Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Can you feel the light shine? You know this song's yours and mine
Sometimes I'm not so strong and even now I could be wrong
But if you love me like music I'll be your song
But if you love me like music I'll be your song
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
The Promised Land
I know the way to the Promised Land.
I do what I always need to do. I preach it.
I preach it to the person I need to preach it to the most.
I preach it to me.
~ Ann Voskamp
I do what I always need to do. I preach it.
I preach it to the person I need to preach it to the most.
I preach it to me.
~ Ann Voskamp
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Petered out
Today I am focusing mostly on me. This week has not lent itself to that. Yesterday, being a Saturday, was a good start, but it is so hard not to become distracted and wittle my weekend, personal and free time away focusing on work needs and the needs of other people. Quiet time is precious, and I need to be extremely self-discplined, given who I am, to take my quiet time for myself, to renew myself, when I can.
I hope the weekend provides you with time to love others and yourself in good measure!
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Thank you
There are young women out there looking to you as role models. I may not affirm the use of force in conflict, but I do affirm your right to serve your country according to your conscience, and I think you are so brave and so worthy of absolute equity in the Armed Services. Thank you, thank you.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Bastille - Pompeii
Fell in love with this song today. Then I watched the video, and, "Oh!" But Kudos for the ever so subtle reference to The Shining. That makes me go from freaked out to freaked out in all the right ways. Listen, head bob, enjoy!
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Have you used your brain today?
I dance to feel my identity.
I understand the cosmos as I agree with the bird's song.
My surroundings and I are only a good talk with friends away.
I am a full person living a full life with an amazing organ stuck in my head and helping the process out a whole heck of a lot.
I'm thankful for what I don't understand, which helps me to understand so much.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Know your people
Who are your people? Get to know them a little bit. Investigate them. Consider what they were thinking and feeling when they made history or made you understand who you, too, are.
I will never forget the first college course I ever took, and the first day of class in that course. It was taught by a Latina, educated at the University of California, Berkeley, who was the standing Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.
I will never forget sitting outside of that first classroom, very early, waiting to enter, completely scared of a college education, despite what others thought of me. I did not know if I could do it. I did not know if I would be intelligent enough, hard working enough, creative enough. I felt small.
Then, 30 or so minutes later, I was in a class, being taught by a Latina woman, my first professor, the woman who would be my first collegiate mentor. She shared with us a story about her college advisor. He met with her before her undergraduate classes had started. He asked her about her educational and vocational ambitions. When she expressed some of her uncertainty about where her education might take her, her advisor was quick to resign himself to her doubt, saying without embarrassment, "Well, that's not unexpected. You'll be pregnant and married after your first year anyway."
Well, Dr. Y didn't get pregnant after her first year. But she did eventually coauthor the book Americanos, though, a tribute to being Latino in the United States and the diversity of our ethnicity here. And even though that course was a challenge for me, I knew I was in the right place being a Latino woman, a woman at college with scholarships keeping me there, a woman with a purpose that would be her own, standing on the shoulders of many giants.
So I encourage you to find, know, and love your people. They will guide you and remind you of your purpose.
I Am Joaquin
by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales
Yo soy Joaquín,
perdido en un mundo de confusión:
I am Joaquín, lost in a world of confusion,
caught up in the whirl of a gringo society,
confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes,
suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society.
My fathers have lost the economic battle
and won the struggle of cultural survival.
And now! I must choose between the paradox of
victory of the spirit, despite physical hunger,
or to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul and a full stomach.
Yes, I have come a long way to nowhere,
unwillingly dragged by that monstrous, technical,
industrial giant called Progress and Anglo success....
I look at myself.
I watch my brothers.
I shed tears of sorrow. I sow seeds of hate.
I withdraw to the safety within the circle of life --
MY OWN PEOPLE
I am Cuauhtémoc, proud and noble,
leader of men, king of an empire civilized
beyond the dreams of the gachupín Cortés,
who also is the blood, the image of myself.
I am the Maya prince.
I am Nezahualcóyotl, great leader of the Chichimecas.
I am the sword and flame of Cortes the despot
And I am the eagle and serpent of the Aztec civilization.
I owned the land as far as the eye
could see under the Crown of Spain,
and I toiled on my Earth and gave my Indian sweat and blood
for the Spanish master who ruled with tyranny over man and
beast and all that he could trample
But...THE GROUND WAS MINE.
I was both tyrant and slave.
As the Christian church took its place in God's name,
to take and use my virgin strength and trusting faith,
the priests, both good and bad, took--
but gave a lasting truth that Spaniard Indian Mestizo
were all God's children.
And from these words grew men who prayed and fought
for their own worth as human beings, for that
GOLDEN MOMENT of FREEDOM.
I was part in blood and spirit of that courageous village priest
Hidalgo who in the year eighteen hundred and ten
rang the bell of independence and gave out that lasting cry--
El Grito de Dolores
"Que mueran los gachupines y que viva la Virgen de Guadalupe...."
I sentenced him who was me I excommunicated him, my blood.
I drove him from the pulpit to lead a bloody revolution for him and me....
I killed him.
His head, which is mine and of all those
who have come this way,
I placed on that fortress wall
to wait for independence. Morelos! Matamoros! Guerrero!
all companeros in the act, STOOD AGAINST THAT WALL OF INFAMY
to feel the hot gouge of lead which my hands made.
I died with them ... I lived with them .... I lived to see our country free.
Free from Spanish rule in eighteen-hundred-twenty-one.
Mexico was free??
The crown was gone but all its parasites remained,
and ruled, and taught, with gun and flame and mystic power.
I worked, I sweated, I bled, I prayed,
and waited silently for life to begin again.
I fought and died for Don Benito Juarez, guardian of the Constitution.
I was he on dusty roads on barren land as he protected his archives
as Moses did his sacraments.
He held his Mexico in his hand on
the most desolate and remote ground which was his country.
And this giant little Zapotec gave not one palm's breadth
of his country's land to kings or monarchs or presidents of foriegn powers.
I am Joaquin.
I rode with Pancho Villa,
crude and warm, a tornado at full strength,
nourished and inspired by the passion and the fire of all his earthy people.
I am Emiliano Zapata.
"This land, this earth is OURS."
The villages, the mountains, the streams
belong to Zapatistas.
Our life or yours is the only trade for soft brown earth and maize.
All of which is our reward,
a creed that formed a constitution
for all who dare live free!
"This land is ours . . .
Father, I give it back to you.
Mexico must be free. . . ."
I ride with revolutionists
against myself.
I am the Rurales,
coarse and brutal,
I am the mountian Indian,
superior over all.
The thundering hoof beats are my horses. The chattering machine guns
are death to all of me:
Yaqui
Tarahumara
Chamala
Zapotec
Mestizo
Español.
I have been the bloody revolution,
The victor,
The vanquished.
I have killed
And been killed.
I am the despots Díaz
And Huerta
And the apostle of democracy,
Francisco Madero.
I am
The black-shawled
Faithfulwomen
Who die with me
Or live
Depending on the time and place.
I am faithful, humble Juan Diego,
The Virgin of Guadalupe,
Tonantzín, Aztec goddess, too.
I rode the mountains of San Joaquín.
I rode east and north
As far as the Rocky Mountains,
And
All men feared the guns of
Joaquín Murrieta.
I killed those men who dared
To steal my mine,
Who raped and killed my love
My wife.
Then I killed to stay alive.
I was Elfego Baca,
living my nine lives fully.
I was the Espinoza brothers
of the Valle de San Luis.
All were added to the number of heads that in the name of civilization
were placed on the wall of independence, heads of brave men
who died for cause or principle, good or bad.
Hidalgo! Zapata!
Murrieta! Espinozas!
Are but a few.
They dared to face
The force of tyranny
Of men who rule by deception and hypocrisy.
I stand here looking back,
And now I see the present,
And still I am a campesino,
I am the fat political coyote–
I,
Of the same name,
Joaquín,
In a country that has wiped out
All my history,
Stifled all my pride,
In a country that has placed a
Different weight of indignity upon my age-old burdened back.
Inferiority is the new load . . . .
The Indian has endured and still
Emerged the winner,
The Mestizo must yet overcome,
And the gachupín will just ignore.
I look at myself
And see part of me
Who rejects my father and my mother
And dissolves into the melting pot
To disappear in shame.
I sometimes
Sell my brother out
And reclaim him
For my own when society gives me
Token leadership
In society's own name.
I am Joaquín,
Who bleeds in many ways.
The altars of Moctezuma
I stained a bloody red.
My back of Indian slavery
Was stripped crimson
From the whips of masters
Who would lose their blood so pure
When revolution made them pay,
Standing against the walls of retribution.
Blood has flowed from me on every battlefield between
campesino, hacendado,
slave and master and revolution.
I jumped from the tower of Chapultepec
into the sea of fame–
my country's flag
my burial shroud–
with Los Niños,
whose pride and courage
could not surrender
with indignity
their country's flag
to strangers . . . in their land.
Now I bleed in some smelly cell from club or gun or tyranny.
I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger
Cut my face and eyes,
As I fight my way from stinking barrios
To the glamour of the ring
And lights of fame
Or mutilated sorrow.
My blood runs pure on the ice-caked
Hills of the Alaskan isles,
On the corpse-strewn beach of Normandy,
The foreign land of Korea
And now Vietnam.
Here I stand
Before the court of justice,
Guilty
For all the glory of my Raza
To be sentenced to despair.
Here I stand,
Poor in money,
Arrogant with pride,
Bold with machismo,
Rich in courage
And
Wealthy in spirit and faith.
My knees are caked with mud.
My hands calloused from the hoe. I have made the Anglo rich,
Yet
Equality is but a word–
The Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken
And is but another threacherous promise.
My land is lost
And stolen,
My culture has been raped.
I lengthen the line at the welfare door
And fill the jails with crime.
These then are the rewards
This society has
For sons of chiefs
And kings
And bloody revolutionists,
Who gave a foreign people
All their skills and ingenuity
To pave the way with brains and blood
For those hordes of gold-starved strangers,
Who
Changed our language
And plagiarized our deeds
As feats of valor
Of their own.
They frowned upon our way of life
and took what they could use.
Our art, our literature, our music, they ignored–
so they left the real things of value
and grabbed at their own destruction
by their greed and avarice.
They overlooked that cleansing fountain of
nature and brotherhood
which is Joaquín.
The art of our great señores,
Diego Rivera,
Siqueiros,
Orozco, is but another act of revolution for
the salvation of mankind.
Mariachi music, the heart and soul
of the people of the earth,
the life of the child,
and the happiness of love.
The corridos tell the tales
of life and death,
of tradition,
legends old and new, of joy
of passion and sorrow
of the people–who I am.
I am in the eyes of woman,
sheltered beneath
her shawl of black,
deep and sorrowful eyes
that bear the pain of sons long buried or dying,
dead on the battlefield or on the barbed wire of social strife.
Her rosary she prays and fingers endlessly
like the family working down a row of beets
to turn around and work and work.
There is no end.
Her eyes a mirror of all the warmth
and all the love for me,
and I am her
and she is me.
We face life together in sorrow,
anger, joy, faith and wishful
thoughts.
I shed the tears of anguish
as I see my children disappear
behind the shroud of mediocrity,
never to look back to remember me.
I am Joaquín.
I must fight
and win this struggle
for my sons, and they
must know from me
who I am.
Part of the blood that runs deep in me
could not be vanquished by the Moors.
I defeated them after five hundred years,
and I have endured.
Part of the blood that is mine
has labored endlessly four hundred
years under the heel of lustful
Europeans.
I am still here! I have endured in the rugged mountains
Of our country
I have survived the toils and slavery of the fields.
I have existed
In the barrios of the city
In the suburbs of bigotry
In the mines of social snobbery
In the prisons of dejection
In the muck of exploitation
And
In the fierce heat of racial hatred.
And now the trumpet sounds,
The music of the people stirs the
Revolution.
Like a sleeping giant it slowly
Rears its head
To the sound of
Tramping feet
Clamoring voices
Mariachi strains
Fiery tequila explosions
The smell of chile verde and
Soft brown eyes of expectation for a
Better life.
And in all the fertile farmlands,
the barren plains,
the mountain villages,
smoke-smeared cities,
we start to MOVE.
La raza!
Méjicano!
Español!
Latino!
Chicano!
Or whatever I call myself,
I look the same
I feel the same
I cry
And
Sing the same.
I am the masses of my people and
I refuse to be absorbed.
I am Joaquín.
The odds are great
But my spirit is strong,
My faith unbreakable,
My blood is pure.
I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ.
I SHALL ENDURE!
I WILL ENDURE!
I will never forget the first college course I ever took, and the first day of class in that course. It was taught by a Latina, educated at the University of California, Berkeley, who was the standing Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.
I will never forget sitting outside of that first classroom, very early, waiting to enter, completely scared of a college education, despite what others thought of me. I did not know if I could do it. I did not know if I would be intelligent enough, hard working enough, creative enough. I felt small.
Then, 30 or so minutes later, I was in a class, being taught by a Latina woman, my first professor, the woman who would be my first collegiate mentor. She shared with us a story about her college advisor. He met with her before her undergraduate classes had started. He asked her about her educational and vocational ambitions. When she expressed some of her uncertainty about where her education might take her, her advisor was quick to resign himself to her doubt, saying without embarrassment, "Well, that's not unexpected. You'll be pregnant and married after your first year anyway."
Well, Dr. Y didn't get pregnant after her first year. But she did eventually coauthor the book Americanos, though, a tribute to being Latino in the United States and the diversity of our ethnicity here. And even though that course was a challenge for me, I knew I was in the right place being a Latino woman, a woman at college with scholarships keeping me there, a woman with a purpose that would be her own, standing on the shoulders of many giants.
So I encourage you to find, know, and love your people. They will guide you and remind you of your purpose.
I Am Joaquin
by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales
Yo soy Joaquín,
perdido en un mundo de confusión:
I am Joaquín, lost in a world of confusion,
caught up in the whirl of a gringo society,
confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes,
suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society.
My fathers have lost the economic battle
and won the struggle of cultural survival.
And now! I must choose between the paradox of
victory of the spirit, despite physical hunger,
or to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul and a full stomach.
Yes, I have come a long way to nowhere,
unwillingly dragged by that monstrous, technical,
industrial giant called Progress and Anglo success....
I look at myself.
I watch my brothers.
I shed tears of sorrow. I sow seeds of hate.
I withdraw to the safety within the circle of life --
MY OWN PEOPLE
I am Cuauhtémoc, proud and noble,
leader of men, king of an empire civilized
beyond the dreams of the gachupín Cortés,
who also is the blood, the image of myself.
I am the Maya prince.
I am Nezahualcóyotl, great leader of the Chichimecas.
I am the sword and flame of Cortes the despot
And I am the eagle and serpent of the Aztec civilization.
I owned the land as far as the eye
could see under the Crown of Spain,
and I toiled on my Earth and gave my Indian sweat and blood
for the Spanish master who ruled with tyranny over man and
beast and all that he could trample
But...THE GROUND WAS MINE.
I was both tyrant and slave.
As the Christian church took its place in God's name,
to take and use my virgin strength and trusting faith,
the priests, both good and bad, took--
but gave a lasting truth that Spaniard Indian Mestizo
were all God's children.
And from these words grew men who prayed and fought
for their own worth as human beings, for that
GOLDEN MOMENT of FREEDOM.
I was part in blood and spirit of that courageous village priest
Hidalgo who in the year eighteen hundred and ten
rang the bell of independence and gave out that lasting cry--
El Grito de Dolores
"Que mueran los gachupines y que viva la Virgen de Guadalupe...."
I sentenced him who was me I excommunicated him, my blood.
I drove him from the pulpit to lead a bloody revolution for him and me....
I killed him.
His head, which is mine and of all those
who have come this way,
I placed on that fortress wall
to wait for independence. Morelos! Matamoros! Guerrero!
all companeros in the act, STOOD AGAINST THAT WALL OF INFAMY
to feel the hot gouge of lead which my hands made.
I died with them ... I lived with them .... I lived to see our country free.
Free from Spanish rule in eighteen-hundred-twenty-one.
Mexico was free??
The crown was gone but all its parasites remained,
and ruled, and taught, with gun and flame and mystic power.
I worked, I sweated, I bled, I prayed,
and waited silently for life to begin again.
I fought and died for Don Benito Juarez, guardian of the Constitution.
I was he on dusty roads on barren land as he protected his archives
as Moses did his sacraments.
He held his Mexico in his hand on
the most desolate and remote ground which was his country.
And this giant little Zapotec gave not one palm's breadth
of his country's land to kings or monarchs or presidents of foriegn powers.
I am Joaquin.
I rode with Pancho Villa,
crude and warm, a tornado at full strength,
nourished and inspired by the passion and the fire of all his earthy people.
I am Emiliano Zapata.
"This land, this earth is OURS."
The villages, the mountains, the streams
belong to Zapatistas.
Our life or yours is the only trade for soft brown earth and maize.
All of which is our reward,
a creed that formed a constitution
for all who dare live free!
"This land is ours . . .
Father, I give it back to you.
Mexico must be free. . . ."
I ride with revolutionists
against myself.
I am the Rurales,
coarse and brutal,
I am the mountian Indian,
superior over all.
The thundering hoof beats are my horses. The chattering machine guns
are death to all of me:
Yaqui
Tarahumara
Chamala
Zapotec
Mestizo
Español.
I have been the bloody revolution,
The victor,
The vanquished.
I have killed
And been killed.
I am the despots Díaz
And Huerta
And the apostle of democracy,
Francisco Madero.
I am
The black-shawled
Faithfulwomen
Who die with me
Or live
Depending on the time and place.
I am faithful, humble Juan Diego,
The Virgin of Guadalupe,
Tonantzín, Aztec goddess, too.
I rode the mountains of San Joaquín.
I rode east and north
As far as the Rocky Mountains,
And
All men feared the guns of
Joaquín Murrieta.
I killed those men who dared
To steal my mine,
Who raped and killed my love
My wife.
Then I killed to stay alive.
I was Elfego Baca,
living my nine lives fully.
I was the Espinoza brothers
of the Valle de San Luis.
All were added to the number of heads that in the name of civilization
were placed on the wall of independence, heads of brave men
who died for cause or principle, good or bad.
Hidalgo! Zapata!
Murrieta! Espinozas!
Are but a few.
They dared to face
The force of tyranny
Of men who rule by deception and hypocrisy.
I stand here looking back,
And now I see the present,
And still I am a campesino,
I am the fat political coyote–
I,
Of the same name,
Joaquín,
In a country that has wiped out
All my history,
Stifled all my pride,
In a country that has placed a
Different weight of indignity upon my age-old burdened back.
Inferiority is the new load . . . .
The Indian has endured and still
Emerged the winner,
The Mestizo must yet overcome,
And the gachupín will just ignore.
I look at myself
And see part of me
Who rejects my father and my mother
And dissolves into the melting pot
To disappear in shame.
I sometimes
Sell my brother out
And reclaim him
For my own when society gives me
Token leadership
In society's own name.
I am Joaquín,
Who bleeds in many ways.
The altars of Moctezuma
I stained a bloody red.
My back of Indian slavery
Was stripped crimson
From the whips of masters
Who would lose their blood so pure
When revolution made them pay,
Standing against the walls of retribution.
Blood has flowed from me on every battlefield between
campesino, hacendado,
slave and master and revolution.
I jumped from the tower of Chapultepec
into the sea of fame–
my country's flag
my burial shroud–
with Los Niños,
whose pride and courage
could not surrender
with indignity
their country's flag
to strangers . . . in their land.
Now I bleed in some smelly cell from club or gun or tyranny.
I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger
Cut my face and eyes,
As I fight my way from stinking barrios
To the glamour of the ring
And lights of fame
Or mutilated sorrow.
My blood runs pure on the ice-caked
Hills of the Alaskan isles,
On the corpse-strewn beach of Normandy,
The foreign land of Korea
And now Vietnam.
Here I stand
Before the court of justice,
Guilty
For all the glory of my Raza
To be sentenced to despair.
Here I stand,
Poor in money,
Arrogant with pride,
Bold with machismo,
Rich in courage
And
Wealthy in spirit and faith.
My knees are caked with mud.
My hands calloused from the hoe. I have made the Anglo rich,
Yet
Equality is but a word–
The Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken
And is but another threacherous promise.
My land is lost
And stolen,
My culture has been raped.
I lengthen the line at the welfare door
And fill the jails with crime.
These then are the rewards
This society has
For sons of chiefs
And kings
And bloody revolutionists,
Who gave a foreign people
All their skills and ingenuity
To pave the way with brains and blood
For those hordes of gold-starved strangers,
Who
Changed our language
And plagiarized our deeds
As feats of valor
Of their own.
They frowned upon our way of life
and took what they could use.
Our art, our literature, our music, they ignored–
so they left the real things of value
and grabbed at their own destruction
by their greed and avarice.
They overlooked that cleansing fountain of
nature and brotherhood
which is Joaquín.
The art of our great señores,
Diego Rivera,
Siqueiros,
Orozco, is but another act of revolution for
the salvation of mankind.
Mariachi music, the heart and soul
of the people of the earth,
the life of the child,
and the happiness of love.
The corridos tell the tales
of life and death,
of tradition,
legends old and new, of joy
of passion and sorrow
of the people–who I am.
I am in the eyes of woman,
sheltered beneath
her shawl of black,
deep and sorrowful eyes
that bear the pain of sons long buried or dying,
dead on the battlefield or on the barbed wire of social strife.
Her rosary she prays and fingers endlessly
like the family working down a row of beets
to turn around and work and work.
There is no end.
Her eyes a mirror of all the warmth
and all the love for me,
and I am her
and she is me.
We face life together in sorrow,
anger, joy, faith and wishful
thoughts.
I shed the tears of anguish
as I see my children disappear
behind the shroud of mediocrity,
never to look back to remember me.
I am Joaquín.
I must fight
and win this struggle
for my sons, and they
must know from me
who I am.
Part of the blood that runs deep in me
could not be vanquished by the Moors.
I defeated them after five hundred years,
and I have endured.
Part of the blood that is mine
has labored endlessly four hundred
years under the heel of lustful
Europeans.
I am still here! I have endured in the rugged mountains
Of our country
I have survived the toils and slavery of the fields.
I have existed
In the barrios of the city
In the suburbs of bigotry
In the mines of social snobbery
In the prisons of dejection
In the muck of exploitation
And
In the fierce heat of racial hatred.
And now the trumpet sounds,
The music of the people stirs the
Revolution.
Like a sleeping giant it slowly
Rears its head
To the sound of
Tramping feet
Clamoring voices
Mariachi strains
Fiery tequila explosions
The smell of chile verde and
Soft brown eyes of expectation for a
Better life.
And in all the fertile farmlands,
the barren plains,
the mountain villages,
smoke-smeared cities,
we start to MOVE.
La raza!
Méjicano!
Español!
Latino!
Chicano!
Or whatever I call myself,
I look the same
I feel the same
I cry
And
Sing the same.
I am the masses of my people and
I refuse to be absorbed.
I am Joaquín.
The odds are great
But my spirit is strong,
My faith unbreakable,
My blood is pure.
I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ.
I SHALL ENDURE!
I WILL ENDURE!
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
My favorite walls
It's important to decorate one's life with beauty and inspiration from the past.
At home, I finally have a picture wall across from real, true-to-form stairs to enjoy. I've hung up pictures of my very best friends in all the world, and some of the most lovely sights I've seen in the past year or so, to encourage me to continue to travel, explore, and open my eyes to new things.
At work, I've outfitted my largest wall with pictures from school children speaking out against substance abuse. They are darling. Taught by health educators past, and now probably teens or adults themselves, these kids remind me why I work on Saturdays.
At home, I finally have a picture wall across from real, true-to-form stairs to enjoy. I've hung up pictures of my very best friends in all the world, and some of the most lovely sights I've seen in the past year or so, to encourage me to continue to travel, explore, and open my eyes to new things.
At work, I've outfitted my largest wall with pictures from school children speaking out against substance abuse. They are darling. Taught by health educators past, and now probably teens or adults themselves, these kids remind me why I work on Saturdays.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Facing it
I am no model, but I need to say that some of the emotions this young woman articulated really resonate with me:
How I feel uncomfortable with my priviledge, but even more so...
... how I feel uncomfortable sharing the struggles I've had in spite of my priviledge, and even more so...
...how I feel uncomfortable sharing the struggles I've had made worse because of my priviledge.
I know the only way to become more comfortable is to be myself, in whatever place and face God gave me, and to wear myself out doing for others and living in gratitude for what I am each day.
But I am glad someone articulated a discomfort that is out there, in her own voice - so different from mine, but so recognized.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Exactly
"I realize now that I never really hated Zooey Deschanel’s feminine performances...I hated the way that her femininity had been cast through the lens of male fantasy."
She's wonderful in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and she, like every other woman - and man and person! - out there, has every right to be her own kind of feminist.
She's wonderful in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and she, like every other woman - and man and person! - out there, has every right to be her own kind of feminist.
 |
| Knee socks and shorts. Yes, please. |
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The happy and sad of it
"We're going to give law enforcement more tools and resources to prevent and prosecute gun crimes, and we're going to end the freeze on gun violence research that prevents the Center from Disease Control from looking at the causes of gun violence."
~ Vice President Joe Biden
Nice, Joe, but it's the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Keeping in mind the whole name could really put a dent in our collective conscious' ability to actually maintain a committment to prevent these devastations before they happen.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Guilt and Conviction
A friend has put this in my heart these days.
That there is no place for guilt. It dwells on the past and punishes without change or positive results. It keeps us in something painful without a plan out.
There is always room for added conviction. The knowledge that there is more to do and the increased wisdom, tied to action, can accomplish beautiful, new and improved attitudes, behaviors and circumstances in our lives.
Purposeful life, for me, means turning guilt into conviction while walking humbly with the One who gives me hope.
That there is no place for guilt. It dwells on the past and punishes without change or positive results. It keeps us in something painful without a plan out.
There is always room for added conviction. The knowledge that there is more to do and the increased wisdom, tied to action, can accomplish beautiful, new and improved attitudes, behaviors and circumstances in our lives.
Purposeful life, for me, means turning guilt into conviction while walking humbly with the One who gives me hope.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Blessed. Honored. Tired.
Thank you, living God, for giving me this life. Thank you for making it better than I could have ever predicted or planned on my own. Thank you for beautiful people who make me laugh, and who I know would comfort me if I needed to cry.
Every day is an adventure.
Every day is an adventure.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Sweet and exciting
Our President's Inauguration is in a week!
I am so excited to take the day off with family to celebrate our country's democracy, freedoms and a tad of civic tradition too.
Also, I kind of geek out on the ceremonial pieces of the day that will just be beautiful, like this, since it is after all Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on the 21st, and because President Obama's second term is a historic reminder of how far we have come and how much more we can still do together.
I am so excited to take the day off with family to celebrate our country's democracy, freedoms and a tad of civic tradition too.
Also, I kind of geek out on the ceremonial pieces of the day that will just be beautiful, like this, since it is after all Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on the 21st, and because President Obama's second term is a historic reminder of how far we have come and how much more we can still do together.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Saturday, January 12, 2013
I'm sure Girls is a good show
I love to talk about body image, about women
and our relationship to ourselves, but sometimes I get frustrated by what we
find worthy of our feminist perspective. Welcome to a discussion that needs to
be had, but one that I, at the same time, find embarrassing for our society.
http://www.xojane.com/issues/lena-dunham-naked-nude
Here are some highlights from the article:
How much self-indulgence is our culture willing
to throw around before we realize that we are so wealthy and pampered that - in
our spare time - we’re watching superficial, fictional characters deal with superficial,
fictional problems, and then we’re creating, within our exposure to these
fictions, new ways to hate ourselves, our bodies, and other people’s bodies
and senses of themselves?
It bothers me that we layer these worries upon ourselves without ever addressing real concerns first – equitable health care, education and work for women, palatable water and adequate nutrition for children, and human rights. We’re burying ourselves in false interests and false ideals.
There’s nothing wrong with fiction, and there is something wrong with the way that people discriminate against others based on body image. But first things first. I don’t want a TV character’s thighs to distract us from the fact that Congress failed to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act or extend protections to immigrants and the LGBTQ community.
Real life is full of real drama, controversy and reasons for offense. Let’s use our womanly wiles to make a difference where it counts.
http://www.xojane.com/issues/lena-dunham-naked-nude
Here are some highlights from the article:
“When a conventionally attractive woman is paid
to model lingerie, or to be virtually any other variety of naked in a bit of
popular media or advertising, she is a woman doing a job, albeit a job that
involves reinforcing the dominant beauty standards we’re all subject to. That,
to us, is normal.
But when a regular, non-remarkable person with
a body they have not carefully sculpted to meet cultural beauty standards does
it, it’s narcissism -- or, as the New York Post would call it, “pathological
exhibitionism.” She is inflicting her body on us, as one might a weapon or a
terrible disease.”
(earlier in article)
“We expect, weirdly, to be
protected from Lena Dunham’s thighs - as if Dunham herself must be made to
understand how uncomfortable they make us, how DANGEROUS they are, to a media
consuming public that doesn’t want to appreciate the variety intrinsic to
reality, but who are happy to only see people and bodies that we instantly
recognize and which do not challenge us. This goes for thighs, sure, but also
for a wide array of other things as well, from race to age to disability. Don’t
make us look. We don’t know how to process it. It’s HARD.”
…
“…how do we compete with Lena
Dunham, who refuses to play? There are no RULES to this game. And so we get
angry.”
…
“The aghast controversy evoked by
Dunham’s nudity shows us just how much of this “real women” talk is lip
service, and how very far we have to go before we can socially deal with the
fact that different bodies exist.”
It bothers me that we layer these worries upon ourselves without ever addressing real concerns first – equitable health care, education and work for women, palatable water and adequate nutrition for children, and human rights. We’re burying ourselves in false interests and false ideals.
There’s nothing wrong with fiction, and there is something wrong with the way that people discriminate against others based on body image. But first things first. I don’t want a TV character’s thighs to distract us from the fact that Congress failed to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act or extend protections to immigrants and the LGBTQ community.
Real life is full of real drama, controversy and reasons for offense. Let’s use our womanly wiles to make a difference where it counts.
Friday, January 11, 2013
It's Friday
Today so many of us get pay checks, get weekends, get the chance to stretch our legs a little and relax with whatever our leisure or recreation plans may be.
I want to take a moment of gratitude for my ability to have leisure time, to have productive work, and to know that this is not a given.
Health, peace and education influence my life everyday for the better, and I am hopeful that we would continue to give out of our wealth as a nation of diversely blessed people so that others might have their basic needs met.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Shucks
It is not raspy. It is not sexy. It sounds like I have a limb stuck in a vice and I am trying to sing while I wriggle myself out. Not cool.
Being told I sound terrible is one thing, but actually not being physically able to sing during my commute is slowly killing me.
I must remind myself of the blessings that accompany peace, quiet and silence...
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
Sleeper strong
This weekend was the last that one of my dearest, H, will be in the country for awhile. H is one of those friends I will call "sleeper strong." Her overt sweetness, prettiness, bubbliness and feminity make it less than obvious to the casual observer how strong a force H really is.
I was so grateful to be able to spend so much time with her at the start of the year.
With her perspective and encouragement, I know I am going it get 2013 a little more right, and live it with a little move love too.
With her perspective and encouragement, I know I am going it get 2013 a little more right, and live it with a little move love too.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Super Proud
I am a big rememberer that education does not equal intelligence, and that book learnin' does not equal common sense, but I have to tell you, that of all the reasons I feel fortunate to have attended the schools I did, Bloomberg's committment to public mental health is right up there.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the only school of public health in the world with an academic department devoted to the study of mental illness and disability.
It's the reason I found my career passion and had such fertile ground to explore it. It's the reason, I believe, that our overall public health program has one of the most humane faces I've seen out of all the programs out there. And it's certainly the reason I've learned from and been inspired by the variety of astounding academic mentors I worked under as a 20-to-24-year-old, and who I will carry with me in my work throughout my lifetime.
Congratulations to some of those mentors, and to the school in general, for this awesome accomplishment:
I dream of living in a world where mental health is treated with as much preventative care, and as little stigma, as physical health. Thanks for the step forward, JHSPH!
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the only school of public health in the world with an academic department devoted to the study of mental illness and disability.
It's the reason I found my career passion and had such fertile ground to explore it. It's the reason, I believe, that our overall public health program has one of the most humane faces I've seen out of all the programs out there. And it's certainly the reason I've learned from and been inspired by the variety of astounding academic mentors I worked under as a 20-to-24-year-old, and who I will carry with me in my work throughout my lifetime.
Congratulations to some of those mentors, and to the school in general, for this awesome accomplishment:
I dream of living in a world where mental health is treated with as much preventative care, and as little stigma, as physical health. Thanks for the step forward, JHSPH!
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Letting go on a Saturday
"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned in order to have the life that is waiting for us."
~ Joseph Campbell
~ Joseph Campbell
Friday, January 4, 2013
Because, what can you do?
I officially have what all people entering their 28th year of life call "the sickies."
With that, I am taking the start of 2013 slow, and honing my humility when it comes to having any sense of ultimate control.
Weekend Update with Seth Meyers - "A man from Scotland recently completed seven ultramarathons on all seven continents in seven days. Meanwhile, I fell asleep in the middle of a haircut."
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Human Heroes
"...all of us are potentials. In a period of so much shock, horror, and grief, it’s easy to feel completely powerless. But it’s equally important to remember that we’re not. That small acts, no matter who performs them, can save lives. That we can be heroes, if just for one day. That’s really only a matter of knowing what to do and choosing to do it."
http://madelineashby.com/?p=1368
http://madelineashby.com/?p=1368
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Wowzers
While the artwork, or mathematically rigorous designs, one might say, are exceptionally impressive in it of themselves, I think I am most inspired by how Mr. Beck took a potential loss in his life and turned it into a new adventure.
I think this goes to show that we never need dwell on our setbacks or misfortunes. Sure, when life sucks, it sucks. But there's always a silver lining, and in this case, a gorgeous, silver, snowy one.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
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