Good Question...

I Ran

It's hand to hand combat with a pale yellow sports bra,a blue tank top, and a yellow long sleeve t-shirt slipped on overhead, a pair of really warm fleace gray running pants and a swift tug and a tie of my blue and yellow trainers - & i'm off.

The constant steady rhythm and motion is not something i especially enjoy but as the sun returns from it's winter quarters it becomes something i do particularly crave. It's not the destination or sometimes even the time v distance that matters but the unavoidable and quite perspective that comes from sliding my feet into my very own very warn pair of sneakers.

Okay so i'm not going to break any records but there is something that feels fast about running, something that reminds me of being free. Free to move around without that yucky old wheelchair or crutches, something i often take for granted. it's free to let my thoughts run off just as far and fleeting as they dare adventure. It's setting fresh goals - and then crushing them! It's pushing myself farther, for the sheer reason of reminding myself that I can.

This month my goal was run 100 miles in a month and tonight as I was nearing the end of 100 and the beginning of 101 twelve years worth of adversary whistle wearing gym teachers came to mind. Despite my varsity soccer and swimming status, I am certain my dislike for working up a midday sweat earned me a proclivity toward civil disobedience, one which nearly cost me my summer vacation - every year, and eventually almost my diploma. Those gym teachers with their gym teacher smell and their ironic gym teacher round and lumpy shape would share quite a laugh if they knew that these days I actually get a bit cross when forced to skip a run.

Ahhh...How things can and do change....this of course is aside from my continued dislike of totalitarian women in sweaties and bad hair cuts... that has stayed pretty much the same :P

mw/h

"The End"

After 264 pages and 601 footnotes Craig was Finally put to rest today leaving behind one very happy Me!


According to my Microsoft Words Stats: This file has been on my screen for 336 Hours or 14 DAYS. I have opened this document 132 times. There are 452 paragraphs & I have been happy with the placement of exactly 74,328 words.


This last month it has taken me longer to write a single page than last year it took me to write an entire chapter. I don't think it was negligence but perhaps avoidance. It is hard to end a life on paper to say this is the end. I remember the day in the archive when I reached the end of his papers. It is a family collection, 16,000 items extending from 1765 to 1890. Craig's papers, letters, receipts, notes just stopped and a new generation of Craig's and their letters began. It wasn't just that life moved on, it was knowing that he would become forgotten. As someone who has been touched by the cold hand of death more than her fair share of times there was something very final and lonely about this experience in particular. It left a great and quiet sadness in me. I drove home without the radio on (very un-me, my life is immersed in music). I have felt a great responsibility in helping Craig tell his story, and although his death was but one small event of his life it seemed such a personal moment. Putting his death back onto paper felt as though I were dressing the body for a wake as opposed to what I wanted to do, bid him farewell on his journey to Aman. (psst it's a Tolkien reference)


As for me - It is not necessarily the ending of a project I don't like it is more the idea of starting another. At the end of each project I look back on the collection of stints where I ran my keyboard hot with good ideas and It scares me to think I will have to do it again & again & again because What if ... What if I never have another good idea...what if this time it was a fluke... what if I already played my best card...worse yet...what if I never had any good cards to play to begin with. This is the thought that scares me as the sun begins to set on any given project. This is the thought that makes Me (the worlds biggest lets-just-do-it-right-now-non-procrastinator) suddenly gain a back burner.


But for now, for this very short moment I'm going to sit back & as one dear and evil friend reminds me... feel like "amazing...crap" ;)



...Of course there is a great deal of editing to be done now...but that is a monster of a very different breed. For now I am just happy to say I am done.


Mw/h

Fool's Gold: Ethanol

Fact: In ONE YEAR 1 man could live off of the amount of Corn it would take to make ONE full tank of fuel...

Fact: According to USA today for all cars in America to run on ethanol we would need 261 Million gallons A DAY! and at full capacity (i.e. - if ALL available farm acreage in the USA was in corn production for ethanol) we'd still only have less than 100 million gallons a YEAR!

Fact: As it turns out Ethanol isn't as pollution free as you thought (oh and BTW - Neither is your plug in car - electric cars run clean... but the power plants that fuel them are WORSE than Petrol!). According to the EPA Ethanol plants produce high amounts of Carbon Monoxide, Acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, and acrolein - none of which are good for you know things that live... and breath.

Fact: According to Time Magazine currently 20% of the Carbon emissions being ... well emnmited is being done so not because of Cars but because of the deforestation, for the production of ETHANOL and Sugar Cane, taking place in the Brazil Jungle (You may also recall the Jungle by its other name from way back in the 80's & 90s when we were trying to SAVE IT FROM BEING DEFORESTED - the RAIN FOREST. But Boo Who saving the Rain forest is old school but not so much yet that's gone Vintage and is back IN again.)

Fact: Ethanol is only truly "renewable" to a point. Crops need rotated or fields need to replenish the nutritional value of their soil and production at full capacity means all available acreage is being worked continuously and sucking that value out of the soil and thus at some point yield will begin to decrease and we do not actually know the long term effects of long term land abuse.

Fact: Ethanol is not as efficient as Petrol. According to Consumer Reports mileage decreases by about 27% on cars that run on Bio Fuels as apposed to those running on Petrol.

Fact: Ethanol is already more expensive than Petrol and is not cost efficient to produce. Companies that specialized in Ethanol have turned to "alternative" bio fuels to supplement their output because thanks to Ethanol - the cost of corn and wheat have increased so that they are no longer profitable crops to work with.

Fact: According to the director of the EPA there is NO way to accurately calculate your "Carbon Foot Print" and most things done by intuition - like purchasing locally grown produce are inconsistent with what is actually eco-friendly.

The Biggest Fact: We've got to stop problem solving old school - i.e. exchanging one Problem for anther. We've got to start using our brains to come up with REAL and LONG TERM solutions. We've put the Cart in front of the horse and although the horse is standing there looking at the cart and getting it ... somehow it's blowing right over our heads. The health and well beginning of the earth - it is a great and noble cause to champion but must be done with appropriate, economical, logical, scientific actions, not knee jerk emotional reactions. We all must become stewards of the planet but we must do so responsibly. I have argued the case for lessening our impact on the earth for most of my life and while it is wonderful to see it has now become the thing to do over the last few years the hysteria surrounding how to "Go Green" has become as stylish and sensible as buying 5 to 8 year olds $1,000 tickets to see Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana) lip sink.

The leap for ethanol is still technologically premature (as are most gas-alternatives), yet our jump to conform, to be trendy, to allow the market to dictate the best solution is creating new problems and leaving ethanol's distillery stink and yellow stain on the world economy in escalating prices and wheat/rice/corn food shortages around the world.

Even if we could grow the amounts of corn required seeing as the food shortages we are already creating should we? There is obviously a considerable moral issue at stake if we do. Turning food into a energy increases it's value substantially and thus moves it farther out of the reach of those who already struggle to survive. We are only just feeling the crunch here in the states and while we have the conveyance of perhaps just nipping our splurges here and there to fund our necessities that is a luxury not all the world enjoys.

What about other forms of Bio Fuels? As it stands now anything organic or dropped off the back end of an animal - will require substantial land. Before we encourage developing nations to begin deforestation of their invaluable resources in the rain forest or farmers to utilize their land for fuel as apposed to food research must be done to see what the repercussions of our actions will be. Of course Displacing people and animals are also ill side effects of programs which demand large sums of land to supply goods to a significantly smaller group. Bio Fuels only seem to "work" b/c they are currently low in demand, compared with Petrol. To rely only on Bio Fuels of any kind is to create an environment of dependence were shortages and higher/unstable costs rule the market.

First we need to decided what our goal REALLY IS. Neither 1. wanting to be independent of other countries for energy or 2. eco-friendly earth saving solutions are solved with Bio fuels. If these are the problems we are looking to solve we need to define them and then construct appropriate and humane solutions - based in logic and science. I think the answer is going to be harvesting, harnessing, and somehow retaining solar energy but I'm going to leave it to the scientists - the people who know a heck of a lot more than I do.

The answer should not be emotional, political, or necessarily stylish - but one made out of the necessity and with the planet's best interest at heart. If we treat this issue like a trend, like the cute mini-toy dogs all dressed up and shivering in a purse-carrier so popular 2 years ago - Than that's what it will be - a trend and when it becomes old or boring, just like those dogs it will be discarded.

As long as we remain uninformed and uniformly trendy and afraid to speak out against green fallacies and the PC Police the vote buying politicians and corporate vultures will swarm above us pimping their ever increasing amounts of new and improved unregulated "Green" crap. Down below we'll buy it all up and think we are doing our part - just like the toxic and hazardous Compac Fluorescent light bulbs we feel ohhh so progressive for jamming into our sockets. Companies will always be glad to fill our " green needs" but it doesn't mean their agenda is ours... though it sure as heck is Green. Right now they are leading us by the nose and deciding for us and we cannot afford jumping on the hybrid wagon a moment too soon, because the planet cannot.

Lost: Inspiration, if Found please Return

I am STILL stuck on page 261...

Why I Boycot China & the Olympics

According to BBC News in China last year 3 Million people took part in over 58,000 mass protests. China is one of a small list of countries I have never been to. Honestly I'm not sure over a life time that I've really given China much thought until last year. It wasn't the never ending recalls that brought the plight of the Chinese people to my attention but it was the the Bodies exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center. I was working for the Carnegie at the time and the first time we discussed the exhibit I was taken back by it - That Said in the name of Art and Science I was able to find tolerance for a "noble and higher cause" within the slightly distasteful display. It was not long after however I began to learn of the Crimes Against Humanity that take place in China everyday. So While I am not in China I quite my job to stand behind the 3 million Chinese who have taken a stand against the kinds of things this exhibit stands for - Western Ambivalence and East Asian Oppression.

These are just some of the reasons why I have been promoting consumer social responsibility (aka boycotting exhibits like Bodies, limiting the purchase of China made products, and by informing others) in the plight for human rights so that all citizens of the world may live... think ... believe... and speak freely. I support this with all my being.

1. Followers of Falun Gong (Which is a system of beliefs that work toward the "cultivation of virtue and character", "moral standards for different levels", and "salvation of all sentient beings.") are tortured and imprisoned daily for their beliefs. According to the UN over 65% of all torture cases and over 50% of all Labor Camps in China are comprised of Falun Gong Followers. This truly is a philosophy built on peace and the betterment of man through each persons own individual development.

2. China has no voluntary organ donation system. The majority of organs harvested and transplanted are done on the black market to people from all over the world who are able to afford them at about 16 million dollars a pop. Where do these organs come from? Although the exact figure is still unknown many of the people who have conducted these transplants have admitted that the organs were harvested from LIVE religious and political(people who have spoken out against communism)prisoners. In 1996 the Chinese Government reported that it had participated in over 20,000 transplant of kidneys alone. UN Report: http://falunhr.org/reports/UN2007-org/Torture-UN-07.pdf

3. Slavery is a reality in China. Men Women and Most often very small children are stolen from the streets, removed from their daily lives they are forced to live in bare hovels, they are tortured, raped, maimed, and fed bread and water, and worked from dawn into the night daily on tasks of hard manual labor in agriculture and mines. To their families most will never be heard from again.

4. According to CNN there are 1,100 known forced-labor camps in China. They are "are driven by hard-line ideology, Communist Party directives and the whims of local cadres. It is designed as a repressive mechanism to control and, in effect, eliminate anyone whose political, religious or societal views differ from those of the Communist Party."

5. All of this before we discus the unregulated and environmentally unfriendly acts that pump pollution above china in unprecedented percentages that corrupting the entire worlds air supply or the rampant sex and child sex trade that employs children as young 4 years old (and maybe younger) and encourages pedophiles from around the world to vacation there or the infanticide & gendercide that has created a gender gap that in some regions has meant a population of 70% males and 30% females. The mutilation of females. The sheer lack of value placed on human life. The 3000 Christians that have been put to death in the last 7 years for speaking out. Or that there is no Freedom of speech, and the internal media is used to propagate propaganda and a tool for oppression of ideas. After an even longer list of Chinese issues we come to the recalls which placed children around the world at risk for nothing more than pennies more in profit.

As for the Olympics I have mixed emotions. In general I don't support the Olympics because of their fundamental ambivalence to human suffering around the world. In one hand I understand that increased revenue can assist impoverished countries But what is good for tourism is Never good for long term sustainability and habitation of developing or oppressed countries. Tourism to oppressed countries only heightens the power of the economically and socially empowered people of the ruling class. In instances like the Sex Trade and Child Sex Trade (popular economic stimuli in developing tourist countries such as Mexico, Africa, the Middle East and Asia) aside from social and emotional ramifications they counter act economic development by denying children the necessary education and opportunities needed to economically mobilize themselves and their families long term. Instead these children become fodder for sexual deviancy until their youth has been spent and their futures blackened and decided. Even in countries were the child sex trade does not operate (openly) children are kept from school in order to make and sell trinkets on streets and in open markets. These sought souvenirs not only reflect the local culture but the culture of oppression & while tourists can not have enough of these goods to showcase their travels they have little heart or consideration for what they have really bought into.

I fear that as the times get closer to the Olympics the Chinese government will become more desperate to silence the heroic voices that have begun to rise above the oppression. During the last Olympics over 300,000 dogs and cats were put to death in order to make the city appear cleaner and more welcoming to outsiders - That was in Athens a country that does not already have such problems as China. For a country already plagued by torture and oppression what drastic measures might the Chinese government take in an attempt to maintain their "image"? That Said, I cannot help but hope that having a spot light on China will if not, empower her people, will showcase the social and inhumane injustices before the world and perhaps with a few billion behind them China may become free. Join the Fight Speak on behalf of those who cannot, limit your purchase of China made goods and make the economic statement that we will not conduct business or be bedfellows with those who commit atrocities against man kind.

An inside look into China:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgGCQ0nVcyU

PdotSdot: I am not so foolish as to think that these things and worse do not happen in other countries of the world... i just figure i'll tackle them one at a time.

Dreaming My Dreams

sleep provides a wonderful loophole for which logic & reason may escape. we may wonder aimless or with exceedingly sharpened and purposeful aim and yet even in my dreams i am afraid to fly. it's one small push and it's like i'm 8 and on ice skates. i have no clue how to stop, instead i simply prepare to smack into something. i star as the heroine, i stand beside an ancient canal, antiquity crumbling all around me, fire burning off somewhere in the background, the ground shakes beneath my feet, a large and heavy marble pillar threatens to tumble as my hand pauses a single moment cupping a cheek as i say good bye before jumping onto the very last boat. whole worlds are made and lives are lived in the span of real world moments, the colours are more vivid the soundtrack is always perfect. anything is everything and everything is anything. and yet perhaps the dreams had with eyes wide open, when we refuse to reach for anything less than everything and when faith and hope are perhaps the only science that supports our endeavours or fuels our passions... perhaps these are the truly daring dreams we dream. Mw/h

You are the Country's Biggest Problem

i'm not sure why but people are always asking me "what do you think"? I mean anyone who really knows me knows i'm this weird concoction of contradicting fatalism and optimism so i don't know perhaps i am not the best person to hand such a loaded gun.

this crazy little election & all of it's many Cani-don'ts hasn't helped. I can't, or maybe just won't, tell anyone who to vote for. i don't think change is something you smell on the wind, it's something you can feel - it's something you can't help but see. i'm a historian &, when i do my job right, i speak for the dead, i know where we've been...& at rare moments i see where we are going. in so many ways it seems we are living in such dark times. as we stand on this verge of "something" we have to wonder if it's not that "something better" we are endlessly searching & hopping for.

i am sorry to report but nothing better is on the horizon. sadly the fact is that regardless of who wins in Nov & regardless if we remain a capitalist democracy, or become a socialist democracy or something all together different it will not solve our biggest problem - You. each one of us is that person standing beside the system wrench in hand...about to throw & worse yet there are about 301,139,947 of us. the fact is we are own worst enemies. the system itself has no set values - isn't that why we call it "the Machine" it is only in the human component (of the government, society, economy, and day to day life), that a moral attribute can be found - we are the moral apparatus of the system/machine. quite simply the majority of people use the system but contribute nothing to it. as people we somehow grow up and think we are entitled to a middle class life, & all the trimmings, that our parents spent a life time building for the simple fact we were raised with them, as workers we demand more pay than most of us really deserve, as employers we demand too much time than we are owed, as consumers we demand bargain basement prices for an endless amount of *Must Have* *Random* *Crap* (how much STUFF do we need anyway?) & we never think of how those prices are achieved or what it really costs us & as retailers any amount of profit less than what we expected we report as a "loss" and demand government assistance...the list goes on & at the end of the day we are all supposed to be "Innocent Bystanders" wanting someone else to come and fix it all. the fact is until we start participating in the system & providing/fulfilling its moral element - until we at least start trying to just be good & accountable people who are fair in their business dealings on both sides...people who care about other people...things will not get better, anything else is simply a spot of bubblegum on a pipe about to burst. that's what i think.

Square Peg Syndrome

with the ease & grace of a magician's silk scarf what has perhaps been kept cleverly amidst the obvious has been revealed.

... i'm okay with that ...

All Work & No Play

It has been spring break all week. No classes to teach no mind wondering students or eager hand raisers to entertain, a week of hitting snooze and welcoming a world of colorful, long, complex and cozy dreams. a week of peace and quite, ceiling starring and falling asleep with a book across my lap on the couch. moments full of wonder, thoughts slipping through my head like warm water between your fingers into a bath tub full of bubbles.

i was waiting for four corners of a slice of paper jack cheese (wedged between two sides of an everything bagel)to fold under the ovens heat it's a process that generally takes 6.23 mins... & that's just enough time to do something I haven't done in a long time...a well hidden secret that few of the people i've met in the last 5 years would ever guess. leaning over the counter i began...slowly eyeing the boxed images one by one... flipping the slightly tattered edges of a Comic book. that's right... i am a not so closeted graphic novel reader & may quite possibly be the only girl of my kind - it's a fact im okay with.

i met 2 strangers this weekend, one was an older woman whose face was dressed in a lifetime of sour emotion. she said she had no free time and rattled off a list of everyday tasks that consumed her every moment. the other was this neat medical professional guy, who wore a smile like some guy's wear J Crew, rugged, natural, and worn in. he reminded me that there is always time for comic books.

have you ever done that, gotten so wrapped up in the "importance of life" that you have forgotten something almost like a box beside the moving van as the heavy metal door is slammed shut and the engine starts? it's an easy thing to do...but unlike time lost to an endless list of things that in reality bring about little happiness ... these small indulgences are easily recovered and merely a reminder away.

M/wh

PdotSdot: While i'm in the confessional i will tell you i also like colouring (my fav of which is comic books or over pop fashion mags that i've white washed.)

Between the Bindings & a List of Must Reads

Having sworn off blogging...here I am. I make no promises in my being able to keep this up but thanks to the urgings of a few mighty bloggers... I will try, and attempt not to put you straight to sleep along the way. While we are on disclosures I Must confess I have a truly boring life & so essentialy I am doing this to quell the mob.

I've been knee deep in writing this whole week, I am on page 248 of my very first book... it is a lot harder than you think or maybe just that I thought. I weave together tightly knit conclusions from a stack of receipts discarded 206 years ago with letters that allow me to eavesdrop on half of a forgotten conversation. Then there is the big struggle to choose the right words and string them all together just so. Lets not forget the whole spelling them all properly along the way thing lol which I swear just ruins the creative process lol.

For this reason, & another, it only makes sense that i begin my first official blog on the topic of books & reading. The invention of the novel, during the Reformation, may just be ONE of the greatest gifts if not advances to and of mankind. Don't worry I wont get all history on you. Reading is a love I did not find tucked away in the back corner of a local library but one which has been fostered by an entire family of book case owners dedicated to a life time of learning & only-them book habits. A book is not just a gateway to some far off and distant place but in spending time with good, and sometimes bad, characters we sometimes gain insight of a great unknown, by which of course I mean that sometimes when we read we find not only a new world filled with new people but a sweet or careful reminder of the fact that we are really reading about ourselves...as books sometimes reminds us who we are, who we long to be, and of course who we would rather die than become.

Of course there are other kinds of books and readings, my fav of which being the kind that stops you right in the very path of your life...you quietly sit to ponder ...& when you resume your life's journey you find that somehow it has changed & you are on another...but of course that is a blog for another day.

Some of The Very Best Books I've Ever Read

(Off The Top of My Head)

1. Les Miserable



2. The Count of Monte Cristo



3. Persuasion



4. Crime & Punishment



5. The Scarlet Letter



6. The History of Tom Jones



7. Vanity Fair



8. Far From the Maddening Crowd



9. Tristram Shandy



10. Moll Flanders



11. Nervous Condition (tisti Dangabraba sp?)



12. Sense and Sensibility



13. The Princes Bride



14. The Hobbit



15. Wicked



16. The Life and Death of Superman



17. A Whisper in the Dark (Alcott)



18. Pride and Prejudice



19. The Girl with a pearl Earring



20. A Tale of Two Cities



21. Atlas Shrugged



22. Wuthering Heights



23. the Great Gatsby



24. Catcher in the Rye



25. Goethe's Faust



26. Madame Bovary



27. Stranger in a Strange World



28. Grapes of Wrath

29. The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio

30. Invisible Man (Ellison)

31. Middlemarch

32. Things Fall Apart

33. How the Garcie Girls lost their Accents

34. The Old Man and the Sea

35. Money and Meaning of Happiness (Needelman)

36. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

37. I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings

38. In Country

Fav Childhood Books:

1. Monster at the end of this book - though admittedly I was scared to turn that last page



2. Uncle Remus - anything



2. Anne of Green Gables

Mw/h