of their friends were targeted and imprisoned or killed. She grew up with a fervor for knowledge and a gutsy stick-it-to-the-man attitude, encouraged by her parents, which got her into trouble when she questioned the rewritten history she was taught in school after the change in government. To be honest, I have little knowledge of Iranian political history, so in some parts of the book I just had to take her word for it, which was sometimes hard because it was written in the style of the age the author was at the time. I think it was interesting to have the combined perspectives of 1. a woman in 2. a liberal family in 3. a Middle Eastern country with its share of political and religious conflict. B+

“Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke
This book really held my attention well considering that not much action actually happened for most of the book. It is the tale of two English magicians, the only two “practical magicians” in England, at the time of King George III. To keep the story moving along, the author finds ways of weaving new characters into a deep-held secret that only Mr. Norrell and the reader really understand for most of the story. Even though it’s an 800+ page book, I never really found myself bored because I got invested in the separate storylines that were sometimes close together and sometimes almost unrelated, and sometimes tied to actual events in history. Characters from previous parts of the story kept popping back up and knitting the storylines back together. I wasn’t all that satisfied with the way that the story ended because I felt like it should have been more finished, but the rest of it was so involved I felt like I was actually in the time period. A-

“Artemis Fowl” by Eoin Colfer
The premise of the book really put me off. Artemis Fowl is a young genius and heir to the fortune of a crime family which has lost its partriarch. He’s twelve and is just too brilliant and too cocky for my liking. I just don’t like books in which children are given more autonomy than they are supposed to have. He cooks up a plan that involves kidnapping a fairy soldier (I’ll admit that the rewriting of folklore into a “what humans think they know but don’t” mythology was pretty clever) and holding her for ransom, negotiating with the supernatural military for her release, pretending to want something that he doesn’t… oh it was all too contrived for a twelve year old. Maybe it would be more fun for someone who actually is twelve or younger, but I’m not buying it. C-

“The Ride Together: a Brother and Sister’s Memoir of Autism in the Family” by Judy Karasik and Paul Karasik
This book was co-written by the brother and sister of a man with autism. The sister writes in normal chapters, and the brother delivers his experience in graphic novel style, which worked especially well in some parts because of his brother’s interest in Superman. I especially liked it because the brother with autism was older than both of them, so they don’t tell much about his childhood, but mostly the family’s experiences bouncing him around to different group homes as an adult and his visits home during vacations or transitions. One transition near the end of the book was hard to read about because it came about when the facility was shut down because of abuse of residents by the caretakers. It spoke to me as a person who works with people with disabilities to say never, ever take advantage of a situation in which you are the person in power. A-

“Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH” by Robert C. O’Brien
I think the last time I read this book I was in the fourth grade. It’s a little bit magical to read something that you thought you knew as a kid. I didn’t remember all the action in the story happening within just a few days, but that was probably because my class read the story over several weeks with vocabulary and comprehension sheets in between. The way the rats build up their civilization is so imaginative and complete, I can really see why this book was a Newberry Award Winner. A-

Project 50 Redux: January

2010-02-08T23:37:00.000-08:00

I’m still working through “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which is an 800+ page monster, so I haven’t had time for much else.

"Coraline" by Neil Gaiman
I saw the movie before I read the book, and honestly…I liked the movie better. I felt like the book moved too fast without all the other extra things that the movie put in. As a book alone, it’s ok, but I didn’t get all that attached to Coraline even. C+

Project 50: December

2010-01-02T23:42:00.000-08:00

The year ended with a total of 56 books read. I could increase my goal to 60, but honestly, I think trying to read more than a book a week would make reading less enjoyable, and that's why I read, so I'm sticking with 50 books a year.
“Adopting on Your Own: The Complete Guide to Adoption for Single Parents” by Lee Varon
I thought that this book was really balanced and thorough. It’s written by a woman who adopted internationally, a toddler from Guatemala in her 30s and a 4 year old from Russia 14 years later. She really encourages singles considering adoption to examine themselves and their reasons for adopting, their abilities to support a child, what age and sex of child they want to adopt and why, whether they want to adopt internationally, domestically, through a private agency, through a state agency. She freely admits that adoption is not for everyone, not even for some couples, and prints testimonies from singles who had success in their adoption, trials, or who finally decided not to go through with it. It gave me a lot to think about. A

“The Skull of Truth” by Bruce Coville
Bruce Coville was one of my favorite authors as a kid. This book is in a serious of Magic Shop Books that includes “Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher” and “Jennifer Murdley’s Toad.” Charlie “accidentally” steals a skull from a mysterious magic shop which talks to him in his head and causes Charlie, a compulsive liar, to always tell the truth. Hijinx ensue. There are a couple of parts that are fairly typical for Coville, in which children have a lot more influence over adults than they would have in real life. It works for children’s literature, but might not appeal to all adults. I think that the origin story that Coville invents for the skull is particularly clever (hint: the skull’s name is Yorick), and could encourage kids to branch out into more advanced literature. B+

“Watching the English” by Kate Fox
This book is a sociological study of English behavior, written by a native Englishwoman who spent part of her childhood in France and America. I don’t know that it’s fair for a native to examine her own people, and I don’t think that she gives enough of a big picture for the causes of what she calls “social dis-ease.” It’s interesting enough, and kind of comical to read her describe things like awkward English greetings where no one knows whether to shake hands, kiss French style, or just give a nod of the head. However, it gets really repetitive and when she does not want to admit that not everyone adheres to the social rules she prescribes, she just says that they are the exception that proves the rule. Kind of a cop-out, I think. B-

“Rite of Passage: Tales of Backpacking ‘Round Europe” edited by Lisa Johnson
There were a real diversity of stories in here. Stories of love, stories of getting ripped off, stories of the kind you just have to tell when it comes up. I thought that some of the stories could have used a little more editing and some were really inconsequential, but it was an all right collection. B-

Disappointment

2009-12-13T01:12:00.000-08:00

I was disappointed last week when the president said there would be continued and escalated US military action in Afghanistan. I was disgusted when this week he used the platform of the Nobel Peace Prize to talk about "Just War." You have to do what you have to do when you're president, but that was gross. I had to turn off the radio. I trusted that guy to make his moves so that he wouldn't have to justify them with something that is fundamentally wrong. I would probably never be able to listen to a John McCain speech all the way through, but at least his wouldn't have been from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.

Project 50: October (belated)

2009-12-04T23:49:00.000-08:00

“Red Planet” by Robert A. Heinlin
This book was a little confusing to me, not really in terms of plot, but there would be parts that were going really well, but suddenly the main character and the secondary main character would switch personalities, and I’d be thrown off. I also think that the author took quite a few creative liberties with science to make a colony on Mars livable, and threw in a few random plot twists that hung there awkwardly for too long and when they were finally resolved, were pretty worthless. You know, what I didn’t like about this book was that it was so similar to the writing that I used to do when I was 9 or 10. Painful. C-

“Matilda” by Roald Dahl
I started reading some books that I’d read when I was younger, to see what they were like when I was old enough to get everything. Matilda is a cute tale of a girl genius (yay girl geniuses!) who doesn’t rage against the people who put her down and call her a twit. Nope, she just gets even. Everyone gets their comeuppance, although I have to say that the magical powers at the end are a little too deus ex machina for me. B

“Freak the Mighty” by Rodman Philbrick
I remember this being really inspirational to me when I was young, but reading it again, I can’t really remember why. I know that my best friend and I made up our own dictionaries, or at least the letter A and B. As a kid, Freak’s imagination and courage in the face of illness and danger were something that I really wanted to access, but as an adult, it just seems really sad and tragic. I also felt like the way that other people treated Max was a little bit over the top. Maybe it works differently for kids. B-

In November, all I finished was "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer, which I have already reviewed and stand by it as being one of the best books I have ever read.

NaNoWriMo Winner!

2009-11-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

This is what I have been doing all November instead of reading books (though I did that too) and putting up my October reviews. And I made it! The fifth time's the charm, eh? And no, no one will be reading it besides me because it is complete crap. As a lover of great literature, I still find it difficult to create.

Project 50: September

2009-10-05T18:51:00.000-07:00

I just have to get through one more book, then I've accomplished my goal for the year and can concentrate on National Novel Writing Month in November!

“The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal” by Jonathan Mooney
The author, labeled “learning disabled” because of dyslexia had grown up being looked down upon, but graduated from Brown University with a degree in English literature. The book is not a story of “short bussers” overcoming the odds to become awesome. Mooney bought a little yellow bus and set out to see the experience of living with a disability label. I feel that his writing was really honest. Before meeting a young man with cerebral palsy, he gets really nervous because he’d thought he would only interview people with learning disabilities like himself, not conditions like cerebral palsy or Down’s Syndrome, but naming his own fears of encounters with people who are “different” gives a lot of depth to his project. A

“Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the musical Rent” by Anthony Rapp
I really like Rent, so when I stumbled on this while looking for books on bereavement, I nabbed it. Rapp focuses on three areas of his life: his mother’s illness and death, his sexuality and relationships, and anything involved with Rent, from the workshop where it began to the film version. It was emotional and touching. I didn’t find scenes from his sex life as a gay teenager to be too graphic. I laughed at the scene where he and a bunch of friends played Spin the Bottle and gave each other “ear sex.” The only thing that I didn’t like was that the only language he used to convey excitement was “shivers ran up my spine.” Over and over and over, especially when first hearing songs from Rent. I wish those scenes had had a little more varied language. B+

“Doctor Who: The City of the Dead” by Lloyd Rose
This book starts off like a good whodunit mystery but as questions are answered, it gets more confusing than before and crumbles into a bunch of disjointed scenes. Maybe it’s an 8th Doctor thing, but there was too much dark magic and other wacky stuff going on for my taste. At the end, I really didn’t have any clue what had happened in relation to the murder at the beginning. C

“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” by Mark Haddon
I liked this book mostly because of the structure. The author writes from the perspective of an autistic 15-year old who wants to discover the murderer of his neighbor’s dog. The structure of the writing is such that every action or sense that he experiences gets processed and analyzed, right down to seeing a certain number of cars of a particular color in a day. The book jacket said that it was about a young man who can’t experience emotion, but I don’t think that whoever wrote that must have read the book, because he definitely reacts to his emotions. As the plot gets more intense for the main character, the sentences start to run together and you feel his panic translating to the inability to separate his thoughts. A

“The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” by Kim Edwards
This was a good story that went on for a bit too long and didn’t end the way that I thought it should have. It’s about a couple who have twins, and one is born with Down’s Syndrome. The husband is a doctor and delivers the babies in his office during a snowstorm, and the only other person there is a nurse. He gives the baby to the nurse and tells her to put her in an institution, but she ends up running away and raising the baby as her own. The husband tells the wife that the baby died and the secret creates an emotional rift between them for the next 20 years. I found the story, mm, a little too feminine, all about children and housewives and insensitive husbands, and clichéd in that the wife becomes an alcoholic housewife, bitter about her role in life. C+

The Threat of Obligation

2009-09-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

I like to volunteer. I've been doing it since high school, when I far surpassed the "service learning hours" required for graduation. I used to volunteer at Hosea Youth Services giving sewing lessons to any of the street kids who wanted them. I volunteered as a "tutor" at Nuestro Lugar Teen Center which mostly meant hanging around with teens and shooting the breeze, playing Clue and learning to juggle. I sometimes would come to the youth group organized by my church leaders to help out. I'm learning to run the planetarium at the Science Factory so I can be a volunteer presenting planetarium shows.

But this weird thing happens when I sign up for something. I get exhausted. The stress of something on my schedule makes my neck and shoulders hurt so bad that all I want to do is lay in bed and act selfish. There are tons of people who work through pain and serve themselves to the limit and they love it, but I just get cranky. Also, things that I want to do for fun always seem to pop up on the days that I've got to do volunteer work, so then I'm cranky because I wanted to go have fun.

Maybe there's really something up with my body that needs rest, but I'd like to work on my motivations. I'm passionate about all these different things, but I can't expect all my wishing to fix them. I also can't expect to fix them all myself. "Obligation" is this dirty word that makes me bitter; so is "commitment". I don't equate relentless volunteerism with being amazing, more like a responsibility because I've got it so good and there's so much work to be done that I can't bear not to be a part of a solution. I don't really care about being amazing. So what is it about my optimism that turns sour once I sign my name to the clipboard? There's no epiphany here. Just the tension of 24 hours in a day.

Project 50: August

2009-09-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

If I spent as much time reading as I did Harry Potter on a regular basis (does that sentence even make sense?) I'd be reading many more books per month. Novels are good stuff.

“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” by J.K. Rowling
This book had the same kind of plotline as the first in that the three main characters had to find something hidden at Hogwarts and broke all the rules to find it, but the twists and turns and reveals at the end were absolutely brilliant. I’m still trying to figure out the motivation of some of the characters, kid and teacher and this book changed my mind about some. At first I thought Draco Malfoy was a harmless snotty brat, but now I think he’s going to be a much more serious player later on. A

“Talking with Alzheimer’s” by Claudia J. Strauss
This month has the potential to be a really depressing reading list, since I went to the library and checked out a metric ton of books about Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia, and a couple on grief for good measure. My grandpa has been diagnosed with dementia, and I wanted to read up on what to do when he starts forgetting my name and things. This book is short and simple. It offers phrases and techniques to use when talking with someone with Alzheimer’s, for example, asking “yes or no” questions instead of open ended ones like “What would you like to eat?” and leading conversations in a way that won’t frighten or confuse them if their reality tells them that they need to pick up their kids from kindergarten or be picked up by their parents. The book is written mostly to “visitors” who come to see people in homes without family, so some things didn’t apply to people who have known their loved ones for a long time, but I still think it will be useful. A-

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
I really want Snape to be not such a bad guy. Or at least I’d like it to be a little less obvious. I’d seen the movie for this book, so there wasn’t a lot to surprise me, but I’d forgotten about the dementors, which are a pretty cool beast when you think about it, if what they did wasn’t so awful. They guard the wizard prison and suck the happiness out of your soul. Heavy. This book tells a little more about Harry’s dad, since all of the new characters were friends of his.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
When my grandma’s eyes bugged out at the size of the book I was carrying, she asked how many pages it was. It’s over 700 pages, but there’s never a dull moment. I appreciate the way that Rowling doesn’t go off on unrelated tangents. This one was a kind of cute because all the little wizards have crushes on each other. There was another twist at the end that I totally wasn’t expecting, although one secret had a kind of lame reveal. This book also started differently than the others, not with Harry, but with a foreshadowing scene of Voldemort. I thought it was kind of inconsistent for the characters in this book to refer to Peter Pettigrew by his nickname throughout, when no one really had in the previous book. Minus for those sticking points. A-

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
The danger really ramps up in this one. How do I write these now without giving away any spoilers? I will say that Dolores Umbridge, the Ministry of Magic approved Defense Against Dark Arts teacher is COMPLETELY insufferable. The Ministry of Magic is trying to discredit Harry, Dumbledore, and anyone else who tries to talk about Voldemort, and every move that Umbridge makes is to that end. But she does it in such a crafted, bureaucratic way…I definitely felt the frustration that I was supposed to get from the story. The saga of young wizards in love also continues…I don’t know why Ron and Hermione don’t just get it over with and stop arguing like an old married couple. A

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
Even though a major part of this book involved Dumbledore giving Harry lots of information about the task they were about to carry out, I can’t help but think that he’s hiding a lot more than he’s telling. I still want him to be merry old Dumbledore, who just looks out for Harry, but he’s creating an awful lot of mystery and not answering any of Harry’s questions. Ooh, tension. I felt like the “Half-Blood Prince” twist at the end was kind of unbelievable, though. I have a feeling that the “big spoiler” is not the last we’ve heard of that. A-

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Honestly, I was kind of bored with most of this book. Watching Harry and Ron and Hermione running and hiding from Death Eaters and arguing with each other for three-quarters of the book is not really my idea of an engaging story. Too much use of Invisibility Cloak, I say. That said, I did cry a little, when the “ghosts” of Harry’s loved ones showed up to help him. I don’t know how I feel about the whole truth about Snape…I still wish he had been a little nobler. The rest’s all spoilers, so you’ll just have to read it yourself. B+

“When A Family Member Has Dementia: Steps to Becoming a Resilient Caregiver” by Susan M. McCurry
I think this book was written by a counselor who works with families in which someone has dementia or Alzheimer’s. It contains a couple of acronyms with steps to dealing with a loved one’s condition in a way that keeps you sane and respects his or her dignity. I thought the acronyms were a little unnecessary, and the one titled “POLITE” was a little absurd in that it had little to do with being polite. Along with helpful tips, the author includes anecdotes about families that she has encountered that put them into practice. It’s going to take some creative thinking to make life livable as my grandpa progresses, and it helps to see other families doing the same thing. B

WTFWJD?

2009-08-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

(I saw the title of this post on a bumper sticker this week. I kind of want one.)

As you’ll have read from my last post, I just started reading the Harry Potter books. Now plowing my way through the fifth book, I’m getting around to that blog post I promised on why a (practically) grown woman is reading the series for the first time. I also figured out how to read and knit at the same time. Hardbound books may be cumbersome in a knitting bag, but they stay open better than paperbacks.

When the Harry Potter books started coming out, I was a teenager, just starting to get really serious about being a Christian. I think somewhere before then, I’d given my “testimony” which involved turning from a wanna-be witch into a God-following Christian. As 10 and 11 year olds, my best friend and I had made up a book of curses and spells to put on people that treated us like weirdos (believe me, it didn’t help). I read all the books that The Dalles Library had on witchcraft, mostly juvenile fiction ones that involved wanna-be witches like myself. And I continued to do this until a Christian friend told me “You know that’s against God, right?” So I “put the darkness behind me” and got rid of my stuff.

Enter J.K. Rowling. My school librarian was really excited about Harry Potter because kids were actually reading them. But Jesus told me not to. “That’s not stuff to mess around with!” I insisted. I steered clear of the books because people told me that the author used verses from the Satanic Bible in the spells. I was terrified that I would be led into temptation and want to be a witch again.
After a while, I stopped caring so much about the peril of my soul and just never bothered to read them. I learned to be terrified of other things, like someone from my Christian co-op seeing me linger too long at the Pride Day celebration and asking me to leave the house. Because, you know, Jesus says no.

It’s only recently that I started to laugh at all I bought into because other people said that Jesus said things were bad. I missed out on all the great Harry Potter parties at bookstores! I missed out on all the drag shows! I started reading “Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies” and bemoaned all the fun and imagination I could have maintained in high school if I hadn’t been scared away from “evil” things like D&D. I started doing yoga, which was amazing and relaxing. And I found that Harry Potter books are very moral. There’s good, and there’s bad, and it’s clear that you want to be on the good side. And you know what? Jesus doesn’t seem to care.

Project 50: July (in which Hannah reads Harry Potter for the first time!)

2009-08-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

“Born on a Blue Day” by David Tammet
David Tammet is a man with Asperger’s and Savant Syndromes with a thing for numbers and languages. I don’t have such a thing for numbers or languages, which is why I’m glad that Tammet uses this book to really give a picture of the way he experiences and processes the information that makes it possible for him to access it, like memorizing pi to 20,000 some places by visualizing a picture of waves and colors. There are pictures in the book that help. I think that this book more than others I’ve read by people on the autism spectrum helped me understand the way he experiences the world. He sometimes jumps around to what seem like completely unrelated topics, which gets confusing, but I do the same thing when I’m talking, so there you go. A-

“The Anglo Files” by Sarah Lyall
Even though this book was funny, it was kind of a downer. Sarah Lyall is an American reporter who married a British man and moved to London, and maybe in a moment of homesickness she set out to expose all that is wrong with the British with a few quaint things thrown in. Her chapter on the misinformed and stunted sexuality of British men and women her own age and older is kind of frightening to me, because I prefer the way we mostly have information out in the open in the US. The caveman sexuality and immaturity of British Parliament doesn’t make me fall in love either. I think she spends a little too much time digging back in time to find examples of British people behaving badly to prove her point, but I think that comes with her being a reporter. B+

“Cuckoo” by Madison Clell
This is the graphic novel autobiography of a woman with disassociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personalities. Madison had been sexually abused by various people in her youth, and to escape the mental, she would disassociate and “create” another person who would take her place during the abuse. When she became an adult, these “alters” started to pop to the surface because of flashbacks. I think that the graphic novel format of the book really works for her story, because the facial expressions, depictions of her alters, changes in font give the feel of what happened much more than a square paragraph would be able to communicate. A

“The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul” by Douglas Adams
This story starts off pretty good, but after a while, I was wondering why I was continuing to read it, because it really wasn’t all that interesting. Sure there were a couple of gods bouncing around and making mischief, but I’m not really sure what the point was. Everything got wrapped up at the end, but I couldn’t tell you exactly how it ended, because it was that forgettable. C’mon Douglas Adams, I know you can do better! C+

“Tunnel Vision” by Keith Lowe
I think that this book could be made into a pretty good movie, maybe a romantic comedy or something. It has all the makings: weird friend, cranky fiance who doesn’t like weird friend, man who makes stupid bet with weird friend while drunk. The bet happens to be that Andy, who is obsessed with the London Underground, must make it to every stop on the tube in one day. The day is the one before his wedding, and he bets the train ticket that would take him to his wedding in Paris. It’s a pretty intense day, with heart stopping delays and suspicion of fellow passengers who could be spies. I enjoyed the whole thing, except how much Andy’s fiancé hated the London Underground. That was a little bit too fierce for me to be convinced that she actually wanted to marry him. A

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling
I’m cooking up a good blog post in my head about why I haven’t read Harry Potter until now. But I’m really kicking myself for not reading it earlier, because I could have gotten in on some KILLER parties. I’ve never heard of any other fans getting dressed up and going to a BOOKSTORE for a midnight party. I think the best way that I can describe the book is “delightful.” I only give A+’s to books with amazing language, so this one was a bit too simple for that, as a kids' book, but it had a really great plot and plenty of intrigue to keep me reading. I finished it in two days. Some make-believe writers will plug in a lot of jargon that you’re supposed to figure out along the way, but since Harry had lived his life so far with no knowledge of magic, the reader learns at the same pace that he does. A

“A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill” by Lemony Snickett
This one was a bit more intense than the others because it involved some pretty close up mortal danger. Also, hypnotism. Fun. I thought the new vocabulary in this book was top notch and a bit more clever than in the others. B

Monkeysphere?

2009-07-25T23:23:00.000-07:00

This is a concept that I kind of like:
http://freakrevolution.com/2009/04/07/the-monkeysphere/
by Pace at Freak Revolution (just found it today) It's about how people have more at stake when they are friends with a diverse group of people, so they tend to act more in the interests of those friends, even if they are different than themselves.

Project 50: June

2009-07-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I did it, but I mowed through nine books this month!

“Green, Greener, Greenest: A Practical Guide to Making Eco-Smart Choices a Part of Your Life” by Lori Bongiorno
I found this book, printed in three shades of green ink, in the new book section at the library. It starts off with the subject of food and the importance of buying local and organic. It was all well and good, but was written in a way that made me not want to take the author seriously. “Studies show that organically grown foods have less pesticides than conventionally grown foods.” Really? And all this time I thought they just had more carbon! It does get better though, and as for the first chapter, she does make a good case for eating organic once she starts sounding like she knows what she’s talking about. Even though I thought that the shades of green were cheesy, it’s helpful to know that if I can’t put solar panels on my apartment building or compost my poop, I can make little changes for my health and the environment, and maybe I’ll get greener when I run out of this brand of toothpaste. B-

“The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv
I definitely take issue with the sub-title of this book. That said, eh, it was ok. There’s really only so many ways you can say “It’s important for kids to play outside guys. No really. No REALLY!” The author offers nice antidotes about how some kids with ADHD felt calmer in the woods or the benefits of taking at-risk youth on Outward Bound trips. He bemoans the expansion of Scouting to include more things that are not nature related. He thinks that schools should have more “natural playtime” and that it would do more for test scores than being in class, and highlights a school that doesn’t have computers until high school age. I can see the point, but he acts like just going outside is the all-purpose cure for things. Of course in a book about returning to nature he’s not going to talk about how students who take band (and practice their instruments) do better in school, but hey, whatever your platform. It has encouraged me to make sure the student with autism that I’m watching over the summer gets out and about a lot. C+

“Just This Side of Normal” by Elizabeth King Gerlach
This is a book written by a Eugene mother of a boy with autism. I kind of needed to read it. I’ve read other books where parents have just talked about the amazing breakthroughs that they’ve had with their children, but since I’ve been watching one of my students all day for 3 days, with the whole summer ahead of us, I needed to see that someone else was encountering the same issues I am. Even though the story isn’t very uplifting, it makes me feel not so alone as a caregiver for someone with autism. It’s poorly edited though, minus for that ;) A-

“Vaginas: An Owner’s Manual” by Dr Carol Livoti and Elizabeth Topp
Ok, ok, so I picked this one out purely because of the name. I chose it from the women’s health section of the library when I was looking for information on Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. It’s pretty informative, though not really for my original purpose. I think that young ladies in high school could handle it. It’s written by a gynecologist and her daughter in an easy going way that makes it clear that not much about “down there” is going to be a surprise to a doctor, although the gyno is pretty opinionated in that she thinks that women who use pads are crazy people who like to wear diapers. It’s pretty detailed about sexually transmitted diseases, which is why I think ladies should read it before they start having sex, although the tone definitely is aimed at sexually active ladies. The chapter on abortion was kind of hard to for me read because the doctor doesn’t refer to a “fetus” in describing each method, but “evacuating the contents of the uterus.” Also, the chapter on sex could have been more of a user’s guide. :-o B+

“Survivor” by Chuck Pahlniuk
I went looking for “Choke” in the library and it wasn’t there so I picked this one. A man who survives a religious cult that committed mass suicide works for a rich couple, lives alone, and puts up suicide hotline stickers with his personal phone number. Whenever anyone calls, he tells them to kill themselves. When it becomes known that he is the only living survivor of the cult, he is groomed by agents and Hollywood types into a kind of Jesus Christ Superstar so they can make money off of his books and products. If anyone knew that his brother also survived and was murdering other survivors, his life of fame could be shot. As intriguing as the plot sounds, I wasn’t all that impressed with the book. I don’t feel like I gained much from it, and it wasn’t all that artful. Take it or leave it. C

“Imagined London” by Anna Quindlen
Quindlen was probably like me and read books that were pretty advanced for her age. I didn’t read Dickens as a 12-year old. This is a short book about the author’s own tour through London to discover the corners and addresses of her literary upbringing. It’s good in a confirming sense, that literature can take you to a foreign place when you can’t go there yourself, but there isn’t too much substance or fact, just one author’s experience with the literary vs. real London. B-

“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood
I had heard good things about this, so when I saw it on the “Staff Picks” at the library, I grabbed it. But I was pretty disappointed with it. It’s supposed to be set in present times, but as if something had gone horribly wrong after the sexual revolution and within a few years the government instituted laws which legislated morality and took away women’s value except for their ability to have children. The main character had once had a husband and child, until they were chased down and she was forced to be a Handmaid, a surrogate who would have children in place of a man’s wife. It ends up being bizarre and just too unbelievable to have happened in such a short period of time. If it had been the far future, maybe I would have bought into it. The back of the book compared it to 1984, but 1984 it was not. C+

“A Passage to India” by E.M. Forster
This had been on my list of books to read for a long time. It started off good, with British and Indian characters that represented a variety of opinions on the British occupation, but then it kind of dissolved into a bunch of finger pointing and shame that I didn’t want to keep reading. I wasn’t even sure where the book was going at the end of it. I wonder if Kipling has anything better. C+

“Inside the TARDIS: The Worlds of Doctor Who: A Cultural History” by James Chapman
First off, I was thoroughly crushed that this book had no pictures. Other than that, it was a good resource for a Doctor Who fan who didn’t grow up in the 60’s in the UK, because the author went through each Doctor in chronological order, highlighting his personality with an especially meaningful episode. The author also brought in cultural information about how Doctor Who reflected and affected British culture at the time. For someone who had seen all of those episodes, it could get pretty boring, but I’ve only seen the first of the classic series. B

Project 50: May

2009-05-31T22:49:00.001-07:00

“A Wind in the Door” by Madeline L’Engle
This is the second in the series after “A Wrinkle in Time.” Charles Wallace is ill because something is attacking his mitochondria, or the critters that give the mitochondria energy, which Mrs. Murry just happens to have discovered. What’s attacking them? Oh, the Devil. The story itself was a little too overtly religious for me, just with different names for the Devil and temptation and hell. Again, the action was not very action-y. Several pages of “You can do it! Come on, fight it!” “Oh, no I can’t!” “Yes, you can!” “No, I can’t!” “Well then someone has to!” Then it got near the end of the book and everything wrapped up quickly and they were all back in Kansas again. I was expecting a slightly different formula from the last book. C

“Douglas Adams’ Starship Titanic” by Terry Jones
Douglas Adams came up with a great computer game, and since it was Douglas Adams, the producers of the computer game thought that there should also be a novel to be released at the same time. Douglas Adams didn’t want to do it himself, so he enlisted the help of Monty Python’s Terry Jones, who agreed on the terms that he could write the book in the nude. It was funny enough, but I don’t think it does justice to Douglas Adams. My biggest issue was this sexual side story in which one of the women threw herself on an alien she’d just met in a moment of peril and they spend the rest of the story finding ways to add more gratuitous sex scenes to the book. Now, in Monty Python style, Jones does a self-referential bit that acknowledges the previous smutty chapter, but still, it’s rather distracting. B-

“Callahan’s Secret” by Spider Robinson
Spider Robinson insists that he did not write a trilogy. This was just his third and final book about Callahan’s Place. I didn’t read the middle book, but I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. This was less of a collection of short stories and more a whole novel of how a bar full of weirdo drunks saved the world. It’s intense and heroic and ends just the way it should. A-

“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer
Like “Everything Is Illuminated,” this book goes back and forth in time, between the life of Oskar Schell, a nine year old boy whose father died in the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, and the lives of his grandparents, who had separated when she became pregnant with Oskar’s father. Oskar finds a key labeled “Black” in his father’s things a year after his death and sets to scouring the entirety of New York City to find the lock that it opens, and hopefully someone who knows something about his dad. I like this story because Oskar is such an oddball little kid, with hobbies like learning French and writing letters to famous researchers asking if they need an assistant, and who personally sends a cabbie his fare when he doesn’t have the money to pay it. Foer’s writing style is such that every little action, like writing down a name, seems magical and important to record. A+

My job and what I get out of it

2009-05-29T23:34:00.000-07:00

I've been working as a special education aid for 2 and a half years. When I applied for the job as a substitute, I wasn't sure if I would like it, but my second day, subbing for a day at the school where I've been most of those 2 and a half years, I fell in love. A boy who will be graduating out of my class this year was compelled to drink with vigor out of every drinking fountain we passed. I was fascinated. What makes you tick? I wondered. Will I ever be able to see or hear you communicate those ticks?

This week was particularly wacky. We've had subs on and off all week. Yesterday was a county-wide event for all the Life Skills classes. One of my students soaked me with a giant water balloon popping device similar to a dunk tank. Another, weighing about 80 pounds (I'm 115 myself) climbed onto my back like a backpack and we climbed up a huge inflatable slide that way. And today I was part of a two-person clean up crew which neutralized a situation involving a dirty diaper and wandering hands.

I used to think I wanted one of those jobs that really made a visible difference in the world. By golly, I was going to put folks back on their feet and inspire others to do the same. But I care too much about people's lives to watch them screw them up again and again, and I'm too much of a results driven person to not feel like I'm a failure at my job when it doesn't happen. I can handle volunteer stuff without the pressure, just not as a job.

So now I do this thing that seems futile, yet noble. More than likely, none of my kids will become astrophysicists (but maybe falconers or paleontologists) or great artists (unless Disney plans on making another Buzz Lightyear movie) like some autistic savants. I'm sometimes torn in my principles, demanding that talented and gifted programs be a top priority, but not wanting to shaft kids like mine with the volume of staffing that will give them respect and dignity. I dare anyone to see what I do on a daily basis and not maintain that those students are precious in the eyes of God, even when they are throwing heavy things across the room or drooling or screaming. At the end of a child's time in my class, he may only be able to let someone know he's hungry and put on a shirt, but to me, that will be a thousand little victories. I don't make a lot of money, and I doubt I'll be an Annie Sullivan, but being hit, sassed, and drooled on in the course of everything else gives me more purpose to my life than I think tutoring gifted kids would.

While my job means a lot to me, I don't think it's special and amazing as some people who tell me it takes a special kind of person to do my job. Maybe my whole life has been building up to this, or maybe people don't give themselves enough credit.

It's not easy being green

2009-05-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to change my environmental impact in small ways since I moved out of my parents' house. I started looking at thrift stores or getting old stuff from family first before buying new things like spatulas, kitchen towels, a microwave, a bookshelf (which I repainted and put a back on and it looks FABULOUS). I'm a big tea drinker, and it was starting to bother me how much waste I was making with my daily cup: the foil package each bag came in, the tea bag itself, the paper tab on the top, the string, the staples that held them together, not to mention the box they came in and the plastic they were wrapped in. So I switched to loose tea, and let me tell you, it's wayyyyy better. About two weeks ago, I stopped washing my hair with regular shampoo and started switching off between Dr. Bronner's 18 in 1 soap and baking soda dissolved in water, inspired by Stephanie Langfore at Keeper of the Home.

This year I moved into an apartment and didn't have anything with which to clean, so I went on the search. I thought I was doing great choosing "Green Works" dilutable cleaner and toilet bowl cleaner. Then last night on OPB I heard about a couple of websites that rate the health impact of various products including cleaners, shampoo, toothpaste, etc. I spent a horrifying night finding out that nearly all the products that I use every day are bad for me and bad for the environment. (The sites are Good Guide and Skin Deep, given, some of the ratings are vague and incomplete; they just give the Green Works cleaner a big red dot for "long term health," but it also lists all the cancer causing ingredients) It's good to be informed, and I care about things like a company's environmental practices (the PETA cruelty-free and bad company lists were my Bibles back in 8th grade when I didn't buy anything) but man, I thought I was doing something right! I should have known better than to buy a Clorox product.

I think it would be more wasteful to throw a whole bottle of cleaner, followed by a couple tubes of toothpaste and my shampoo and conditioner into the dumpster, so for now I'm just going to have to deal with using those carcinogens sparingly. I've come across some good websites that show you how to make your own cleaners with baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, and borax, so once I have an empty bottle to use, I'll probably try that for a while. It sure beats spending $5 on cleaner when I could add a few tablespoons of baking soda (from a little baggy that cost me 38 cents) to a bottle of water (basically free). I'm doing my best. I'm learning little by little.

The end of the Trinity

2009-05-10T22:02:00.000-07:00

My cousin married a man whose father was a Lutheran pastor. Now, Fred is a professional juggler, comedian, and all-purpose smart ass who has no problem offending people's sensibilities, and at least once in a conversation he can usually trick you into embarrassing yourself. He doesn't really hold to a particular belief, if any, but he attends church regularly for tradition's sake. I'm sure all that doesn't accurately describe my cousin's husband, but it's a start.

Anyway, today I was wearing a sweatshirt with "Trinity" printed across the front. Trinity is the name of the Baptist co-op where I lived for three years in college. Fred tried to make a wise crack about how there was no Trinity and that there was only one "Jehovah God." I said, "Well, I don't think it's true, either." He asked me "You don't believe in the Trinity?"

So there I was, asked the question that separates me from liturgical churches and most statements of faith of other churches by my joker of a cousin. And I said "No, I don't." He called me a Jehovah's Witness and went on being Fred, and I thought, "Huh, that was easy."

I wish I did, sometimes, because things like Celtic spirituality really appeal to me in their mysticism and prayers, but it's very much focused on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I would probably become Episcopalian if you didn't have to stand up and recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday. I believe there's one God, and it's a disservice to call God "Father." I believe in the virgin birth and the crucifixion and the divine nature of Jesus' life. I can even buy into the idea of Jesus being God in human form, but if that is so, than I cannot call him the Son of God because that implies a separation. But more I believe that Jesus' life purpose wasn't to be God, it was to show people a right way to live, because there's no evidence that I've seen that implies otherwise. The resurrection gets a little wishy-washy with me, and I'm not really sure what I believe about that. I don't believe in the Spirit of God as an entity in itself. I think that God speaks to people, and there's no reason to create a whole other being to describe that.

For me, to say "I believe in the Trinity, even though I don't understand how it works" is to say that I'm willing to suspend belief for the sake of fitting in with other people. I wonder how many people do that, say "I believe in the Trinity, whatever that is." I don't think that dogmas are all that important to faith in God, which is why I wonder why churches put so much emphasis on this abstract theological thing that no one really gets rather than practical life that reflects the way that Jesus lived. I'm cool with believing unitarian.

Project 50: April

2009-05-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

“I Sing The Body Electric” by Ray Bradbury
This is the first collection of unconnected Bradbury stories I’ve read. Reading them put me in this happy, dreamlike, “anything could happen” state. Once I started reading the title story, I recognized it as an episode of the Twilight Zone that I’d seen. I think my favorite story was the one about the men who come to visit Ireland, but the effect of the story when reading it depends on me saying no more. A

“When the Music’s Over” edited by Lewis Shiner
My coworker slipped this into my box with a “read and return” sticky note. It’s an anthology of stories against war and violence. I think the editor contacted a bunch of authors and told them the premise and let them have at it. They aren’t at all pastoral stories about a society of love and peace; some of the stories are totally terrifying, and they do contain violence, but in a way that shows how horrible and unnecessary it is. Most of the stories are futuristic or set on other planets, so the whole book has a sci-fi bent to it that I like. A

“A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeline L’Engle
I had not read this book since I was about 8 or 9 years old. I think I did a book report on it back then. I got really caught up in reading it because the heroes are genius oddballs and they go on a fantasy adventure and the language is rich and descriptive and challenging enough for an adult. Looking back on the story as a whole though, I think it was a little too simple. There’s a mystery to be solved, good fights evil, good wins within a few pages and it all gets wrapped up rather quickly, as if the author had a word count limit that she wasted back when the characters were fighting over who would go back to save Charles Wallace. I think there are more books in a series after this, so I’ll have to see if there’s more to this story. B

“The Way We Never Were” by Stephanie Coontz
One of my college roommates had to read this for a class, and one day she read some out loud to me. It sounded interesting enough, but it really wasn’t. The author sets out to prove how different actual life in a couple of “golden ages” compared to the idealized version, where mothers didn’t work, but stayed home with the children and fathers were able to support an entire suburban family. The reality was that a very small fraction of the population lined up with that model, but what I didn’t like about this book was that it was about 300 pages of statistics which only proved that some, but not all, of her students “Leave it to Beaver” dreams of the past were real. This book could be summed up with “Yes, but not as much as you’d think.” I guess it was assigned in a college class for a reason. C+

“Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon” by Spider Robinson
My coworker is getting good at lending me books I like. I would describe these stories as “Cheers, but with weird visitors.” Callahan’s is a bar where people come, Jake the narrator says, because they’ve got some kind of hurt that they need to share. These people include time travelers, immortals, alien androids programmed to destroy Earth, and the like. The regulars at Callahan’s don’t usually offer solutions, just support, a non-judgmental ear, and a toast followed by pitching one’s glass into the fireplace. Sounds pretty good. A-

Internet Free

2009-04-16T17:02:00.000-07:00

I moved into my new home in mid-March. Internet was not provided in the rent, and I haven't set it up yet because $30 a month is a lot for one person when I may also have to pick up the full $700 rent next month. So I've been going to the library every few days to check my email, check up on the blogs I follow and hopefully catch a friend or two on AIM. Here's some of the ways that not having internet at home has changed my life.

I get a lot more done. I'm sure that I would have a lot of things still in boxes if I'd had internet when I was moving in. I spend the hours that I would have spent dicking around on the net each night READING.

I get to bed at a reasonable hour. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, because I usually stop reading around 11:00 and try to wake up at 7:30, which is probably too long to sleep, and it gets me in a bad habit.

I have to remember things. I can't just run to Wikipedia and look something up, or jump online and tell my friends about the sweet rainbow that I saw on St Patrick's Day. I also don't spend a lot of time brooding over blog topics like this one because I know that the money on my meter runs out in 15 minutes. So maybe I don't communicate with the world as much, but that's ok, because I'm not wasting time. Maybe I won't get internet at all.

Project 50: March

2009-04-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a lot more now that I live in a place with no TV and no internet. It's kind of nice. I curl up in a chair around 8:00, or if it's cold I crawl into bed and read for several hours a night.

“Dune” by Frank Herbert
This is supposed to be the greatest science fiction masterpiece of all time, but honestly, I was a little bored with it. It was a little too Star Wars for me, what with its futuristic religion and prophecy about one man who would lead the desert people to victory, plus a bunch of political stuff that I really didn’t care about. I kept hoping for some great action scenes, but what I got was the semi-hero Paul getting cockier about his rightful place as the savior of the planet. I suppose that was probably a set-up for the thousand and one other Dune novels. I could take or leave this one. C+

“The Spiritual Traveler: England, Scotland, Wales” by Martin Palmer and Nigel Palmer
I keep dreaming about a time when I’ll be able to visit the homeland again, this time when I’m old enough to choose my own sights to see and appreciate it. I like this book not only because it lists a ton of sacred sites (with a whole chapter on henges) and pilgrimage routes, but for every church or holy well or shrine, the authors tell the story of the saints or historical events associated with the place. They write to an audience who would take a religious pilgrimage seriously, not just as a touristy thing to do, and are very matter-of-fact about the miracles that happened in each place. The book focuses on Christian sites, but also gives respect to pagan landmarks and the authors draw up an “interfaith pilgrimage” at the end that includes Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Baha’i sites. I’ll probably buy this book before I actually go to England. A+

“The Way I See It” by Temple Grandin
This book differed from others I’ve read by authors with autism in that it isn’t an autobiography, but more a book of suggestions for teaching and parenting children and adults with autism with a personal perspective. I like that she doesn’t beat around the bush about things. She’s very forward with the idea that kids with autism should be taught table manners and etiquette, not just because she thinks “kids get away with anything these days” but because as a person with autism, she would not have just “picked up” acceptable social behavior like a neurotypical child would have. She had to be repeatedly told when she was being rude to be able to generalize what rude behavior was. She’s very thorough, including topics like alternative medical treatments, sensory adjustments, relationships, and how to get and keep a job as an adult with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome. I started this book the day before I found out that my good friend’s son had been diagnosed with PDD, a pre-autism diagnosis. Even though I was only halfway through with the book, I insisted that she read it. I think it would be especially beneficial for parents with autistic children. A+

“The Rules” by Sherrie Schneider and Ellen Fein
When I was first introduced to this book, it was given to me in a brown paper sack. The cover features a large photo of an engagement ring, and I was told to never let anyone catch me reading it. I remember reading the first chapter and giving it back. This time, it came recommended by some progressive women, so I figured it couldn’t be as bad as it seemed at the beginning. I was wrong. One of the first pieces of advice is, roughly translated, “For God’s sake, fix yourself up a bit! Slobs don’t get married.” It goes on from there to tell readers that the way to win a man is to be manipulative and hurtful. The authors qualify themselves by saying “Yes, acting completely uninterested in the man you are dating for the first few months may confuse him, make him angry, and make him possessive, but at least he wants you and you’ll eventually get married!” To those who don’t use the Rules, they have only self-righteous pity.
Now, I can buy into playing a little hard to get. I can even buy into waiting for a man to make a date-initiating phone call more often than I would. I can understand that no challenge in a relationship makes it boring. I’ve been there, with someone who took it for granted that I would arrange my schedule around him. I’ve also been there fawning over someone who took no interest in me and didn’t have to, because I wasn’t otherwise going away. But I’ve tried these kind of rules before, and STILL ended up alone. When I found that I was making all the phone calls and stopped…the phone calls just stopped, and I found out rather quickly how I rated. Playing hard to get didn’t make the guy I fancied want me more, it just meant that I had no one to hang out with. As far as relationship advice goes, I much more recommend something like “He’s Just Not That Into You,” which gives women a little more power in deciding when he’s not worth it, rather than leaving you feeling like you’ve broken a rule that would have otherwise put a ring on your finger. D+

Sing. Sing a song.

2009-03-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

A friend at church brought up a few weeks ago that hardly anyone ever sings with him during church. Now, we've only got 8 or 9 people at most on a Sunday, and one of those people has yet to speak her first words. But sometimes, I don't. Sometimes it's because I don't know the words. And sometimes it's because I know them far too well. I like to think that I take my poor experiences with big church and its young adult group in stride, but I never realize how much baggage I've got until those songs start playing. It's hard to describe the flood of emotions and memories of being parked in a room of people who have worked themselves into a feel-good state, and their faces are just glowing and I was on the outside of that. Even in the middle of people doing what worship is "supposed" to look like, after the first year of crushing loneliness, I couldn't tap into it anymore. I knew what I was, still a weirdo, still a tagalong. Except for the few close friends I made, I felt like I wasn't free to be myself, or even to show the pain I felt about it for fear of being dramatic.

Don't get me totally wrong; I'm a big believer in mystical worship, feeling the presence of God, and the overwhelming joy that goes along with that, and I wouldn't dare venture to say that any person in those big church worship times was just following through. But during those times, I could not speak the words of those songs and be honest. Despite living in a place called Trinity, I really don't believe in the Trinity, so singing about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit feels like I'm lying.

But there are songs that break through that shell. Songs of honest sorrw and the hope of repair, songs where I can admit my faults and brokenness as a messed up human being are freeing to me.

On Doctor Who, the Doctor and Donna encounter the Ood, a race that's been enslaved and had their external brains, which allow them to communicate telepathically, connect with emotions, and SING, they have that cut off and replaced with a translator that gives them a pleasant and compliant voice until they plan their revolt. They can't even express their feelings about being slaves. In a holding cell, they find "unprocessed" Ood who still have their secondary brains. The Doctor can hear their painful, sorrowful song of slavery, but Donna can't until he opens her mind. When she hears it, she's so overwhelmed by the sadness that she asks him to take it away.

I identify with those kind of songs. I've never been a slave, but I love the honesty and hope of songs that throwback to the Israelites in Egypt or in the desert. At the end of that episode, the Ood give the Doctor and Donna their song to take with them, this time a song of freedom and the triumph of good. It has no words, but to me, it's a song that lifts my heart in hope like those church songs do for other people. It brings be tears of joy.

And sometimes it's not even that I've got baggage connected with a song, but I feel more like contemplating the words that day. I did spend a significant amount of time with some Quakers, you know.

I like singing. I wish I was better at it, but I'm mostly stuck with singing in the car or doing karaoke. I just hold my God-related song life close to my chest.

Project 50: January/February

2009-03-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

I got behind on writing reviews right after I'd read the book, so I don't think these are my best. I'm hoping that moving into my new apartment with no cable will increase my reading time.

January

“Cosmos” by Carl Sagan
I just devoured the first half of this book. Sagan digs deep back into the history of science and pulls out all these fascinating events that brought humankind to its current knowledge of outer space. He takes breaks from the hard history and science to gush poetic admiration and wonder about the universe. And this book was written in 1985, just as the Space Shuttle Program was getting started. Nothing stood out to me as dated because c’mon, I’m not Carl Sagan, but imagine everything that we’ve learned in the twenty-some years about “out there” that he never knew. I’ll admit though, the book was pretty long, and with really tiny type, so I kind of wanted it to end sooner, but if you’re interested in space and have the stamina for a lot of science talk, I really recommend it. A

“A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Bad Beginning” by Lemony
Snickett
Lemony Snickett warns you to put down the book, then launches into a small segment in the lives of three unfortunate siblings. He does it so well, though! I especially like how he stops every page or so and defines a word that one of the characters has used. I think it would be a great way to expand kids’ vocabularies. And to crush their souls until there’s no hope, but eh, what are you going to do? I also want to read a bunch of these because they're short and will get me to 50 books. I'm a cheater. A-

“Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle
Astronaut” by Astronaut Mike Mullane
This is by far one of the best books that I’ve ever read. Mike Mullane was part of the first astronaut class of the Space Shuttle program. His story of NASA behind the scenes is hilarious and irreverent, starting with his determination to have the cleanest colon in his selection group, followed by adventures in peeing in radiators and admissions of guilt for being a sexist pig. It had me in
stitches, but also in tears, because Mullane’s friend and crewmate Judy Resnik
died in the Challenger disaster. I understood his drive to get into space at any cost, and appreciated that he saluted his poor wife’s absolute terror every time she had to go to the roof for a launch. He identified a lot of problems with the NASA administration that led to Shuttle accidents and a Survivor-esque workplace, and I felt the frustration with him. The book was 400 pages, and I was glad, because I didn’t want it to stop. Seriously, read it now! A+

“Doctor Who: Dreams of Empire” by Justin Richards
This book features the second doctor, who isn’t quite as wacky as the fourth, but he has his moments, like when he tries to cover up a security camera by climbing a wall and leaping into space to throw a handkerchief over it. The novel centers
around politics on a prison asteroid, chess, and a little bit of drawn out action with robots, so take that for what you will. There’s a twist at the end, but it kind of falls flat and I feel like I should have seen it coming anyways. B-

.. ......

February

“The Stargazing Year” by Charles Laird Calia
When a man who had grown up an amateur astronomer rediscovers his love for the stars his pocketbook and wife’s sanity suffer. That’s the basic message of this book, written month by month as Calia starts to build his own backyard
observatory. Given, there’s a nice bit of history around the production of telescopes through the ages, but I kind of felt like the author was trying to build himself up as an eccentric backyard astronomer in the company of people who had discovered comets and planets and stuff. B

“A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room” by Lemony
Snickett
Poor Uncle Monty! When you know that bad things are going to happen from the beginning of the book, and the author keeps telling you to give up hope, it’s kind of predictable. I can see where these books are headed, and I’m starting to wonder just how much a person can do variations on a theme of doom and gloom. There’s 13 of these absurdly curmudgeonly books to get through! Again, I liked it for what it was, and it kept me smirking. A-

“A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Wide Window” by Lemony
SnickettI liked this one a little less than the one before for its drawn out detective work. The Baudelaires are supposed to get the clues right away, but there’s a lot of them sitting around and pondering how to point the finger at Count Olaf and be heard. Poor kids. B

This one goes out to all the ladies out there...

2009-02-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

This weekend I went to my second Covergence, a gathering of Christian women leaders. Now, I don't really consider myself that much of a leader, but I'm a supporter of gender equality, women's empowerment, and the emerging church movement, so I went. It was just the thing I needed. First, it was a weekend away from the Bosco House, which has been very stressful and frustrating since I've been trying to get out of the job for several months. I got to see my friend Bex from Oregon State for the first time in six years. But besides all that, it gave me a lot of hope for womankind.

I got to join women of all ages and marital statuses in a discussion about sexuality (in a warm soaking pool! rawr!) We talked about our hope that the church would step up to give a sex-positive education to our young people. Women who had been married for a few years said that they wished they had known so much more about sex and intimacy before their marriages, even if that didn't include sex itself. A non-Christian woman who joined her friend and who had had a child at a young age said that she now considered abstinence sexy and exotic. A married woman shared that she was looking forward to some "sexploration" with her husband in their 50s. We talked about the stigma against "self-love" and agreed that being blessed with the possession of our own bodies and being forbidden to understand how they worked was more than a little ridiculous. We agreed that we should affirm the external beauty of our friends and ourselves.

Later that night, over drinks with the gals, I had the opportunity to talk about honoring the external beauty of signs of aging and the things that life does to our bodies. A woman shared a story about her friend's son, who, tracing the stretch marks on her skin, asked "Mommy, where did you get your rainbows?" There is hope for our men after all! Together we wondered what kind of education growing boys and men needed to really start treating women with respect and fully realize equality. The single girls and I agreed to expect the men we date to treat us like equals who have ownership of our own bodies and minds instead of objects made to nod our heads at whatever they say.

I think that the diversity of ages at Convergence totally made it what it was to me. I benefited so much from the wisdom of the elder women at the gathering, and in turn, they affirmed me and the other younger women by saying things like "You girls are so much farther along than I was at your age." I didn't have very many elder women who gave me a positive and empowering view of myself and other women growing up, and I think that's something that's been missing from my life. I hope that I can somehow still be that woman to someone else a few decades down the road.

I wish that some of my CCF friends could have been part of those conversations. At one time I also internalized that patriarchy that has held women hostage as perpetual servants to men. And when I finally started to think outside that box and asked if there was anything that I didn't have to submit to my husband, I was asked "Why would you want to?" and told "Oh, when you find the right guy you'll understand." What a colossal cop-out it is that we tell ourselves so that we don't have to feel frustrated at our lack of equality. But I see the women at Convergence taking ownership of their rights and abilities. Women can lead congregations in the way of Jesus. We can expect an equal partnership instead of a head of household and servant relationship. We are not angels and we are not whores, but we are strong, and we are more than an old fashioned view that's been misinterpreted as biblical. Ladies, start roaring. Men, start listening.

What happened to the idealist?

2009-01-26T21:35:00.000-08:00

Last year about this time, I was hopeful. I'd just left a roommate situation that made me want to spend more time out of the apartment than in. I moved close to work and the church plant I was involved in was just getting off the ground. And man, I was going to move mountains. Maybe that vision I'd had the year before, hallucinating on Percocet, where I was flying over the city, seeing everyone touched by God...maybe that would soon be coming true. (Note to reader: don't try to numb a broken heart with Percocet)

And then the shit hit the fan. I broke my toe, which brought out all my minor frustrations with the kids in my job. I had a performance review in which my supervisor basically told me that I was in danger of losing my job if I didn't shape up. The roommates I thought I would be living with spent nearly every night away from the house. I started looking for another job, and I found that the Bosco House, a Catholic Worker community with a mission to house single mothers and their children, needed a live-in staff person. Perfect! I thought. I could get away from my supervisor and actually make a difference in the world.

But it wasn't what I'd planned on. I knew that my social life would suffer somewhat, but I didn't count on having to spend everyday from 4:30-11 sitting on my butt waiting for residents to get home so they could come home and tell me about all the drama they'd gotten themselves into that day. I couldn't spend time with my aging grandparents or my new baby cousin. It turned out to be a former Catholic Worker house, one in which a former worker had damaged ties with the outside community of support. My coworker was negative about the residents and it rubbed off on me. My church continued to meet in a suburban living room instead of a downtown retail space that used to be a strip club. I got grumpy, cynical, bitter, everything I didn't ever want to be. I started to say to myself what I hoped just a year before I would never say, "There has to be more to life than this." I honestly felt, and still kind of feel like God ditched me.

So what really happened?
This Sunday, my church talked about when Jesus going out to the desert for 40 days. Wallowing in my funk, I just sat through it and listen because it didn't seem relevant to me at all. Who sits around talking theology when they're dying inside besides like, David? But one person said "Maybe Jesus didn't know that he'd only be there for 40 days. Maybe he went out there knowing that he had to experience trials, and never knew when or if it would end." That spoke to me. I don't know when I'll finally learn some skills to deal with times when I'm depressed. I don't know if I'll ever not feel lonely. I'm not really ok with that, but recognizing it somehow makes me feel better. I don't know what I believe about God and Jesus at this point. But I know I don't like feeling bitter about being good to people. It's hard to think of people as beloved creations of God when you feel like God has cursed you, but there's a crack in that, and it gives me at least a little ability to wish.

Feel good soundtrack

2009-01-12T22:43:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I don't feel good. Sometimes music helps. Here is a list of some feel good songs that I've been into lately. You'll see that I don't really listen to music of my own generation. They don't get it. I was born about 30 years too late.

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen
This song breaks my heart into a million tiny pieces every time I hear it. Sometimes I cry because it's so beautiful.

“Chelsea Hotel #2” by Leonard Cohen, sung by Rufus Wainwright
If in was physically mate with someone's voice, I'd pick Rufus. I think the voice is all I'd be able to get, if ya know what I'm sayin'.

“Kathy’s Song” by Simon and Garfunkel
I like this one because it makes Eugene rain seem not so bad.

“Shelter From the Storm” by Bob Dylan
This is just a nice song that perks me up.

“In Spite of Ourselves” by John Prine
A dirty little ditty that makes me giggle.

“Illegal Smile” by John Prine
I grew up listening to one John Prine album that my dad recorded on tape. In my adult years, I was visiting my parents home and went out to the garage, and my dad was listening to that tape and singing along. To a song about marijuana.

“Waltzing Matilda” by Banjo Paterson
I don't think this one needs explanation.

“No Rain” by Blind Melon
I want to dance like a bee girl to this.

“Cry Baby” by Janis Joplin
I can just feel all the soul and energy that Janis poured into this one and it reminds me how good it feels to empty all that emotion out until you've got nothing left to feel. Then you go to sleep.

“Solitary Man” by Neil Diamond
I heard this on one of the last Stargate Atlantis episodes sung by Johnny Cash, and it's been stuck in my head since then.

“And Your Bird Can Sing” by The Beatles
It can. But you don't get me.

“Paradise” by John Prine
Sometimes paradise gets hauled away and all you've got are memories of the way things were.

“Helpless” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
s'ok

“The Man Who Sold the World” by David Bowie
Bowie wins at practically everything.

“Hold Me Now” by The Polyphonic Spree
If you ever need a pick me up on a grey day, this song delivers.

“April Come She Will” by Simon and Garfunkel
There's always next month.

Project 40: December

2009-01-08T20:49:00.000-08:00

December

“The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century” edited by Harry Turtledove
It’s hard to write a review when the stories in a collection are so diverse. They really are the best of the 20th Century, at least (with the exception of the Connie Willis story…I’m not a fan) they were all really good. It was a good mix of traveling forward and traveling back in time. I think my favorite was the man from the early 20th Century who fell in with the clan of Vikings and they deemed him not even useful enough for “women’s work.” A-

“Promised the Moon” by Stephanie Nolan
In the early 60s, a group of twelve female pilots went through a series of test exactly like those endured by the Mercury 7 astronauts, with the impression that NASA would somehow recognize the tests and accept women into the astronaut-training program. They were wrong. This book is a dramatic history of the unknown women who never had a chance to go into space because of their sex. The book is good…the story itself is rather disappointing because even though I know they never made it, I wanted them to win! A

That's it! 41 books! I'm shooting for 50 this year, so recommend some good ones when you see me.

Project 40: November

2008-12-16T22:32:00.000-08:00

November
I gave up on the novel at about 17,000 words of action-less crap that even I didn't want to read. I would rather read what other people have written. Maybe I should practice writing more...
“Doctor Who: Festival of Death” by Jonathan Morris
Now THIS was more like it. I’m glad to see that all Doctor Who books are not as boring as the first one I read. Right from the beginning, there’s action, danger, paradoxes, lives to be saved, and K-9! It involves the 4th Doctor (played by Tom Baker on the show) who’s really a goony absent-minded professor kind of hero (my kind of hero). The Doctor, K-9, and Romana have to save a ship of people from zombies created by “The Beautiful Death,” a tourist experience where participants actually die and then are brought back to life. Zombies, guys! There’s also some other weird timey-wimey stuff on account of the Doctor and Romana going back in time several times and bumping into their past selves. A+

“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K Dick
A friend of mine has read a lot of Philip K. Dick, so I thought I’d hit up the future on my sci-fi kick. Rogue androids in the future pose an apparent threat to humans, and they aren’t allowed on Earth (mass exodus to Mars, radioactive dust on Earth, that old story). The search for the missing androids didn’t interest me as much as the view of the future as a time when humanity is so difficult to define, and status is placed on people and things in such a strange way. Officer Deckard is a bounty hunter who wants to get the bounty for a bunch of androids so he can buy an animal in a world where real animals are status symbols. Deckard is afraid to admit that his sheep is electric because he doesn’t want anyone to look down on him. Isodore is a “chicken-head” who’s been brain damaged by the radiation and unable to flee with the rest to Mars. He tries to help the fugitive androids hiding from Deckard because he lives all alone and just wants companionship. I watched the movie Blade Runner, based on this book, right after I read it, and it left something to be desired because it didn’t even focus on some of my favorite things about the book. A-

“The Anubis Gates” by Tim Powers
This was another NaNo recommendation. An English professor is invited to speak to a group of high-paying time travelers who go back in time to see Samuel Colridge speak. Then when they go back to the site where they are supposed to make it back to the 21st Century, he is kidnapped and chased around by a sorcerer and his clown friend. It gets kind of hard to follow because there are a lot of new or body-switched characters coming in every few chapters. There wasn’t very much focus on the time travel aspect, just a bunch of weird stuff happening while everyone chases everyone else. I think it could have been more pulled together. C+

“The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells
This book was short and sweet and in that high style of writing that makes you feel like you’re reading something really important. The Time Traveler visits the future and sees what becomes of the human race after several thousand years: it splits into two species, the child-like people of the light, and the terrifying Molocks of the dark. All the Time Traveler wants to do is get his machine back! It’s short enough to read in a few days of bus rides, but I felt it was satisfying as a whole story. A-

That makes 39. I think I'm going to make it, kids!

Project 40: October

2008-11-23T21:33:00.000-08:00

In preparation for National Novel Writing Month, I stocked up on a bunch of sci fi. Man, I love science fiction. I don’t think people realize how monumental it is to DREAM into the future. I mean, how would we have reached the moon without Jules Verne? Seriously.

“The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury
It took me a couple of stories to get into this one, but once I was able to follow the timeline, I kind of caught on. My favorite story was “Usher II,” where a man builds a mechanical house of horror based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. The book is a collection of stories, so they’re not all that cohesive. The Martians are different in nearly every story, but if you’re going through a timeline and assuming that Mars is a big planet, that’s not too hard to get past. After “Something Wicked This Way Comes” though, I was expecting to be drawn in a little bit more. B-

“Out of the Silent Planet” by CS Lewis
I think this is the first in a series, because it kind of ended like part of a series, which I generally don’t like in books. I like the way it was written though, with a sense of wonder of being on a new world, and the setup for a mythology comparing the Earth to other planets who have a connection to God (CS Lewis isn’t all that subtle) is pretty fascinating. B+

“Doctor Who: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street” by Lawrence Miles
I haven’t been obsessed with a TV show since the X-Files, and even with that, I lost interest after David Duchovny left the show. Now, I’m really really into Doctor Who. So I was excited to read one of the novels because hey, the show’s so great and action packed, the books are bound to be as well, right? Bzzt. Not this one. Within the first 30 pages, I wanted to put it down. I was very disappointed. It was written like it was trying to be a historical account written several years later, except that all of the events “are not clear.” So there’s very little action, just a bunch of things that “might have” happened, but “it is not clear”. Most of the novel involves whores sitting around a brothel for about six months while the Doctor doesn’t do anything because he’s sick. I ended up finishing it, but barely. D+

“Time and Again” by Jack Kinney
This one was recommended by some people at the NaNoWriMo forums when I asked for novels about time travel. Sy Morely is an artist who is chosen by a government agency to participate in a time travel experiment. These experiments don’t involve a machine or anything. The person has to immerse themselves in the time period of their assignment, and then travel back in time through self-hypnosis, and somehow, they “break through” and actually participate in past. Sy goes back to 1880s New York. It’s a very romantic view, because the characters take walks in the park during the winter, with horse drawn carriages and everything. There are a few action scenes involving the nefarious fiancé of the woman that Sy falls in love with in the 1880s, which was bound to happen, but most of the book was an elegant portrayal of the past. I was expecting a little more substance, but it was still a fairly good read. B

A New Era

2008-11-05T17:42:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama won the presidential election.

Time to get busy.

And an island never cries

2008-10-17T20:45:00.000-07:00

I'm in a pretty big funk. You might call it depression (but funk is hipper). I don't feel like eating, and for a couple days there, I just felt like doing nothing but crawl into bed and cover up my head. I felt spaced out at work and ignored people at home. Tuesday night found me hugging myself on the floor in my room crying my eyes out and trying not to be loud enough for my coworker to hear me. It's numbness and sadness I've only felt a few times in my life.

I feel like I've failed on account of my loneliness. I was supposed to live and work at this house for single mothers for a year, and I expected it to be hard, but I wasn't prepared for how trapped I would feel. I'm not required to be at the house all the time, and I'm not even required to be there all the time that the residents are there, but some fights have happened when I haven't been there, so I'm paranoid to leave my coworker home alone with the residents. As a result, I don't get to see my family very often, and I've hung out with a friend once since I started working in July. So I'm quitting in January or as soon as we can find a replacement. I want to move back to Springfield and be available to my family and friends again.

Last year, I felt like my family demanded a lot of my time. I did a ton of volunteer stuff, and it seemed like my grandparents wanted me over at their house any time I wasn't doing something. Now I miss it. I had a night off a few weeks ago, and I spent it on my grandparents' couch after the presidential debate. Last year, my grandpa drove me crazy with his cranky attitude, picking on me and my grandma and bashing of my religion. Now he doesn't ever want to leave his house except to do the same things he does everyday, ride his bike and see his sister in the assisted living place. All the other time, he sleeps on the couch and reads the paper over and over.

Most of my friends don't know what I'm doing. I can't go to nighttime events because I'm stuck at the house. I'd invite people over, but I'm always afraid that something crazy is going to go down, plus it's not very exciting here. My church is going to start gearing up soon (we've been in an antsy stasis phase for a while and I'm itching to start doing stuff instead of talking about it) and I want to be available to help out.

Maybe I'm running away. I guess I'd rather be a chicken than keep working and be bitter and lonesome. I don't know how I'm going to afford moving out...room and board was free while I worked here, but I was also only working my school job part time, so I'll be bringing in about $600 a month until I find another job after I move out. Which means no apartment complex will take me. Which means I'm going to have to either find a room in a house, possibly with strangers, or try to get into affordable housing through St Vincent dePaul. But I'd rather worry about money than not be able to help my grandparents or see my new baby cousin or have a Fairytale Theater marathon with my best friend or fix the ceiling in the tiny maybe-church space.

I was all about jumping in and serving God with people who are different than myself. But it's not very fulfilling when the nature of the service is to be cut off from your community. Maybe some people are Lone Rangers like that, but I can't function that way. I hate to admit that I NEED.

Project 40: September

2008-10-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

“Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin” by Myra Friedman
I’ve wanted to read a biography of Janis Joplin for a long time, since I’m a big fan of her music. I love that she wasn’t traditionally beautiful, but still made it as a star. This was about as good and detailed a biography as you can get. Myra Friedman was a personal friend and publicist to Janis, so she saw everything that went on while the band was on tour, as Janis went on and off of drugs, in and out of love, everything. She doesn’t try to make Janis a victim of drugs or fame or a bad childhood or anything. She recognizes the places where Janis chose to act a certain way towards people and chose to be involved with destructive behaviors over which she had a great amount of control. The whole book shows a Janis Joplin who needed to be loved, a very insecure young woman with a lot of talent and a lot of fear. The book got a little colloquial at odd times, but I was ok with that. A-

“Lost Horizon” by James Hilton
I had a bit of a hard time with this book. It wasn’t badly written; it was just kind of boring. Four foreigners are kidnapped and taken to the Himalayas, but they don’t seem too bothered by it. Then they come to the city of Shangri-La, and it’s all well and good. Oh, but they can’t leave. But only one man knows that. The story of the city is kind of interesting, but I expected the whole book to be a little more spectacular from what other people have told me about it, and I was super disappointed in the ending. C+

“The Bonesetter’s Daughter” by Amy Tan
I think my friend who recommended the chick lit books also recommended this one. But I actually liked this one! It’s told in two parts, the first focusing on Ruth, a Chinese-American woman trying to handle her aging mother, LuLing. Ruth thinks that her mother has Alzheimer’s Disease; she gives her wrong age at the doctor and pulls out a picture of her childhood nursemaid and claims the woman is her mother. While searching her mother’s apartment, Ruth finds a stack of memoirs, written in Chinese by her mother. She has them translated, which becomes the second part of the book, the story of LuLing’s life in China. I picked this book up at just the right time, as I’m trying to figure out my part in my aging grandparents’ lives. A

Invisibility

2008-09-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

A lot has changed since I left the sticks. I lived my whole life in a town of 250 and went to school in a town of 400. We didn't lock our doors (well, until my house got robbed, probably by my parents' students). I never locked my car at work, and I always left my keys on the passenger seat. I and all the kids that lived there never had the option of going to a different school. When we went to the local store (there was only one) we bought our snacks from Jerry-Bob and Crystal's parents. When we went to Henry's, Henry made our hamburgers and fries, and his son was in my class. I worked in the diner owned by one of my parent's former students who babysat me. Everyone knew everyone else.

But now, I don't know the store clerks. I go to Winco and there are a thousand lanes to choose from, so I never see the same person. The pharmacist isn't my math teacher's sister like where I came from. I don't have a favorite restaurant or coffeeplace where "everybody knows your name." Even though we give Oregon hellos (a little dip of the head) on the street, we're mostly invisible.

I don't like that, really. It would be impossible to know everyone in this city, but I wish I did so I could give a genuine hello. How do you get to that point in the second (or third) largest city in Oregon? Pick a small place and get to know everyone well or go on a get-to-know-you spree and find out every name of every cashier in Eugene? I'd probably have a heart attack from anxiety because I'm nervous around people I don't know, but wouldn't it be worth it?

I think it's especially important to show respect and caring to janitors, bus drivers, servers and cashiers because there's little prestige that goes along with those jobs. I just wish it wasn't such a big job.

Library quote

2008-09-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

I write a letter to the Eugene Weekly about a month ago. It was an open letter to the teens who hang out downtown, about not accepting the bad view that adults have of them. It was titled "Prove them wrong" and it's now on a huge poster in the window of the Eugene Public Library on the corner where the teens hang out. I don't know how long it's been there, and I didn't even know it had been published, but it's exciting to me!
You can read it here.

I feel a little bit strange about the location, because it's in an obvious place that teens hang out, kind of a "behave or get out," but I did mean for people to read it, and if they didn't pick up the Eugene Weekly then, they'll be sure to read it now. I hope teens and adults read it.

Project 40: August

2008-09-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

“Jesus for President” by Shane Claiborne and Chris Shaw
This book was a lot more focused than Shane’s last book, The Irresistible Revolution, which was also great. In this one, he and Chris Shaw look at the incompatibility of Christianity with empire and war, right down to saying that Christians should not be in militaries. It might rub some people the wrong way, and I’m not sure I’m completely convinced of their interpretation of Romans 13, but it was thorough, full of art and color and gave me a new respect for the movers and shakers and peacemakers in the history of Christianity. A

“Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer
A friend read the first page of this novel in a Russian accent in the back of the car, and that’s how I heard about it. It’s pretty wonderful. A Ukranian young man and his grandfather escort a “young rich Jew from America” around the country on a search for a woman who supposedly saved his grandfather from Nazis. They’re searching for a town that was totally destroyed, which is really heartbreaking, but most of the novel is lighthearted, going back and forth between Jonathan’s (the American) family history and the farcical journey around the country, narrated in hilarious broken English by Alex (the Ukranian). Read it! A

“God Speaks Again: An Introduction to the Baha’i Faith” by Kenneth E. Bowers
I had a friend in high school whose family was Baha’i, and other than knowing that their leader was the Baha’ullah, I didn’t know anything about the religion. I’ve learned tiny bits about it since then, but when I recently went through a spiritual reevaluation, I figured I’d put a little more effort into it. This book is very thorough on the life of Baha’ullah, less so on his son and great-grandson who became successors of leadership after his death. The book is also fairly clear in stating that Baha’is believe that Baha’ullah, Jesus, Mohammed, and Moses are all chosen “mouthpieces” of God who give humanity the proper word of God for the time period, and that Baha’ullah was the most recent. In other parts of the book, I felt like the author had the space to make a compelling argument of proof on a subject but chose not to. It’s clearly a labor of spiritual love on the part of the author, not just a cut and dry history and list of beliefs, which I can appreciate, but in the way he writes, it’s sometimes not as substantial as I’d hoped. It lives up to its title, though, and I guess that’s all you can ask for. B-

“Buddha, Vol. 3: Devadatta” by Osamu Tezuka
This volume didn’t have as much condensed material as the last two. Siddhartha is starting his monkly quest, and is confronted with more temptations of power, especially where he’s trying to withdraw from violence. He joins up with a monk who’s all about putting himself through suffering, and also gains a disciple in a snot nosed little boy. There’s a subplot of Devadatta living in a state between animal and man, which is interesting and heartbreaking and repulsive all at once. I feel like it was a setting-up book, so I didn’t give it a real great score. B-

“Locas: the Maggie and Hopey Stories” by Jaime Herdandez
This is a huge volume of a bunch of comic books mashed together. It’s about two Latina girls who are into sex, drugs and rock and roll. Oh, and hanging out in their underwear a lot, like when fixing cars. It’s a wild and crazy life, kicked off with a story about Maggie doing a mechanic job in a foreign country that involves dinosaurs and a rocketship. Nearly every older woman in the book is a female wrestler, and there are a lot of love lessons from which no one learns. The two main characters separate for a while, and I found myself frustrated that they weren’t reunited until the end, when the author tries to pull a deus ex machina and then changes his mind, which was lame. I still rooted for the characters. B-

The intolerable other

2008-08-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

I wrote a few months ago about the kind of person that would make me cringe the most if that person showed up in my faith community. Well, I found another kind of person, and I live and work with her. Awesome combo.

Here's the deal: I live and work in a house for single mothers who are trying to get their lives back together. There are rules and chores and so far, the two residents haven't stepped up to them. So every time the residents are out of earshot, or something new happens like someone calling to say they're going to miss curfew, my coworker crabs about it, but even worse, her tone makes it seem like it's my fault. I tried to tune her out, because I'm not going to be able to change someone that's older than my mom. But tonight I couldn't handle someone crabbing at me that much and I told her that I wished she wouldn't complain like that because it brings me down. Now she's pouting.

It's harder to be tolerant of differences when you're supposed to be on the same team. I thought the hardest part of the job was going to be the residents. Maybe I just screwed up something by not stuffing things down and keeping my mouth shut. I don't know if I have all that theoretical Christian patience. But I have to, or this job is going to be hell. Hell in my own house.

Disappointed

2008-08-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

The news about John Edwards' affair bums me out. When things falter with Obama, I could just reassure myself that he was not my first choice. Man, I believed in that guy. I thought he was honest and genuine, but if a person can't keep a promise to just one person when they're suffering from a potentially fatal disease, how can that person keep promises to millions of citizens. Even more, if a person lies about his or her personal life to the public, how is the public supposed to trust him or her to tell the truth about public matters? I feel let down, and I'm not even married to him.

Project 40: July

2008-08-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

I've got three books that I started in July, but I'm halfway through all of them. I'll see you next time! (I've been watching Reading Rainbow lately)

"Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
I found this one kind of uncomfortable to read. Old Humbert Humbert has a thing for little girls, falls for one in particular named Lolita, moves into the house as her mother's boarder, marries the mother so he can continue to be close to Lolita, then when the mother is conveniently hit by a car after she discovers his pedophilia, he takes Lolita on the road and makes her his lover. She's a typical precocious teenager though, and doesn't really fit his ideal of a little lover. I thought this was going to get better or he was going to get caught, but it never happened. I'm not really sure what the point was, to gross out the reader with reserved erotic descriptions of 12 year old girls or to make you identify with a pedophile or something in between. I might be interested in reading some literary study on Lolita to see what other people think about it. It's not explicit, and the coy way he dances around sexuality is actually kind of poetic, so I give Nabokov points for that. I would recommend this book only to people I thought were mature enough to handle the subject matter. B-

"Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
This book was easy to get through, and I finished it in a day full of plane delays. A zookeeper's son from India, Pi, is moving with his family and a ship full of zoo animals to Canada when the ship sinks in the middle of the Pacific. He's set adrift in a lifeboat with a zebra, hyena, orangutan, and, he finds out a few days later, an adult male tiger named Richard Parker. The hyena dispenses with the zebra and orangutan, and Richard Parker takes care of the hyena. Pi realizes that there's no way to get rid of the tiger, so he has to survive by keeping Richard Parker alive and happy. He survives in the ocean for 227 days. The survival story reminds me of Robinson Crusoe in its detail, and I really believed it was a true story as told to the author by Piscine Patel until I did a little Google research. So Martel made all that up out of his own imagination. Sweet. The first part of the book was also kind of interesting to me because Pi is a very religious boy who practices a combination of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, and is told by his spiritual leaders and family that he can't have it all. His answer is that he just wants to know God. Fair enough. A

"Buddha, Vol. 2: The Four Encounters"
In the second book of this series, Siddhartha battles heartache, royal responsibility, and a few pretty fearsome foes. He begins to feel a pull to become an aesthetic monk and forsake his comfortable lifestyle near the top of the caste system. The storytelling is really effective, and I definitely understood the complicated choices that Siddhartha has to make between family, love, responsibility to his people and the spiritual life of denial he believes he should practice. A

Eugene Scene

2008-07-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

Here in the Eug' we're having a little issue. More than one downtown shop owner has complained of "street people" and teenagers peeing, defecating, and writing obscenities and racial slurs on their shops. The proposed solution? Greater "crackdown" on loitering teenagers and dirty old homeless people and the right to BAN certain people from the downtown area without conviction of a crime.

I'm only kind of torn on this. I really do agree that peeing and writing the n word on shop is threatening and totally inexcusable. But that doesn't mean that you can take away people's right to be in public spaces. If there are benches in front of the library, they're meant to be SAT ON. If there are tables in Kesey Square, they're meant for people to gather and enjoy the space.

What it comes down to is that the people with money and influence don't want to look at undesirables. The ability to banish people from downtown would really only apply to teens and homeless people. Can you imagine a downtown guard asking a group of greyheaded old ladies to move along from the benches in front of the library? Can you imagine a bunch of soccer moms with kids in tow being told they can't gather on the sidewalk while they give their toddlers organic Cherrios? It wouldn't happen.

Teens are threatening to respectable folk because those people know that they haven't given them the respect they deserve as human beings. They've been written off on account of their age, expected to make trouble, and what young person fighting for acknowledgment of their worth is going to want to smile and be sweet to people who make them feel like criminals?

My suggestion is not to be afraid. Carry your toddler into the library, right past the congregation of teens, and smile. Wish them a good afternoon. Compliment their mohawks. I don't care as long as you show respect. I feel that people on this side of success in their lives don't recognize their responsibility to be the bigger person, not in a "better than you" or "more right to be here" kind of way, but recognizing that some people have growing to do. Please realize that respect should be given unconditionally, no matter if the person is a shop owner, professor, homeless person, or teen.

Teens, prove them wrong. Prove your right to be in public spaces by resisting the urge to puff out your chest and claim your territory. That goes for everyone. Don't abuse your right to public spaces by claiming them as your own. Downtowns should be places for everyone who shows respect, and that involves sharing. You learned it in kindergarten. Can't we just share downtown?

This is weird and really personal so don't laugh

2008-07-25T23:03:00.000-07:00

Do you believe in prophetic dreams? With everything pregnant happening around me, I had a weird dream, I don't know if it's a prophetic dream or not. I dreamed I was pregnant and ready to give birth. There was no father around, but my family was all around me, and some friends. The high school pep band, which consisted of Mr Breon (our janitor) and Lynn (my childhood babysitters husband, both of whom actually were in the pep band) played music for me outside the hospital window. I told some friends who were sitting around on a sidewalk that I was about to have a baby, but they seemed disinterested. But no matter what I did, the baby didn't come. I walked around and my water had broken, but it didn't come. I was upset that everything happened too fast for me to have any choices about how I wanted to give birth. I hadn't had any ultrasounds or anything. I think I wanted to name the baby Danny.

But the birth just wouldn't happen. What does that mean? There's something waiting to be birthed out of me and it's not happening. There's something inside of me, an idea or a dream or something that I'm supposed to be a part of, something big, but it's not happening o matter what I do. My friends and family are mostly supportive, but some are suspicious.

What is my baby? What am I waiting for?

Wear your religion on your chest

2008-07-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I went to Cornerstone Festival, a huge Christian music festival in Illinois. I was already cranky from the emotional things I was going through, and then...I went to the merch tent. Coming at me from all sides were tshirts that read "ABSTINENCEISAWESOME" and "I love my future wife" (tempted to get that one), booths for Christian colleges that promised the tools to win souls or get a degree in "Worship Leadership," and a general black hole of creativity in design and thought that proclaims "Christians are to rip off every worldly trend, slap a smarmy saying about abortion on it and in so doing fit into the box that we have created for you that makes you look like an even BIGGER asshole than the guy at the entrance holding a sign and passing out Chick Tracts."

Why am I a Christian again? Oh yeah, the monsters! (Thanks Otto Nobot!)

No really, what gave me a little hope at Cornerstone that Christianity isn't just a boxed in money market were the people who reminded me that human beings are gross and monstrous and we're ALL like that. Christians aren't special by nature of their sexual mores (they just would rather not talk about it) or their appearance or their GODAWFUL music or even by nature of their religion, because God is for everyone. I don't know if God wants everyone to become a Christian or not, but I think he loves people who aren't Christians just the same. What gave me hope was knowing that in little pockets of the world, there are Christians who believe in doing good unto everyone instead of being self-righteous. There are people who walk Palestinian children to school so Israeli grownups don't throw garbage at them. There are people who take in seven teenage skaters into their houses like they're their own kids. There are people who put the money that their churches generate into paying an acquaintance's medical bills instead of building a mahogany pulpit for the church.

I think that things like saying thanks to God and valuing life and saving sex for marriage are right and good, but there's so much more that Christians are responsible for. If someone gets some kind of spiritual nourishment out of the church with the mahogany pulpit, God bless 'em, honestly. But if your entire faith is based on rubbing it in someone else's face that you're saved and he or she isn't, then it's not really following Jesus' example. That's what the Pharisees were doing and Jesus made no bones about how pointless it was.

So Cornerstone made me throw up in my mouth a little. All this has probably been said on the blogosphere before, and I really don't mean an ill will toward anyone. It's saddening to think that this might be all that Christianity is cracked up to be, and I'm not feelin' it. I was much happier to get back to Eugene and the Country Fair, where the jugglers didn't have any self-righteous agendas, the women didn't dwell on causing their brothers to stumble over their painted breasts (although literally...), and pregnant mothers celebrated the life inside their bodies with decoration rather than preach to the choir about how awful abortion is and leaving it at that.

Transcontinental Failroad

2008-07-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

The next few entries are going to be about things I was thinking about on my two-week vacation to North Carolina/ Illinois.

I was prepared for the most awkward trip of my life. Not only would I be road-tripping to the midwest with my old boyfriend, the soon-to-be wife, and the converted Muslim brother, but I'd be seeing my ex for the first time in four years, the last time being when we broke up (it was mutual). A lot has happened in four years, and my ex is practically a new person. How so? My old boyfriend is a transsexual person in transition to becoming a full-time woman.

Note: If I try to do pronouns, I'm going to get them wrong. I know it probably hurts my ex's feelings that I can't get them right at the moment...the last time we saw each other, there was no problem saying he/him, and the nature of our relationship makes it difficult for me to make the switch right now. So in the interest of not hurting anyone's feelings and protecting confidentiality, I'm going to refer to my ex as X (get it?) and use the neutral pronouns ze and zir. It might be a little cumbersome, so sorry.

I was expecting to see X at the airport in the full makeup and inserts that we'd talked about before, but on the way to the airport, ze had to visit relatives that don't know about ze's transition, so I saw the same old person that I'd known before with slightly longer hair. When we went out to lunch the next day, X got "girled up" and the waitress referred to the three of us (me, X, and fiance) as "ladies". I expected it to be harder at first, but I actually thought that ze was pretty brave, getting out there and being zirself.

It got harder later on, when I was surrounded by three couples, one married, one engaged, and one in which the boyfriend had moved out of state to be with his girlfriend. The last good relationship I'd had was with X, and four years of insecurity weighs heavy on a person's heart. I probably got all that mixed up with X's transition, and took it out on zir when we talked later. I'm resistant to any kind of change, and everything around me was a whole hell of a lot of change.

It bothered me that I was bothered. I'm the last person that should be a jerk about being supportive of a queer friend. I was confronted with issues of sexuality I hadn't dwelt upon for years. Before X and I started dating, I came out as bi on the message board where we met, and ze was the most supportive person through the whole thing. That's the only group of people, beside a few select individuals who have ever known. I'm comfortable with myself these days, and I don't like to make a big deal out of it, but I also haven't had a date in close to three years, so I don't even know how I'd react if I was particularly into a girl. It's not even like 50/50 attraction, more like 85/15, so she'd really have to be some girl to catch my attention.

X has had the benefit of being pretty involved with a trans group this past year, and I wonder if things hadn't worked out the way they did, if I would have benefited from involvement with an LGBTQ group. Near the end of my year at OSU, I got really involved and made really good friends in the Rainbow Continuum. I didn't even have to come out to them. No one cared if I was queer or an ally, and they were really respectful of everyone. Then I moved to U of O, and everything was different. I was living in a Christian women's co-op associated with a Conservative Baptist church, and the LGBTQ group was a lot more in-your-face than I was ready for. I had to make a choice, and since I don't like to make a big deal out of my bisexuality anyways, it's not the most important part of myself to me, I chose to hide it.

Bi Christians are like the worst of both worlds. In the gay and lesbian community, bisexual people either don't want to admit that they're really gay or they're just bi because it's cool. Oh, and they're total sluts too. In the Christian community, queer people in general are the ultimate sinners with the agenda of afflicting everyone with the gay. And they're total sluts too. I'm celibate by choice, and the pressure of the "sexual" part of bisexual kept me out of the queer community too.

I'm not ashamed of having dated a trans person even if ze wasn't transitioned at all at the time. I knew about zir feelings, but at the time it was no more than "sometimes I think it would be better if I was born a girl" and at 19, I didn't take it as seriously as I should have. X taught me to question the gender roles that I'd been indoctrinated with through all those marriage prep groups also known as youth groups (high school and especially college). So maybe I'm a jerk who can't use X's desired pronouns or chosen name right now, but I'm a jerk who's trying. Our friendship is important to me, and even though it's difficult, I'm fighting it out with myself.

Project 40: May/June

2008-06-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

May

“The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd
I think my grandma must have given me this book to read a couple of years ago, because it has her name in it. A teenage girl, Lily, runs away from her abusive father with the family’s black housemaid, Rosaleen, after Rosaleen gets thrown in jail for trying to register to vote in Georgia in 1964. They run to a bee farm run by three black sisters in South Carolina, following Lily’s hopes of learning more about her deceased mother. It’s a great story with a lot of heart, but not written with a real mushy, sentimental tone. It was enjoyable to read. A

June

“Light in August” by William Faulkner
I followed up a book set in the South with another. I’d read Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” and loved it, so I had high expectations for this book. Conclusion? The book was entirely too long. If it had been about 100 pages shorter, maybe I would have liked it more, but because the author jumped around so much in time with lengthy and (I felt) pointless histories of each peripheral character, I got worn out by the end. It started out great, but dragged by the middle. C+

“The God of Small Things” by Arundati Roy
This was the second time that I read this. The first time was my sophomore year of college in an honors lit class. I liked it then, and I ran out of books to read at my parents house, so I started it again. It's probably one of my favorites, just because the language is so great. The story is set in India and follows the Kochamma family, especially the fraternal twins Rahel and Estha and their mother. There are a lot of Indian caste politics involved, as well as dysfunctional family dynamics. I think what I like most is that the kids play with language, spelling words backwards and reconfiguring them the way they actually hear them, like singing "Rejoice in the Lord Or-rol-ways" A+

"Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis
I was supposed to have read this book for a class on historical fiction. Yeah, I never did that. It's a pretty good book, although the pacing sometimes gets a little boring. The story jumps from the 21st century, where Oxford historians send students back in time for research, to the 14th century, where one such student has been "dropped" during Christmas. The first third of the book is kind of frustrating because Kivrin, the student, can't understand the contemps she meets because of a malfunction in her translator, and it gets old. Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, a mystery disease is complicating EVERYTHING! Other than that, it's a pretty interesting and intense book. I'm a big fan of stuff about time travel, even if it's just to one place and time. B+

"Buddha, Volume One: Kapilavatsu by Osamu Tezuka"
A graphic novel about the life of the Buddha? I'm there! Since it's a graphic novel, it goes super fast. It's not completely serious. Tezuka throws in some jokes about turning water into coke and draws himself into a few frames. It ends with the birth of Siddhartha, and I'll probably try to read the rest of the series to decide whether they all tell me what I want to know about the Buddha. I think for people like me who are just trying to get an idea about Buddhism, it's probably pretty decent. Stay tuned. For now B+

"Two Truths and a Lie" by Scott Schofield
This is the script for a one man show about the life of the author, a female to male transsexual. It's mostly in a lighthearted tone, with sit-com like recollections of involvement in debutante balls in the South when the author still identified as a female lesbian. There are few pictures to help you figure out what's actually going on, but it's short enough to read in an hour in the car, which is what I did. B+

Cleaning out the closet

2008-06-08T22:24:00.000-07:00

This coming weekend I'm moving to my fourth residence within a year. I hate moving with a passion. Last time was a little easier because I only lived in the place for four months and most of that time I knew or hoped that I'd be moving out, so I just never unpacked my boxes.

I heard somewhere that every six months you should clean out the closet of what you believe, to see if you really believe it or if you're just going along with something because it's easiest. I think I'm overdue. So tonight, as Eminem says, I'm cleaning out my closet. Do I still believe in God? Yes. Do I believe that what Jesus taught is good and true? Yes. Do I believe that Christianity is the religion most suited to carry out those teachings? I don't know so much.

For the first time since I've been a Christian, I'm ok with looking at the beliefs of other religions without a Biblical screen. I don't feel like I have to block out everything that isn't Christianity as a cult. It's scary, like free-falling through the world of religion kind of hoping I'll land firmly on Christianity because it's a big organized religion and that makes things easier. But I'm frustrated with the lack of unity in Christianity. Jesus, why didn't you explicitly say that all peoples are equal and that God is for everyone? Baha'u'llah did a much better job, and his religion has pretty much stuck together so far. Maybe I ought to give it a couple millennia, except then, according to him, there will be another Mouthpiece of God to fill his shoes.

So with a spiritual chip-tossing, a move that's kind of contingent on landing safely back at Christianity, and a beyond complicated trip across the country, I spend most of my time in a mental daze. I wish I could unpack these boxes already.

Food crisis and grade schools

2008-06-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

I went to get groceries today, including a loaf of bread. I noticed that the price of the brand of bread that I normally buy had gone up 20 cents since the last time I bought groceries. There's that domestic food crisis pinch.

I don't really understand all this. I don't know enough to know the reasons for the "crisis" and the conspiracy theorist in me thinks it could be everyone talking about a food crisis so much that it manifests itself.

All I know is that the school where I work has a deal with a nutrition company that requires that every student take an entree and a milk, even if they don't want it. Sometimes there is not a vegetarian option. I don't know what would happen if a student was a vegan and refused to take both. What really kills me is that even though the students aren't allowed the choice of leaving the milk, once they touch the carton, it's "contaminated" and they have to dispose of the milk. That means I watch the lunch aids open 20 or so milk cartons (just in the lunch period that I'm there) and dump them out into a bucket.

I understand that they're trying to get the students to eat healthy and get all their nutrients and calories, but it's still bogus. I'm writing a letter to the school district.

Barack my state!

2008-05-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

Looks like Obama is going to win in Oregon. Turns out that party switch at the last minute wasn't all that important, but I wonder how many Oregonians did the same. 2%? 3%?

Now, how about this delegate/ super-delegate business? Would a party really nominate someone based on important people in the party than the popular vote? Sounds kind of like the electoral college to me, which some people think is outdated. This politics stuff is too complicated to me. I just want to make a positive difference in the world.

Plastics make it impossible

2008-05-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

I just watched a good chunk of This piece about plastic in the ocean. (Warning to viewers: there's quite a bit of R rated language, so take care where you view it. Also, I just skipped the parts where they were on their way out to sea, part 2 to about part 9.) The crew went out searching for a "garbage island" the size of Texas. What they found were billions of tiny pieces of plastic floating in the ocean, squeezing out life so that the samples that the researchers were gathering had a ratio of 1000 to 1 plastic to sea life. That's disgusting. That's unacceptable. God help me if I ever buy anything in a plastic bottle again.

Don't you dare tell me that plastics make it possible.

Oye!

2008-05-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

Feliz Cinco de Mayo! (In an hour)
It's not Mexican Independence Day, but the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla, and is now a general celebration of Mexican history and culture. In honor of my Mexican brethren and sistren, I give you a picture of Cesar Chavez
An American of Mexican descent, he was an activist for civil rights, particularly for farm workers. (I don't agree with everything the UFW did regarding illegal immigrants during Chavez's leadership, but the dude stuck by his convictions.)
also, a piñata
When I DJed at the college station at Oregon State, we had a Cinco de Mayo party. We had a piñata, but nothing to hit it with, so we hit it with our fists. We were THAT hardcore. Then we watched some hip hop music videos and "El Mariachi" while eating Taco Bell. Best party ever.

Project 40: March/April

2008-05-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

I only finished one book in March because I didn't really feel like reading, so the last two months are combined.

March
“Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew” by Ellen Notbohm
This is kind of a primer to get you started or remind you of things that are useful when interacting or living with or raising a child with autism. And they are good reminders. The downfall of this book is that it was written by the mother of a child with autism who, instead of writing a full story about her child, threw in tidbits of how her wonderful son overcame the challenges of autism to do this perfectly normal thing and that amazing thing in the middle of general tips to all parents and teachers. It kind of rubbed me the wrong way because it felt like “Ten Things Ellen Notbohm’s Child Wishes You Knew” at times. C+
April
“Catch 22” by Joseph Heller
It took me a long time to get into this book, which is unfortunate for me, because it’s a long book. I know that getting frustrated with the characters was probably the whole point of the story, and in that way, Heller accomplished his goal, but it still took me a lot time to actually want to pick up the book and read it. There are a lot of storylines that stop before the punchline and start several chapters later, stop again, and are resolved somewhere unexpected. It takes some getting used to, but it’s not a bad book. A book about despair, futility, bureaucracy, death, war and prostitutes can’t be all that bad. B

“Our Day to End Poverty: 24 Ways You Can Make a Difference” by Shannon Daley-Harris and Jeffrey Keenan
Like “The Green Book,” this gives lists of suggestions to play a small or large part in ending world poverty. The approach is based on the UN Millennium Development Goals http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/. I felt that it had a good mix of domestic and international focus, and kept a positive, yet realistic perspective on the prospect of meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The authors clearly believe that people of faith can, should, and do play a big part in addressing poverty, and give many suggestions that are specific to faith communities. The way the topics were split up made it a simple and quick read. B+

“Look Me In The Eye: My Life With Asperger’s” by John Elder Robison
This is an excellent memoir of a man with Asperger’s Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum disorder. What I liked most about it was that he had a mostly nonchalant attitude about totally awesome things that happened in his life, like inventing flaming and exploding guitars for KISS as a technician and designing games for Milton Bradley. He keeps this up for the whole book, except when he talks about his son and his second wife. Then his tone changes into a child-like language, like a kid pretending to be an animal, and it’s a little weird. Some readers might have heard about John Elder Robison before. He’s the older brother of Augusten Burroughs, author of “Running With Scissors.” A-

“Songs of the Gorilla Nation” by Dawn Prince-Hughes
This is a not really excellent memoir of a woman with Asperger’s Syndrome. I read on the book jacket that Prince-Hughes worked with Jane Goodall, of whom I’ve been a big fan since I was little, and I was excited to read about a scientist who was as obsessed with gorillas as I had once been. Her writing language disappointed me. It was SO over the top, I almost wanted to stop reading. When she described root beer as “the dark liquid, like some ancient sea,” I threw up in my mouth a little. Apparently, everything she experienced as a child was SO AMAZING that it required extra similes and metaphors. It got a little better when she dropped out of school and her wild and crazy life took over the story. Then it got worse when she started romanticizing about the gorillas she worked with. Meh. C

Rev. Jeremiah Wright

2008-04-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

I'm going to post the link to the Bill Moyers Journal interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright because the more people that see it, the better understanding people will have of who he actually is and works for rather than the image he's got because of a seconds of video of one of his sermons that got passed around without the full context. When I saw this on Friday, my view of the man was completely changed. I thought he was a fanatic too. I'm as guilty as the next person at jumping to conclusions. Here's the link Bill Moyers interviews the Reverend Jeremiah Wright

I did it

2008-04-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

I registered with the Democratic Party. Am I a sellout? Maybe. I just know that I want a stake in who will be the next president, and the Oregon primary is actually going to matter this year. I'm going back to being unaffiliated as soon as the primary is done. Oregon's so silly. They actually have an Independent Party, which is only a few years old, and it's different from being unaffiliated. I guess it gives a foundation to run for people who aren't Democrat or Republican, so I support what it's trying to do. Do any other states have an Independent Party?

The future of ladies

2008-04-19T01:21:00.000-07:00

I wonder how the world will change as we put more effort into the education and empowerment of ladies young and old. I'm reading a book about ending poverty, and it gives a few suggestions for organizations to support that pay for school specifically for girls in poor countries. Will all this attention to girls create that much change, or should we not also put equal effort into teaching boys and men to respect the authority and personhoood of ladies?

We can teach girls all the sexual safety tips in the book, but what will change unless boys are taught that it's ok to wait and it's not ok to pressure or use violence against a partner?

We can teach ladies that if he's "just not that into you," then he's not worth it, but will we still end up settling if no one teaches men to care enough to call?

We can teach ladies how to balance work and motherhood, but how much more would it mean in a mother's life if boys were taught what's expected of them as a mate and father?

Will this happen automatically? As girls and ladies become stronger as a species, will boys and men be forced to acknowledge their power or will they try to undermine it? Will they sit around wondering what happened to the dominion they expected?

Love one another and the other

2008-04-07T21:54:00.000-07:00

My faith community did an exercise on Sunday. Since our church body is about 13 people total, we're pretty much all on the same page. We read Acts 4:32-35
"All the believers were of one heart and mind, and they felt that what they owned was not their own; they shared everything they had. And the apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's great favor was upon them all. There was no poverty among them, because people who owned land or houses sold them and brought the money to the apostles to give to others in need."

Then we talked about what could/will most likely happen when our community grows and the kind of people that we would be most uncomfortable with start showing up. Everyone thought about their "profile" person, the one who encompasses all that stuff that makes our skin crawl. One person said that hers would be a KJV only reading, know-it-all fundamentalist, the kind of person that would enter a community like ours to tell us how wrong we were. One person said that hers would be a person who legitimately needed help from others, but sucked the life out of those who tried without a commitment to change from the person who needed the help.

Mine would be the person who co-opts all the time in Bible study to recite an unrelated miracle story that they'd read in a forwarded email or Chicken Soup for a Grandmother's Soul. The kind of person who gets super emotional about a person's goods or bads or slight interest in Jesus and pushes a bunch of Christianese down her/his throat. That or the person who would come in and impose a church standard on the community: "Why don't you have the American or Christian flag on the stage? Why don't you have a stage? Where are your bulletins? Why don't the pastors wear suits and ties to preach? Why do they ask for input during "sermon time? How dare you "allow" a woman to be a pastor!"

We read the beginning of Acts 6:
"But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. Those who spoke Greek complained against those who spoke Hebrew, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve called a meeting of all the believers."We apostles should spend our time preaching and teaching the word of God, not administering a food program," they said. "Now look around among yourselves, brothers, and select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. We will put them in charge of this business. Then we can spend our time in prayer and preaching and teaching the word."

Kinds of people we don't want to be around will inevitably get here. And our loving response can't be to run. I don't like that there are types of people that I don't like. I want to cherish the people that annoy me as this fascinating and important person in my life. After we stewed on all that for a while, we participated in communion by breaking a piece of bread and imagining that as we did it, we were sharing in the experience with our "profile" person. It's a lot to reconcile, and that's probably the point.

RIP Charlton Heston

2008-04-06T00:35:00.000-07:00

Now we can have your guns. I bet Moses is like, "Dude, WTF? Dramatic much?" I remember watching Ben-Hur when I was a teenager and not being able to sleep for two nights because I was afraid of lepers. I was a very nervous child.

I may not agree with the NRA on...anything, but their president sure was a badass.

Ba-rock my world

2008-03-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

On Friday evening, I stood in line for more than 3 hours to see Barack Obama speak at the University of Oregon. There were so many people that my friends and I didn't get in, so we were diverted to the turf field behind Mac Court. The Senator came out onto the field to speak to us for about 5 minutes before he went into the arena, at which point my friends and I bolted back to my old co-op to watch the speech on TV. They were going to have the audio from the speech played out on the field, but the system was set up so poorly that we could hardly hear the Senator when he was out there.

But now I can say that I've seen a presidential candidate speak. I hope that I can say I saw a future president speak. The back of his head, at least. I don't regret all that time that I spent just waiting, but I probably would have regretted it if I hadn't gone. It didn't change my mind much just to see the back of his head, because I already support his message and would vote for him if he were the Democratic nominee (my first choice was John Edwards, but alas and alack!).

Which brings me to a dilemma of principles. Should I register for the Democratic Party so that I can vote in the primary or stay non-affiliated? (For effect, I wore a sweatshirt that said "Independent" to the Obama speech) When I registered to vote at 18, I sought advice from my teachers. One, a fellow Christian with a son in the National Guard, said that I was a Republican. The school librarian, a non-religious woman who I respect very much said that I was a Democrat. I researched each party carefully, even scouring the Pacific Green website and the Socialist Party USA website. The conclusion that I came to was that I didn't align with either party, so I registered non-affliated. I've taken a lot of pride in not being beholden to a political party, but I'm not sure that it's worth it. I don't plan on being a career Democrat, because I want to make sure that I'm not tempted to put too much energy into campaigning for individuals (policies, maybe). But Oregon is one of those "blue states" and Clinton family love runs strong here. Would being able to vote for Barack Obama be worth compromising my independent principles? Of what value are those principles anyway if I don't do everything in my power to change the state of the nation?

Give me my money back, you Senate!

2008-03-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to announce that the Biden-Lugar amendment to the 2009 International Affairs budget has passed. What's that? Here's the skinny:
President proposes International affairs budget with an increase in poverty-fighting aid
Senate lops off $4 billion
Smith and Durbin propose amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the budget
(this is where I learned about it on Sunday, when my faith community took time to write letters to Senator Wyden)
Renamed Smith-Feinstein amendment
Senators Biden and Lugar propose $4.1 billion be added to the budget
Amendment passes! Huge victory for the fight against poverty!

The point: Write your elected officials! Keep tabs on issues that are important to you through your favorite blogs and WRITE LETTERS.

Grumpier Old Men

2008-03-04T15:52:00.000-08:00

I'm going to get a little personal here. I live in the same town as my grandparents, and they're one of the reasons I decided to stay in the area after college. They helped me out a lot while I was in school, and even let me stay at their house for several days while I nursed my broken toe. I love them dearly, but there's something you must know:

My grandpa is a jackass.

It appears to be a life-long problem. If there is something that he can pick on Grandma for, like leaving a bottle of olive oil on the counter, he'll do it, and then not stop. "You have time to go to Al-Anon and Red Hat Lady parties, but not time to put the cap on a bottle and put it in the cupboard," he says. Then again 5 minutes later. Then again later in the afternoon. Then again when someone new comes to visit. I nearly broke down last night because he was viciously harassing me for not knowing when the last time I changed my oil was. He told me that he was going to have to call my parents and tell on me, a 23 year old adult who can change her own oil. It was the dumbest thing to pick on me for, and he wouldn't quit.

I got off work early that day and came over just to see them. I come over because they're my family and I want to spend time with them, and I'm also really lonely at my empty house. I don't go over there to get my weekly ration of verbal abuse.

Grandma goes to Al-Anon, and that apparently helps her deal with him. I don't have those tools. Last night, I just did not have the ability to handle something so stupid. I just left. I don't want to go over there again, because I know he'll berate me for being so sensitive, and then we'll be back where we started. I'm really the only grandchild who regularly comes to visit. Why does he pick on me? What am I supposed to do or say? How do I love someone who drives me away?

Project 40: February

2008-03-02T22:43:00.000-08:00

(for some reason I decided to punish myself for being single by reading chick lit in the month of love. Gag.)

“Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story” by Rachel Kadish
A friend recommended this to me and I couldn’t even finish it. 30-something literature professor in Manhattan swears off love, but oh, wait! She falls for some random guy whose only apparent quality is that his eyes twinkle. It’s all written in present tense, like a trashy detective novel or cyber porn. No thank you. F-

“Not Even Wrong” by Paul Collins
This book was really awesome. As a special education aid, I’m always looking for ways to self-educate about the mental conditions I see in my classroom. The book is an autobiography of a father and his son with autism mixed with history. It goes back and forth between the time that the author and his wife are first finding out about their son’s autism and the history research that the author does, mostly in Europe. It has lots of fascinating stories about people with autism from days past. I highly recommend this to educators or anyone who knows a person with autism. A

“The Brontë Project: A Novel of Passion, Desire, and Good PR” by Jennifer Vandever
It’s nearly as bad as its title. Slightly more tolerable than “Tolstoy Lied,” and recommended by the same friend. 28 year old literature grad student in Manhattan gets caught in a whirlwind of lovers, movie deals, and a fellow grad student who lives the celeb high life and wants to make “Princess Diana studies” a legit area of academia. The characters and plot are way far-fetched and if I hadn’t picked it up at the time that I was couch ridden with a broken toe, I might have put it down. So it goes. D+

“Something Wicked This Way Comes” by Ray Bradbury
Bradbury’s use of language in this book just sucks you right in. I read the prologue one night right before bed, and got really excited about reading the rest of it. The story is about two boys, Jim and Will, and their run-in with a mysterious carnival that rolls into town at the wrong time of year. The main thing that drew me in was that he had these two young characters who encountered everything you ever feared as a child (or an adult), and the fearless vs. fearful exchange between them or within the individual. It’s not a “horror” book in the sense that there’s blood and gore or something out to kill them, but it’s intense enough from beginning to end that most people would call it a scary story. I loved it. A

“The Green Book” by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen
This was one of those tempting “new books” at the library. I was kind of disappointed in it. The book is simply a list of things that you can do to be more environmentally friendly, but I noted that it wasn’t too environmentally friendly that you necessarily had to drastically change any aspect of your life. To make being green seem hip, they interviewed several celebrities who talked about how they act “green.” It’s a good starting point though, if you’re not from a generally environmentally conscious area like I am and want to be aware of your impact. Another good point was that each suggestion was accompanied by a statistic like “If everyone in the US declined their receipt at the ATM, it would save a roll of paper that would wrap around the earth X number of times.” Kind of neat. B-

Project 40: January

2008-02-18T22:48:00.001-08:00

I set a goal this year to read 40 books by year's end. I figure this is as good a place as any to keep track of them all. I'll post them by month, so here's January's:

“Salvation: Scenes From the Life of St. Francis” by Valerie Martin
I admit it, I cheated a little with this one. I started it on December 31st, 2007. I had started reading “The Little Flowers of St. Francis” and found it sweet but a little uninteresting. “Salvation” turned out to be an intimate, dramatic recounting of similar events in “Franceso’s” life, starting with his death and moving backward in time. Martin’s style really drew me in, and I’m glad I read this version of the saint’s story. A

“Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I cheated a lot. I started this one early in 2007, maybe even before, read a lot over Spring Break, then put it down for a long time. I shouldn’t have done that because I lost a lot of momentum and picking it up again was difficult. The first part of the book was really intense and sucked me in, but after a bunch of characters got added to the mix, I had a hard time keeping all the Russian names and nicknames straight. It also dragged quite a bit in the last quarter of the book. I don’t think I got what people are supposed to feel about Raskolnikov. I just like books where people go crazy, and this was one. B-

“God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” by Kurt Vonnegut
“Slaughterhouse Five” is one of my favorite books, and a fellow English major recommended this one. It was a good read, without much of a purpose, but that worked well. The tangent bios about related characters were sometimes funny, sometimes sad. There were a couple of parts that made me chuckle out loud. It’s a quick read; I read all of it minus 15 pages in a Saturday after I’d finished “Crime and Punishment.” A-

“Where Have All The Flower Children Gone?” by Sandra Gurvis
Written by a former flower child (apparently). It contains interviews with Vietnam era radicals, hawks, doves, vets, squares, and anyone in between. The author makes an attempt to show all sides of events like the Kent State killings by interviewing National Guard Members, students, and faculty, for example, but she stuck in a few snide personal comments that I found kind of annoying and cheap. I liked the many perspectives that she offered and that she included “Where are they now?” paragraphs. B

Hooray Democracy!

2008-02-04T21:01:00.001-08:00

I'm all giddy about sending my senators, Smith and Wyden, ~~love notes~~ assertively worded emails regarding the upcoming Senate vote on Bill S. 2433, the Global Poverty Act. This is where I first learned about the bill. This is the text of the bill itself. The gist is that it demands a plan from the President for achieving the UN Millennial Development Goal of reducing the proportion of people in the world living on $1 a day. Learn about it! Write letters! If a wannabe socialist can participate in democracy, so can you :)

You've got work to do

2008-02-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

Last night, I watched the movie Amazing Grace. It chronicles the efforts of William Wilberforce, British Member of Parliment, to abolish the slave trade, and subsequently, slavery as a whole in Britain and its empire. At the beginning of the movie, Wilberforce has a crisis of conscience: to follow God, or continue on his career track as a politician. He goes to his childhood minister, John Newton (the former slave trader who wrote the song, Amazing Grace) for advice. When Wilberforce suggests that he might leave politics to lead a more spiritual life, Newton tells him, "Wilber, you've got work to do." A meeting with Christian abolitionists confirms that he can "do both;" he can serve God and work in government at the same time. Wilberforce sets the legal proceedings for abolition of slavery in motion, passing the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and barely living to see slavery abolished in 1833.

Now, I've been stewing over the appropriate mix of politics and faith (different from politics and religion) for a while now. I've given up on my 2004 dream to become president and I've tried not to get too wrapped up in the 2008 election (see this post). But after seeing the potential for a person of faith like Wilberforce to do God's will through politics, I've changed my mind about staying out of it. It's ok to be involved in a worldly system for godly purposes. What would have happened if William Wilberforce had not taken advantage of the opportunity he'd been given to make a difference in the British slave trade? Slavery might have gone on for many more years.

Whenever there is injustice in the world, it is right and good to take whatever moral means necessary (legal and illegal if it comes down to it) to right it. (Bombing abortion clinics and taking hostages would definitely NOT fit into the "moral" category.) There is still illegal slavery going on in the world, and by God, I intend to work to right it. Getting hooked up with Free The Slaves is the first step I know to take. Writing my senators and congressperson is another.

I don't necessarily agree with all of the things that William Wilberforce did in his life, but if a person can run himself ragged and spend every waking and sleeping hour pouring effort into justice for humanity, then I can too. God help my parents for having such an idealist child. And maybe I'll get nothing done in my lifetime to fix the list of things that I keep in my wallet, but at least I'll be able to live with myself. I've given up on public office, but who's to say an ordinary comrade can't make a dent?

And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?

2008-01-30T20:25:00.000-08:00

I recently watched the documentary Sir, No Sir!. It's about the GI anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. I don't think I've given serious thought to the idea that those who experience war would be the most qualified or passionate opponents. It didn't occur to me, even though now it's obvious. The GIs they interviewed said that the dichotomy between opponents of the war and soldiers just wasn't there. Most of the stories about hippies spitting on soldiers at airports and calling them baby-killers were totally fabricated, but now history has made us believe that it's the hippies' faults that so many Vietnam vets went crazy after they got back, not because combat is a trauma, not because it was policy to kill villages of civilians, not because a person could possibly see "the enemy" as human and they had to face the moral tempest that comes along with that. And, according to this movie, most of the GIs in Vietnam WERE opposed to the war, or at least the way it was executed. I'm not saying that it's the soldiers' own faults for going over there. I understand that no about of mental preparation could prepare a person for the kind of action Vietnam soldiers were forced to take, and even those who volunteered couldn't have foreseen the horrific things that actually went on there.

One of my friends at Hosea is going back into the military. I asked him why he would do it. The path he's taking guarantees that he'll see combat in the Middle East (for the second time). He said that it was so his father would look at him with respect. He's homeless right now, and he says he can't get a job. I asked him "What if you had to kill someone?" He said, "When it comes down to that, it's a choice between me and the other guy, and I'm going to be the one going home at the end of the day."

I can't help but believe that there are things going on in Iraq that are being suppressed. I don't believe that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, just like the My Lai massacre wasn't an isolated incident. I've learned this from interviews and speeches from former and AWOL soldiers. In March, a Winter Soldiers public investigation is taking place in Washington to expose the realities of the Iraq War. I hope that it doesn't just get shoved into a 3 inch blurb in the National News section.

Time: An all too common story

2008-01-24T21:52:00.000-08:00

When did 24 hours get so short? Probably when I started working full-time. It's kind of distressing, really, how little time I feel like I have all of a sudden. In theory, I have Mondays and Tuesdays to myself after work, but the reality just isn't so. There are friends that want to hang out (and I want to see them, of course) and errands that need to be run and groceries that need to be purchased. Last year, when I worked part time, I spent nearly every afternoon with my grandparents. Now I'm lucky if I get to see them on Sundays for family dinner (which I haven't been bringing food to because I didn't have enough time to cook).

Some of my time is taken up by volunteering. It only works out to about 6 hours out of my total week, but it's dark by the time I'm done at this point in the year, so I feel like I should be done for the night. But honestly, I would feel like I was doing nothing for the world if I didn't spend those six hours giving my time and trying to get to know teens. I'm trying to start a love revolution here, and the days just keep getting shorter.

I'm finally starting to feel that American Way time crunch. Just how IS a person supposed to work full-time and still change the world in other ways? How are relationships supposed to function in an era of leaving one job to work another across town? How do families with young children even survive? I don't marvel at it; I think it's dysfunctional. But how do you argue with the way things are? I always thought that people who had to "pencil in" quiet time were complete basket cases whose lives were too busy. Now I put my schedule into my cell phone calendar. How can a person hear a still small voice above the sounds of other things demanding attention?

This is why I relished those 5-10 minutes of "open worship" at Friends Church. Once a week, I breathed. Usually, there was just enough time to break through feeling guilty for letting another week go by without a conscious attempt to listen to the Spirit before the sermon would begin. Maybe I should have gone to the Friends Meeting, where it's all open worship. Excuse me, I'm going to go breathe.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet?

2008-01-24T21:36:00.000-08:00

I'm reposting this rant about a Holman Bible ad by my friend Karlene because it's kind of incredible that anyone would think this is okay. And her husband thought it would be a good idea to jack up the Google count on Holman Bibles with it. Read on.
Holman Bibles for the Poor

Once in awhile something comes along that is truly appalling. Today’s rant is inspired by a full-page magazine ad for Holman Bible Outreach International. The middle third of the page is a photograph of an obviously impoverished, partially clothed, very young child, standing barefoot in a gutter, poking at the garbage on the ground with a plastic fork. The big headline at the top of the page reads, “We publish BIBLES for people who can’t afford SHOES” (emphasis theirs).

wow. Where do I start? What is this little child going to do with a Bible? He or she is too young to read and probably will never get an education. Do they expect people who can’t afford shoes to be excited about getting a book they can’t read? Maybe they could find some string and tie the bibles to their feet? They can’t eat bibles, and this child is obviously hungry. They can’t seek shelter in a bible, though it’s obvious this child has no place to live. There is an adult sleeping on the sidewalk in the background. How do people who read and study and translate the bible come to the conclusion that all those verses in the bible about God’s concern for the poor mean the poor need bibles?? Do they honestly think that, lacking food, clothing, shelter, and education, that what the desperately poor of the world really need most are bibles??

The small print says in part, “From the streets of Bangkok to the back roads of rural America, people are hungering for the bread of life. And we’re bringing it to them with bibles and scripture portions…”

I looked up Matthew 25 in the Holman Standard Version online. The words of Jesus there do NOT say, ‘When I was hungry, you published me a bible. When I was thirsty, you published me a bible. When I was naked, you published me a bible. When I was sick, you published me a bible.’

I was startled to see this ad in Creation Care magazine - an excellent publication for Christians who care about the environment that was gifted to us from a friend. The Holman ad seems very out-of-place here. Even if I did not already dislike the Holman translation because of its history on the gender translation issue, this ad alone would ensure I never purchased one.

It seems that there is a wonderful awakening beginning to emerge from N. American churches who used to be ignorant and apathetic to the plight of the poor, but who are beginning to come alive with a passionate, active response to global and local poverty. I pray that this is not a passing fad, but a renewal that will grow and spread among God’s people. And I honestly pray that the well-intentioned folks behind this Holman ad will adopt a more holistic understanding of what it means to bring the bread of life to the world’s impoverished people.

Money money money by the pound

2008-01-21T22:36:00.001-08:00

At church meeting yesterday, we went through a checklist of "survival skills" for living in poverty, middle class, or upper class. There were things like "I know what to do if I can't pay my bills" or "I know about credit rates and annuity" or "I know where to sign my child up for scouts." I realize how little I know about life in ALL of those categories. I know next to nothing about money, and I'm not sure that I need to. I just pay my bills out of my checking account, auto-pay my student loan and keep a certain amount of money in my savings account. My dad wants me to get invested in a mutual fund, but I keep stalling because money in many different places freaks me out.

I really want to live in a house with a bunch of people and be able to offer spare rooms to homeless people that I know, but I can't do that when I rent because it's generally not allowed. So someday I'll have to look into buying a house. I don't know the first thing about buying a house. I don't have any credit because I've never had a credit card, so I don't think I can get a house loan. How does a person even buy a $100k-$200k house? Do they take out a loan and cut a hugeass check or pay in installments? What the hell is a mortgage?

Loving Absolutely

2008-01-21T01:21:00.001-08:00

I just watched the movie "Rize," a documentary about clowning and krumping, styles of hip-hop dance. Even if you're not a fan of hip-hop, you really should watch this movie. It made me think about God and love. A lot.

The style was created in South Central LA, where broken families, drugs, gangs, and violence are an everyday reality. What really got to me is the way the leaders of the clown groups and krump groups took on younger dancers as their own families when they had none to love and care for them. One clown, Tommy the Clown, would get on their cases about hanging around gangs, getting into drugs, or even not doing their homework, and they respected him enough to follow through with it. He also wouldn't let them dance with him if they didn't keep themselves in line. It was all so positive and meaningful and no doubt has really saved lives from gang violence and drug addiction. And it's something I admire, but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.

At church today, we went through a chart that compared the "rules of the game" for poverty, middle class, and rich culture. One of the first things listed was "possessions." Under "poverty" possessions meant people, relationships. I definitely saw that in this movie. When there was no security for life or money, the clown groups and families cared for each other like it held their cells together. Will I ever be able to understand or fulfill that for others? My middle-class family was pretty unaffectionate. My parents emphasized independence. As a result, it takes me a long time to feel like I can depend on someone or like I want them to depend on me. I don't want to resign to the idea that I'll never love like the family I had didn't. If the love of God is in my heart, than the love of people can surely be in there as well. If God has the power to change lives of drug dealers into hip-hop clowns, God can change an icy teachers' daughter into someone who loves like breathing.

Sustainable living

2008-01-14T23:32:00.001-08:00

I went to hear some speakers at Friends Church talk about simple and sustainable living as inspired by John Woolman's Journal. First they did a skit of John Woolman meeting with a Southern slave owner and talking about respect for God's creation, and explored how it was inconceivable to someone who was so used to/dependent on that lifestyle. Then they did a skit of "Joan Woolwoman" meeting someone new at Yearly Meeting and talking about changing how you buy your food (non-locally produced food creating pollution and certain imported goods produced through slavery). It got me thinking about some ways that I want to feel spiritually at peace by changing my lifestyle.

Driving
I figure I'm solely responsible for global warming with all the frivolous driving that I do by myself. Really, who needs to go to Fred Meyers at 10:30 at night for tweezers? I just moved to a place where I can walk to work, which is fantastic, but I still have to drive 2-3 days a week because of time constraints on where I have to be right after work. I think I could attempt to force flexibility into at least one of those days. There's also a busline close to my house, and I want to commit to riding on Thursdays when I have weekly activities that I could easily get to by bus.

Stuff
I just moved, and in moving, rediscovered how much JUNK I have that I don't use. I need a garage sale real bad. Some friends recently said that they need to do the same, so I hope we can do it together when the weather gets nice. It causes me a lot of anxiety to know that I have lots of stuff and some people have nothing. My best friend from high school has reduced his possessions to a backpack of stuff and I'm extremely jealous. He's not even a Christian, much less a Quaker! I've got a long way to go.

My eating/buying habits
I have a moral crisis every time I go to the grocery store. Is it local? Is it organic? Can I afford it? Do I just really really really want some chocolate right now? I've stopped eating candy for the most part because I found out how bad it was for me, but there's a bigger picture than just the chemicals that get into my body through my food. There's the environment and workers of the world to think about. Am I making my food and clothing purchases in love of myself or in respect of others and God's creation? I think I should. I also want to start growing my own herbs for cooking and tea. Yum.

Voting: Christian duty or not at all?

2008-01-12T23:56:00.000-08:00

With the 2008 election ramping up, I've been thinking about voting. There are some circles of Christians who feel that voting in any election is confirming your citizenship in that country instead of in the kingdom of God. It's something to think about. For a while now, I've tried to think of myself as a citizen of the world, with all people as my comrades. When we studied the beginnings of communism in my Western civ class, Marx and the others thought it was a bad idea to think of communism as a nationalist movement, but that instead communists should think of all other communists as citizens of the same government. (I rue this day in which I have summoned the name of Marx in a blog post!) This closet socialist likes that idea. (Is the FBI going to come knocking soon?)

When I vote in an American election, am I isolating Christian brothers and sisters in other countries? Do I make a bad Christian anarchist because I submit to this government? Am I not putting my faith in God and his people to be independent hands of Christ? On the other hand, if I don't vote, am I doing a disservice to the people that could be helped in America by government programs on account of my vote? Going further, is it my Christian duty to encourage people to vote a certain way because it will serve poor people or foster children or elders, which I believe Christ would have done?

Jesus didn't live in a society where most of the people he talked with would have had the option of voting. He just said to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's. Is this democracy thing something that Christians are supposed to get involved in? I've tried to stay informed on political events. In 2004, I started to be a talk radio junkie, and I still am. But should I be? In 2004, a friend called out her fellow Christians and said that if we put the effort that we spent on politics into serving Christ, how much the world could change. That's been bugging me.

New Post

2008-01-05T02:59:00.001-08:00

A new post for a new blog.