e-Bomb, the fire cracker in a small package. e-Bomb, the philosopher. e-Bomb, the late bloomer staging her own life revolution. e-Bomb, the history watcher. e-Bomb, the lover. e-Bomb, the friend. Welcome to My World. Here's my story.
I'm bored.
Yes, me, bored.
Well, both yes and no.
Actually, I'm not sure.
Really, I have no idea.
Many things but not enough to mention.
My mind is like a pile of yarn tangled and unruly.
It will take a while to sort out.
[And no, I don't have the words to talk about it all at the moment.
So pardon my silence.
But thank you for wondering.]
I'm a verbal/linguistic, inter- and intra-personal learner.
How do you learn?
(http://www.ldpride.net/learningstyles.MI.htmMultiple%20Intelligences%20Explained)
VISUAL/SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE
ability to perceive the visual. These learners tend to think in pictures and need to create vivid mental images to retain information. They enjoy looking at maps, charts, pictures, videos, and movies.
Their skills include:
puzzle building, reading, writing, understanding charts and graphs, a good sense of direction, sketching, painting, creating visual metaphors and analogies (perhaps through the visual arts), manipulating images, constructing, fixing, designing practical objects, interpreting visual images.
Possible career interests:
navigators, sculptors, visual artists, inventors, architects, interior designers, mechanics, engineers
VERBAL/LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE
ability to use words and language. These learners have highly developed auditory skills and are generally elegant speakers. They think in words rather than pictures.
Their skills include:
listening, speaking, writing, story telling, explaining, teaching, using humor, understanding the syntax and meaning of words, remembering information, convincing someone of their point of view, analyzing language usage.
Possible career interests:
Poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, translator
LOGICAL/MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE
ability to use reason, logic and numbers. These learners think conceptually in logical and numerical patterns making connections between pieces of information. Always curious about the world around them, these learner ask lots of questions and like to do experiments.
Their skills include:
problem solving, classifying and categorizing information, working with abstract concepts to figure out the relationship of each to the other, handling long chains of reason to make local progressions, doing controlled experiments, questioning and wondering about natural events, performing complex mathematical calculations, working with geometric shapes
Possible career paths:
Scientists, engineers, computer programmers, researchers, accountants, mathematicians
BODILY/KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE
ability to control body movements and handle objects skillfully. These learners express themselves through movement. They have a good sense of balance and eye-hand co-ordination. (e.g. ball play, balancing beams). Through interacting with the space around them, they are able to remember and process information.
Their skills include:
dancing, physical co-ordination, sports, hands on experimentation, using body language, crafts, acting, miming, using their hands to create or build, expressing emotions through the body
Possible career paths:
Athletes, physical education teachers, dancers, actors, firefighters, artisans
MUSICAL/RHYTHMIC INTELLIGENCE
ability to produce and appreciate music. These musically inclined learners think in sounds, rhythms and patterns. They immediately respond to music either appreciating or criticizing what they hear. Many of these learners are extremely sensitive to environmental sounds (e.g. crickets, bells, dripping taps).
Their skills include:
singing, whistling, playing musical instruments, recognizing tonal patterns, composing music, remembering melodies, understanding the structure and rhythm of music
Possible career paths:
musician, disc jockey, singer, composer
INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE
ability to relate and understand others. These learners try to see things from other people's point of view in order to understand how they think and feel. They often have an uncanny ability to sense feelings, intentions and motivations. They are great organizers, although they sometimes resort to manipulation. Generally they try to maintain peace in group settings and encourage co-operation.They use both verbal (e.g. speaking) and non-verbal language (e.g. eye contact, body language) to open communication channels with others.
Their skills include:
seeing things from other perspectives (dual-perspective), listening, using empathy, understanding other people's moods and feelings, counseling, co-operating with groups, noticing people's moods, motivations and intentions, communicating both verbally and non-verbally, building trust, peaceful conflict resolution, establishing positive relations with other people.
Possible Career Paths:
Counselor, salesperson, politician, business person
INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE
ability to self-reflect and be aware of one's inner state of being. These learners try to understand their inner feelings, dreams, relationships with others, and strengths and weaknesses.
Their Skills include:
Recognizing their own strengths and weaknesses, reflecting and analyzing themselves, awareness of their inner feelings, desires and dreams, evaluating their thinking patterns, reasoning with themselves, understanding their role in relationship to others
Possible Career Paths:
Researchers, theorists, philosophers
I wish to be a gas attendant on the path of others' lives ... to refuel them with inspiration and encouragement.
Rape on Okinawa continues to reoccur and "tighter military discipline" has been promised and broken time and time again.
What does loose discipline mean? A weak military, despite all technological advances.
February 28, 2008
Rice Offers Regret Over Alleged Rape
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO — Hoping to prevent outrage here from harming ties between the United States and Japan, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed deep regret on Wednesday over a case in which an American marine is accused of raping a 14-year-old Japanese girl on Okinawa.
Ms. Rice stopped here on the final leg of an Asian trip intended to find ways to contain North Korea's nuclear program. She also visited South Korea and China. She ordered her top Asia adviser, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, to remain to study China's new proposals on North Korea's program.
But in Japan, she spent much of her time trying to control diplomatic damage from the rape case and recent alcohol-related arrests of American servicemen on Okinawa, where most of the more than 40,000 American troops here are based. Japan is a major ally in Washington's bid to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions.
The accused marine, Staff Sgt. Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38, has denied raping the girl, but the case has inflamed anger over the American military presence. It has also revived bitter memories of the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three American servicemen in Okinawa, which set off huge protests and forced Washington to consider relocating some of its forces on the island.
"We certainly hope that there will not be lasting effects; it's a longstanding and strong alliance," Ms. Rice told reporters. "Our concern right now is to see that justice is done, to get to the bottom of it, and our concern is for the girl and her family. We really, really deeply regret it."
Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, has called the episode "unforgivable" and demanded tighter military discipline. The United States responded by restricting military personnel and their families in Japan to bases, homes and workplaces.
On Wednesday, Japan's foreign minister, Masahiko Komura, said the case had hurt ties, but he also sounded a conciliatory note by saying that improving relations with Washington was in the interest of both countries.
Ms. Rice met with Mr. Fukuda, Mr. Komura and Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, promising that the United States would do everything possible to prevent such episodes from occurring.
Speaking about her trip to Asia, Ms. Rice said there had been promising developments on the North Korean issue, including the Chinese proposals, the details of which she did not disclose.
Today, I am a mixed bag of emotions. But amongst all, I am happy.
I am happy that I feel strong.
By all accounts, I am living a life that I asked for -- to have the opportunity for growth and change and improvements. I live a life of learning. What more can I ask for?
Yes, my life is in a state of discontent, a life in motion. But through my anxiety, I am certain of my mission: I am here to value myself and add value to myself. I am here to claim who I am and my role in the Community.
Yes, I am here now.
Germans decide to teach the Holocaust with a more personal approach as the century turns pages.
February 27, 2008
ABROAD
No Laughs, No Thrills, and Villains All Too Real
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
BERLIN — The other morning Jens Augner, slight and owlish, a schoolteacher in his 40s, quizzed his eighth-grade class of 13- and 14-year-olds at the Humboldt Gymnasium, a local school. As part of a trial program, he has just introduced a new history textbook into the curriculum: to be exact, a comic book about the Holocaust, called "The Search."
Among other things, the book shows how far comics have come as a cultural medium taken seriously here, but also that the Holocaust has come a long way too, as a topic to be freshly considered by a new generation of German teenagers.
As it happens, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, just recently made headlines across Europe and elsewhere when, seemingly out of the blue, he announced that beginning next fall, French fifth graders should each study the life of one of the 11,000 French children killed during the Holocaust. ("Obscene," responded a dumbstruck Pascal Bruckner, the philosopher. He wasn't alone in that sentiment.)
On the new comic book's cover, a teenager named Esther sprints from a truckload of Nazi soldiers. She faces a choice in the book: a policeman will let her flee, if she wants, rather than follow her parents to the camps.
Standing before the blackboard, Mr. Augner asked the students what they might have done in Esther's place. Hands shot up.
"Her parents would have wanted her to hide," one girl speculated. A boy pointed out that the policeman, and not only Esther, had to make a difficult decision, because he could have been punished for letting her escape.
Many students said they would have gone after their parents. One declared that she would die for them.
At which point a quiet classmate spoke up: "It's a question of whether you want to die alone."
With the Second World War passing from living memory, the Holocaust remains a subject taught as a singular event and obligation here, and Germans still seem to grapple almost eagerly with their own historic guilt and shame. That said, few German schoolchildren today can go home to ask their grandparents, much less their parents, what they did while Hitler was around. The end of the war is now as distant from them in time as the end of the First World War was from the Reagan presidency.
Paradoxically, this seems to have freed young Germans — adolescent ones, anyway — to talk more openly and in new ways about Nazis and the Holocaust. Passing is the shock therapy, with its films of piled corpses, that earlier generations of schoolchildren had to endure.
In the comic Esther recounts to her grandchildren what happened to her family, and in the process facts emerge about Hitler's rise, about deportations and concentration camps. Without excusing anyone or spreading blame, the story, rather than focusing on Hitler and geopolitics, stresses instances where ordinary individuals — farmers, shopkeepers, soldiers, prison guards, even camp inmates — faced dilemmas, acted selfishly or ambiguously: showed themselves to be human. The medium's intimacy and immediacy help boil down a vast subject to a few lives that young readers, and old ones too, can grasp.
As for Mr. Sarkozy's plan, his education minister suggested that instead of having each school child study a specific Holocaust victim, an entire fifth-grade class might study the life of one child so as not to traumatize every 10-year-old in France. A committee is meeting now to study both proposals. Even if uncooked, the president's original notion about personalizing and revivifying a moral turning point in modern history reflected a broad change afoot.
Ask many Germans now in their 20s, 30s and 40s, and they will describe elementary and high school history classes that virtually cudgeled them into learning about Nazis and the Holocaust. The other morning Jutta Harms recalled her class in a small town in the north of West Germany during the late 1970s. Ms. Harms now works for Reprodukt, a leading Berlin publisher of graphic novels.
"Students had to fight to talk freely about the war," she recounted, "and, being confronted in class by the emotions of the teachers, there wasn't any space to feel for ourselves." The comic book, she went on, is therefore a welcome sign of change.
Mr. Augner, the schoolteacher, echoed Ms. Harms's recollection: "Teachers with good will used to make German children feel it was somehow their fault, that they had a weight on their shoulders. The war was still a fresh wound." This new comic book, he added, speaks to "a different generation of students."
"It teaches the subject," he continued, "so that it's no longer just about victims and perpetrators."
When a visitor asked Mr. Augner's students how much they identified with the Germans who fought the war, they looked blank and slightly baffled. "It was another generation," one said with a shrug. In that response a page of history seemed to turn.
"The result, I find, is that interest in the subject is actually increasing," Mr. Augner later commented. "These students don't have the same discomfort we did talking about it."
Older Germans can recall an American television mini-series, "Holocaust," that shocked people when it was shown here in the late 1970s and helped transform public opinion, giving many permission to break the long silence about Nazi atrocities. It recounted the war from the perspectives of two families, one Jewish, the other Nazi.
"The Search" takes this approach further, beyond the realm of commercial entertainment and into much subtler territory. The Anna Frank Haus in the Netherlands put it together by joining a team of experts with Eric Heuvel, a Dutch comic artist, whose previous book about the war in the Netherlands was distributed to 200,000 schoolchildren there. Some 20 classrooms, grades 7 to 10, here in Berlin and in North Rhine-Westphalia, are testing the new book. There are versions in Dutch, German, Hungarian, Polish and English.
"It would not have been possible as a history text 10 years ago, when people here assumed comics were only for those who couldn't read properly," Ms. Harms, from Reprodukt, the comics publisher, said.
The visual style of "The Search" is clear, simple, pastel-colored, in a classic Belgian-Franco comic tradition. "Less is more," Mr. Heuvel, the artist, said in a recent telephone conversation, acknowledging that he pilfered liberally from Tintin's inventor, Hergé. "We spent endless hours making sure that the Nazi costumes were kept to a minimum because boys can glorify these things."
Thomas Heppener, director of the Anne Frank Center in Berlin, said, "There was also a lot of discussion about color." Black-and-white, he noted, is now a cliché of art and movies about the Holocaust. Color is less melodramatic. "And you know the trees were still green at Auschwitz," he added.
It's a bright autumn day in the book when Esther's parents are rounded up and sent off to die. The comic is more heartbreaking for being understated and cautious about violence. Ruud van der Rol, one of the writers, explained: "There are no piles of bodies, because we knew from experience that this could block children from dealing with the whole subject. Also — and we had endless conversations about this — we decided not to show Hitler as a beast or inhuman because the Nazis, after all, were human beings. That's the point. Anyone can be a perpetrator or a hero. The choice is yours."
The other afternoon Dilek Geyik, a 30-year-old schoolteacher in training, was preparing to introduce the comic to her students at another Berlin high school. The students there come mostly from working-class families, and from time to time tensions flare between immigrants and right-wing teenagers. A petite, dark-haired woman, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, Ms. Geyik is accustomed to answering the question Where are you from? Unlike many of the people who ask, she was born and reared here, a native Berliner. But with a Turkish name, she's simply presumed to be an outsider by many Germans.
"When I was taught about the Holocaust in high school, I felt I could step away from the topic in ways German students couldn't, because it wasn't about me," she recalled. "History was something they were supposed to bear in silence. But now you don't have so many witnesses, so the direct connection isn't there for children. And also I came in time to see it myself in a larger context."
She added: "More and more young German students do too. They are sensitive to the idea that the subject is not just about Germans and Jews. It's about people and life."
February 25, 2008
Americans Change Faiths at Rising Rate, Report Finds
By NEELA BANERJEE
WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The report, titled "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey," depicts a highly fluid and diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations.
For at least a generation, scholars have noted that more Americans are moving among faiths, as denominational loyalty erodes. But the survey, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, offers one of the clearest views yet of that trend, scholars said. The United States Census does not track religious affiliation.
The report shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but that the Roman Catholic Church "has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes." The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country's fourth largest "religious group."
Detailing the nature of religious affiliation — who has the numbers, the education, the money — signals who could hold sway over the country's political and cultural life, said John Green, an author of the report who is a senior fellow on religion and American politics at Pew.
Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University, echoed that view. "Religion is the single most important factor that drives American belief attitudes and behaviors," said Mr. Lindsay, who had read the Pew report. "It is a powerful indicator of where America will end up on politics, culture, family life. If you want to understand America, you have to understand religion in America."
In the 1980s, the General Social Survey by the National Opinion Research Center indicated that from 5 percent to 8 percent of the population described itself as unaffiliated with a particular religion.
In the Pew survey 7.3 percent of the adult population said they were unaffiliated with a faith as children. That segment increases to 16.1 percent of the population in adulthood, the survey found. The unaffiliated are largely under 50 and male. "Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13 percent of women," the survey said.
The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion "as nothing in particular." Pew researchers said that later projects would delve more deeply into the beliefs and practices of the unaffiliated and would try to determine if they remain so as they age.
While the unaffiliated have been growing, Protestantism has been declining, the survey found. In the 1970s, Protestants accounted for about two-thirds of the population. The Pew survey found they now make up about 51 percent. Evangelical Christians account for a slim majority of Protestants, and those who leave one evangelical denomination usually move to another, rather than to mainline churches.
To Prof. Stephen Prothero, large numbers of Americans leaving organized religion and large numbers still embracing the fervor of evangelical Christianity point to the same desires.
"The trend is toward more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that," said Mr. Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, who explained that evangelical churches tailor many of their activities for youth. "Those losing out are offering impersonal religion and those winning are offering a smaller scale: mega-churches succeed not because they are mega but because they have smaller ministries inside."
The percentage of Catholics in the American population has held steady for decades at about 25 percent. But that masks a precipitous decline in native-born Catholics. The proportion has been bolstered by the large influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, the survey found.
The Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other group: about one-third of respondents raised Catholic said they no longer identified as such. Based on the data, the survey showed, "this means that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics."
Immigration continues to influence American religion greatly, the survey found. The majority of immigrants are Christian, and almost half are Catholic. Muslims rival Mormons for having the largest families. And Hindus are the best-educated and among the richest religious groups, the survey found.
"I think politicians will be looking at this survey to see what groups they ought to target," Professor Prothero said. "If the Hindu population is negligible, they won't have to worry about it. But if it is wealthy, then they may have to pay attention."
Experts said the wide-ranging variety of religious affiliation could set the stage for further conflicts over morality or politics, or new alliances on certain issues, as religious people have done on climate change or Jews and Hindus have done over relations between the United States, Israel and India.
"It sets up the potential for big arguments," Mr. Green said, "but also for the possibility of all sorts of creative synthesis. Diversity cuts both ways."
Do you realize this?
Do you realize that the creative moment you have right now, right at this second is something completely unique to you and you alone? See, even if someone else repeats what you do today, it would never be the same.
So remember this day, this hour, this second, for, just as the sun that rises tomorrow is never the same sun as today's or yesterday's or ever after, this is your moment.
Congratulations. You just made history.
So we have people that know the importance of educating kids on sex and sexually transmitted diseases.
Then, here, we have people question whether it's "worth the risk" to have their boys get shots so that they can slow cervical cancer rates since the shot is primarily for the benefit for girls.
The fact that this is even a discussion is utterly absurd. These are just GIRLS. These are fellow human beings we're talking about here. Who taught these parents -- people -- to be so selfish?? This is when I start feeling like human legacy has totally regressed.
February 24, 2008
Vaccinating Boys for Girls' Sake?
By JAN HOFFMAN
HOW cool are those Gardasil Girls? Riding horses, flinging softballs, bashing away on drum sets: on the television commercials, they are pugnacious and utterly winning. They want to be "One Less," they chant — one less victim of cervical cancer. Get vaccinated with Gardasil, they urge their sisters. Protect yourselves against the human papillomavirus, or H.P.V., which causes cervical cancer.
But someone's missing from this grrlpower tableau.
Ah, that would be Gardasil Boy.
Gardasil Girl's cancer-related virus? Sexually transmitted. She almost certainly got it from him.
So far, Gardasil is approved just for girls. They can be vaccinated when they are as young as 9, although it's recommended for 11- and 12-year-olds, before they are sexually active.
As the commercials show, the pitch to Gardasil Girl's parents doesn't need to address sex: it's about protecting their daughter from a cancer.
By 2009, the vaccine could be approved for boys as well. Although Gardasil also protects against genital warts, which are not life-threatening, the primary reason to extend approval to boys would be to slow the rates of cervical cancer. Public health folks charmlessly call this "herd immunity."
Will parents of sons consent to a three-shot regimen that has been marketed as benefiting girls? How do you pitch that to Gardasil Boy's parents?
Think altruism. Responsibility. Chivalry, even? Oh, and yes: some explicit details about genital warts and sexual transmission.
Madeline Cattell, an interior design consultant in Beverly, Mass., and the mother of two boys, ages 8 and 12, never paid much attention to Gardasil, assuming it was a gender-specific vaccine for a gender-specific disease. She was surprised that her boys might be offered it one day.
"You don't want to say it's just the girls' problem," Mrs. Cattell said hesitantly. "But my sons won't contract cervical cancer. And genital warts are treatable. I'm very skeptical. What risks will I expose them to?"
Gardasil got off to a rocky start. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006, for girls and young women, ages 9 to 26, it came under attack for its high cost. Conservative groups feared it would encourage promiscuity. But buoyed by recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Merck has distributed 13 million doses in the United States alone; insurance picked up much of the tab. In 2007, worldwide sales of Gardasil brought in $1.5 billion.
Gardasil protects against four types of H.P.V. Two have been found in 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. The other two types account for 90 percent of genital warts, which affect both men and women. Immunization gives protection for five years.
Sometime this year, Merck will submit data to the F.D.A. seeking approval to give Gardasil to boys. In Australia, Mexico and countries in the European Union, the vaccine is approved for boys.
"We have a very clear benefit that we offer to men," said Dr. Richard M. Haupt, Merck's executive director of clinical research, referring to the warts, "even if they don't feel they need to have an altruistic reason to get the vaccine."
Of course, many parents will automatically dismiss Gardasil. They view Big Pharma in general and new vaccines in particular with suspicion. Barbara Goodstein, a Manhattan insurance executive, who has a daughter, 10, and a son, 12, plans to refuse the vaccine for both. "I wouldn't give children that young a shot without multiple generations of research," she said.
A competing vaccine, developed by GlaxoSmithKline to protect females between the ages of 10 and 55, is being reviewed by the F.D.A. The company is studying its vaccine, Cervarix, in boys as well as girls in Finland. Cervarix does not protect against genital warts. Boys are being included in the trial to see whether vaccinating them will help eradicate cervical cancer.
That's good enough for some mothers. "If there was a vaccine I could take that would get rid of prostate cancer, why wouldn't I?" said Lisa Lippman, a Manhattan real estate broker with three sons. "If there was a vaccine that sons could get that would get rid of breast cancer, most parents wouldn't hesitate. But cervical cancer is the 'sex cancer.' "
A few reports show that American parents generally favor the Big Idea that Gardasil be made available to both boys and girls. But few surveys discern whether parents would consider the vaccine specifically for their own sons. In 2003, Dr. Elyse Olshen Kharbanda interviewed Boston-area parents.
"They didn't see it as having much benefit for their sons," said Dr. Kharbanda, now an adolescent specialist at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. "It was smart of Merck to get people excited about it for the girls, but now they're stuck with that perception."
Cervical cancer, which kills a quarter-million women a year worldwide, has long been a subject of urgent research. In the United States, about 3,700 women die from it each year; screenings like Pap smears have greatly lowered mortality rates here. But H.P.V. also causes a host of precancerous conditions: a study put the annual cost of cervical H.P.V.-related disease at $2.25 billion to $4.6 billion.
H.P.V. is the most common sexually transmitted infection. There are estimates of six million new infections in the United States each year. Yet, of more than 100 types of H.P.V., only a handful may result in disease. Most people who are infected have no symptoms and can transmit it unknowingly.
At least a half-million Americans each year develop genital warts, which can reoccur. But is Gardasil's protection against warts enough for parents of sons?
"It's not life-threatening, but it's very stressful," said Susan L. Rosenthal, a specialist in adolescent psychology at the University of Texas at Galveston and an adviser to Merck. "Genital warts are a really yucky disease and they make you feel bad about an important, sensitive body part. Psychologically, it's not an insignificant infection."
Baruch Fischhoff, a professor of decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon, thinks that older boys may see a mix of benefits in Gardasil. "Being able to say to a girl, casually, that you had the shots, boys might think, 'If I can slip that into the conversation, it makes me less of a risk and seem like more of a humanitarian,' " Dr. Fischhoff said. "So the self-interested and altruistic motives could actually support each other."
Some doctors even envisioned college kids, gay and straight, insisting partners get vaccinated.
Down the road, the vaccine may have other benefits. H.P.V. also causes anal and penile cancers, which are relatively rare, and some head and neck cancers.
The burden of explaining genital warts to fifth-grade boys and their parents, as well as spelling out how boys could give girls a virus that could lead to cancer, will largely fall on pediatricians.
Dr. Evelyn Hurvitz, a pediatrician in Tonawanda, N.Y., is beginning to map out those Gardasil discussions. "If you have an 11-year-old boy in your office," she mused, "the last thing he's thinking about is having sex with a girl. He's still thinking about getting past talking to a girl."
Tough sell.
"Then you have the parent of a 15-year-old boy who might be sexually active," Dr. Hurvitz continued. "And so I would say, 'This is a disease he could give to a loved one.' And then I'll hear, 'But our son isn't sexually active.' And he'll be squirming. So I'll say, 'Maybe not, but eventually he will be.' "
Dr. Hurvitz wishes that Gardasil had been available for boys and girls from the outset: "It would have been easier to get across the idea that this is a vaccine to prevent transmission of H.P.V.," she said.
A few prescient pediatricians are already laying a foundation. The other day, during Cathy Anderson's 11-year-old son's annual check-up, the pediatrician mentioned that Gardasil might become available for boys.
"He talked about taking responsibility for controlling a communicable disease," said Mrs. Anderson, a stay-at-home mother in West Lafayette, Ind. "My first reaction was: 'Well, that makes sense.' Then I told my son he wouldn't have to worry about the disease, because he wouldn't be having sex until he'd been married for a long time."
February 26, 2008
Talking With Children About Sex and AIDS: At What Age to Start?
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
What age is the right age to have "the talk," not just about where babies come from, but also about sex and AIDS?
How about, oh, 4?
A new documentary, "Please Talk to Kids About AIDS," raises this question in a cute but discomfiting way. So far it has been seen only at film festivals and at schools of public health, including those at Harvard and Johns Hopkins. But the film will soon be available at www.eztakes.com/Talk-to-Kids. I saw it last month at a Gay Men's Health Crisis screening for AIDS counselors.
In it, two incredibly sweet and precocious sisters — Vineeta and Sevilla Hennessey, ages 6 and 4 — accompany their parents, the filmmakers, to the 2006 International AIDS Conference in Toronto. They interview top AIDS experts, gay activists, condom distributors, a sex toy saleswoman, a cross-dresser playing Queen Elizabeth II and an Indian transgender hijra in a sari.
The startling aspect is that, as one childish question leads to the next, they ask things like: "How does AIDS get into your body?" and "How come they want to have sex with each other?"
For a reporter, it is a guilty pleasure to see some of the world's leading scientists squirm — or not — when grilled by a child.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's instantly recognizable authority on everything viral, seems as relaxed as he does on television or before Congress. People get AIDS from each other, he explains in the documentary. "You know," he says, "when a man and a woman have sexual relationships they get infected. And also from injecting from a needle that is contaminated with the virus."
But, with children as with senators, Dr. Fauci glides casually away from the tough follow-up, segueing to: "Do you know what a virus is?"
By contrast, Dr. Mark A. Wainberg, the conference's co-chairman, dissolves in nervous laughter.
"Well, AIDS gets into your body in ways that can — can be complicated to explain to little girls," he says, fumbling to a finish with: "In the same way that a mommy and a daddy have a relationship that . . . results in our coming into the world. But you know what, you asked a great question. I'm just not sure I'm qualified to answer."
The girls get straightforward answers about bodies conjoining, from Craig McClure, the AIDS society's director, and about trading sex for money, from a prostitution-rights activist.
But the film is hardly a medical lecture. The hallway theatrics — flags, puppets, dancing — give the conference a carnival feel. In fact, an unplanned stop at the Condom Project's table inspired the filmmakers, Brian Hennessey and Radia Daoussi, to center the film on their girls.
Sevilla thought the bright packages were candy and loved the Cinderella ball gown and tutus made of blue and pink condoms. She asked about them, and a volunteer's struggle to turn her boilerplate spiel into words simpler than "destigmatize" made it clear that a child's innocence would elicit good interviews.
But innocence — being fleeting — fled. At one point, Vineeta draws for the camera a picture of two people in bed. "These are condoms," she explains of the bowl beside them, "that you put in the boy's penis, so they don't get AIDS with a woman or with a man. A man can do it with a man if you like it."
Interestingly, only some interviewees checked to make sure that the producer and cameraman were Mom and Dad. To me, that would have been crucial; after all, I wouldn't tell a child there is no Santa Claus or why I am an atheist without a parent's permission.
The woman at the sex-worker booth did, as she was decking out the girls in feather boas for a make-believe evening on the street. "I was wondering why you were bringing kids up here," she said to Mr. Hennessey.
Poor Dr. Wainberg said he had been swamped with running the conference and was told nothing about the girls before meeting them. "I was a bit taken aback," he later said in a telephone interview. "I wasn't sure if this was the time and place to go into a long explanation of the birds and the bees."
Dr. Fauci said he had been briefed by a press aide, and guided his answers by watching the girls' reactions. I wished I had seen more of those in the film. Were they confused? Bored? Horrified?
When the screening was over, I lingered to meet them. Would they turn out to be traumatized robots parented by publicity-seeking control freaks?
They did not. Mr. Hennessey and Ms. Daoussi are on a mission but with a sense of fun. For example, to protest cluster bombs, which kill children who find the bomblets, they staged a bomblet hunt near the last White House Easter Egg Roll.
And the girls seemed self-possessed and at ease with grown-ups. Asked by an audience member if she had any advice, Vineeta said, Yes; don't share too much. "It's like what they say at my school," she explained. "Don't share a comb or a hat because you can get lice."
There is, Ms. Daoussi argues, no right age for the topic. "It's when they're ready to ask," she said. "It's our own discomfort that's the problem, not theirs. Kids don't have taboos."
I left only partly convinced. It is possible to push very young children, with so little grasp of which fears are realistic, into information that scares them — into, for example, lying awake worrying that sex will kill their parents.
Sevilla did say she was scared twice — once by an African guerrilla theater skit showing a village massacre and an orphaned girl forced into a sugar-daddy relationship, once by learning what a sex worker did. "I know it's a job," she said, "but it's a weird job."
But the film is not really for children — certainly not in its present form, even its makers say. For a parent, however (and I have a stepson Vineeta's age), watching someone else's very young child — maybe even too-young child — grapple with the topic is a powerful exhortation to begin thinking about how to talk to one's own.
February 25, 2008
`Doomsday' Vault Opens to Protect Seeds
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:48 p.m. ET
LONGYEARBYEN, Norway (AP) -- It's been dubbed a Noah's Ark for plant life and built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear attack.
Dug deep into the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain, the ''doomsday'' vault is designed by Norway to protect the world's seeds from global catastrophe.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a backup to the world's 1,400 other seed banks, was to be officially inaugurated in a ceremony Tuesday on the northern rim of civilization attended by about 150 guests from 33 countries.
The frozen vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around the globe, shielding them from climate change, war, natural disasters and other threats.
''There are not many countries in the world they could have pulled this off,'' said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a partner in the project.
Norway's government owns the vault in Svalbard, a frigid archipelago 620 miles from the North Pole. The Nordic country paid $9.1 million for construction, which took less than a year. Other countries can deposit seeds for free and reserve the right to withdraw them upon need.
The operation is financed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which was founded by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and Biodiversity International, a Rome-based research group.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya, a Crop Diversity Trust board member, and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg planned to attend the opening ceremony 425 feet deep inside Plataaberget mountain.
It was about 5 degrees outside as reporters were allowed Monday in for a sneak peak. But it was colder inside. Giant air conditioning units have chilled the vault to just below zero, a temperature at which experts say many seeds could survive for 1,000 years.
Inside the concrete entrance, decorated for the opening with an ice sculpture of a polar bear, a roughly 400-foot-long tunnel of steel and concrete leads to three separate 32-by-88-foot chambers where the seeds will be stored.
The first 600 boxes with 12 tons of seeds already have arrived from 20 seed banks around the world, Norwegian Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen said. The first 75 boxes were to be carried into the vault by guests as part of the opening ceremony.
The seeds are packed in silvery foil packets -- as many as 500 in each sample -- and will be placed on blue and orange metal shelves inside the vault. Each chamber can hold 1.5 million packets holding all types of crop seeds, from carrots to wheat.
Construction leader Magnus Bredeli-Tveiten said the vault has been designed to withstand earthquakes -- successfully tested by a 6.2-magnitude temblor off Svalbard last week -- and even a direct nuclear strike.
And even if power fails and cuts off the air conditioning, the permafrost insulating the vault would help keep the seeds ''cold for 200 years even in the worst case climate scenario,'' Fowler said.
He expects the vault's life span to rival that of Egypt's ancient pyramids.
''So much of the value of Svalbard is that it is so far away from the dangers'' that affect many other parts of the globe, Fowler said. The archipelago is about 300 miles north of the Norwegian mainland.
Other seed banks are in less protected areas. War wiped out seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one in the Philippines was flooded after a typhoon in 2006.
Fowler called the vault an insurance policy against the unthinkable. ''It's like you get in your car in the morning and drive to the office. You don't expect to get into a car accident, but you buy insurance anyway.''
The vault is protected by armed guards, but their rifles aren't meant only to discourage uninvited humans from coming too close.
''My job is to keep away people who aren't supposed to be here -- and guard against polar bears,'' vault worker Jimmy Olsen said, was standing outside the entrance with a rifle slung on his shoulder. There are an estimated 3,000 polar bears on the islands.
Norway has received praise from around the world for building the seed bank. FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf on Monday called it ''one of the most innovative and impressive acts in the service of humanity.''
But the world spotlight worries some locals, who treasure the isolation of living in the Arctic.
''We like to be here a little bit for ourselves,'' said Kai Tredal, 42, one of the roughly 2,000 people in Svalbard's main town, Longyearbyen.
------
On the Net:
Norwegian government site on vault: http://www.seedvault.no
Global Crop Diversity Trust: http://www.croptrust.org
I've been craving for spicy food for the past few days.
SPICY SPICY SPICY!! I WANT SPICY!
I think it's because the tingly feeling on my lips reflects how I feel inside at the moment. Funny how my body reacts to my heart so well.
Oooh, I had so much Tabasco, I am getting a little lightheaded.
(Or is it really the Tabasco?)
I'm in Bend.
Welp, glad to be home, glad to be welcomed home, glad to be clear and not clouded, glad to hear myself again.
Ahhhhh.
They tell me "kudos to you for working towards being a better person." But really, the fact that I'm able to work towards being who I want to be is a luxury.
Yes, a luxury.
And I would not hesitate to say that which is the truth, or be so shameless as to take all credit for being able to do what I'm doing. I am where I am only because I need not to be in a position to fend for myself. I don't need to be struggling to make a living, to survive. Ask anyone in any of the previous generation (those of the Depression era, for instance) and any of our third world countries -- all 85% of the rest of the world -- if they are going through their hardships "to be a better person," and you will find that they are just barely surviving, let alone focusing their attention on self-improvement.
In other words, I am saying that self-improvement is an elective only for those in the situation with prerequisites of basic human needs fulfilled, at the very least.
Regardless of the fact that none of my family members actually understand what I am doing for myself and are puzzled and baffled by my "being myself," as frustrated as I am with the lack of empathy and understanding, as hurt as I am at times with the consequent remarks I received, I know that this is the price for me to pay -- a small one, at that.
So, no, my working towards being a better person does not essentially make me a "better person," so to speak. All it means is that I am privileged -- and I would not spend a second harboring any illusion that I am destined to be greater than what my family and friends generously enabled me to be.
It was Sunday.
And I have never seen the Pacific Ocean in such a luminous grey. Yes, luminously lit by a sort of bold and fearless, yet mild, light that I have never seen before.
What else I have never seen before is someone so eager to open up his life to wrap me in the midst of it. An engulfing passion that swept over me like a crimson tide, rushing to the tempo of the ocean or that of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I felt a sense of connection with him which battled with my comforting walls of protection within -- a race of disarmament.
I refused to see it, but he reflects the best of me. Why? He is just another me, bright and full of life. But I approach only with caution. Why?
And now I feel the throbs inside. Perhaps old scars ache.
On my journey to the great land of California, I befriended someone who showed me what misery means.
The long straight hair that reached waist, "grunge" exterior, the soft "V" between his brows, the downturned corners of his mouth, lack-luster nails that show signs of weather (or lacking in vitamins) married incomprehensibly, yet fittingly, his flawed wisdom and scarred compassion.
His forever chase after acceptance, lasting loyalty and unconditional love is like a lone kite longing to touch the ceiling of a grey sky ... when will it end?
His residence is disorientingly dark, as if he resolved to stay in the darkness because no matter how much light he turns on, it is still a black world. The gloom sticks to him inside and out. It is everywhere he can imagine, for it is like an eternal darkness that has dawned on his psyche.
And what did I do for him? Nothing, at best. I felt the lamp of hope I bore snuffed out. I felt like my light dimmed. In the darkness, I felt small and helpless ... even useless.
What should I tell him? That everything will turn out great? As much as I can tell myself that, I didn't have the heart to tell him, for fear that I would swipe away even the smallest shred of dignity from him. Why, you ask? Because he already believes that doom has befallen him. Because this is the only "truth" that he can count on ... but it gives him stability. I wasn't sure if I should, or could, uproot that.
You see, good news and bad news are good and bad depending only on how one receives it. And because of this faith in the darkest of fears, his unhappiness and joyless life has almost been prophetically pre-determined.
I felt minuscule in his sadness. In pink and red Valentine's Day festivities, the glittery City of Angels is somehow ladened with pea-soup colored melancholy in my eyes.
I had the urge to start a blog, but I wasn’t sure how to tell you how I feel.
I suppose I want to tell you that everything will be OK, and you are cared for and cared about.
I suppose I want to tell you that you are stronger than you know, as long as you remember to find strength from within and around.
I suppose I also want to tell you that, if you are reading this and understand me, you have no need to find yourself. You have always been you. You just need to be there for yourself.
And I want to tell you that there are so many ways to be alive, and each and every way can be your own. How many have you found, and how many have you tried each day?
I want to ask you: Do you respect yourself enough? Do you love yourself enough? Do you appreciate yourself enough? Do you give yourself room to breath enough? Do you have courage for yourself enough? Do you give thanks enough?
I wish you to know that if you feel the fear, take it, hold it, dissolve it and make it your courage. You can.
Yes, everything happens for a reason, and every reason is birthed with each happening. If you feel that something happened to you, then what you are doing right now will determine reasons for the future. Keep on your path.
I would also like you to know that you are never alone. You are in good hands. No matter what happens, no matter your torn seams and scratched surfaces, as long as you are true to yourself, you are no disappointment (as a friend told me yesterday).
My mentor told me not to forget to look beyond thinking, feel without touch, and understand with compassion. Yes, your heart knows better than you think you do.
It’s OK. You’re doing great.
I had the urge to start a blog with feelings that I didn’t know how to convey. But now that my blog is finished, I hope you know what I mean.
Some people, the more you wish they'd stay, the farther they will go.
Some people, the more you wish they'd leave, the closer they remain.
That's OK though.
I have the ones I want right here by my side.
As a kitty lover, I felt responsible to post the following:
The Oregonian
Saturday, Feb. 24, 2008
Faith Cathcart
GIVE HEARTFELT THANKS TO CATS
Finally, the truth about cats and dogs.
Or, if not THE truth, a truth.
Well, according to one study, at least.
According to a study by researchers at the University of Minnesota, owning a cat (which 38.4 million U.S. households do) is good -- very good -- for your cardiovascular health.
A dog? Not so much.
People who did not own cats were found to be 30 percent to 40 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than cat owners.
But dog owners had the same rate as non-owners.
Dr. Adnan Qureshi said the findings are not a coincidence, but he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune "we don't understand this completely."
Not a cat owner himself, he then added, "Maybe I should get one, though."
I woke up this morning and found that my hair looks nice.
Ahhh, and the sun is out! Blue skies and all that jazz, too. :)
Sweeeeet!
Now, if only I were that brave, I'd be doing this, too.
Kudos to this dude!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/world/americas/23tinaco.html?ref=world
February 23, 2008
THE SATURDAY PROFILE
A Global Journey, Relying on Kindness and a Donkey
By SIMON ROMERO
TINACO, Venezuela
JONATHAN DUNHAM is walking the earth. Assisting him in this endeavor is his donkey, named Judas. They have stopped to rest for a few days in Colinas de San Lorenzo, a slum in this dusty town on the cattle-raising plains of northwestern Venezuela.
On a recent Sunday morning, reggaetón blared from a house near the abandoned shack where Mr. Dunham has been sleeping on the floor. Barefoot children wandered up to his hovel, petting Judas. They giggled and stared at Mr. Dunham, 33, whose disheveled look evokes that of a graduate student for whom surfing, or maybe foosball, is high art.
"Are you an athlete?" one of the children asked him. "Or a missionary?"
"No," Mr. Dunham replied. "I'm just a guy."
In fact, Mr. Dunham is just a guy searching for the meaning of life.
His quest began more than two years ago in Portland, Ore., where he was working as a substitute teacher in the public schools. One day, he decided to start walking south, down through the western United States. From Texas he crossed the border into the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where he stopped for a while. He said he hoped to walk for two more years across the rest of South America until reaching Patagonia.
In an interview here, Mr. Dunham retraced his tracks. He said a family in Tamaulipas allowed him to care for some of their dairy cows while he stayed with them for several months. It was there that he honed his Spanish and his milking technique. When he left, they gave him a donkey to help carry his load: a few books, a bit of food, some secondhand clothes.
Mr. Dunham named the donkey Whothey (the origins of the name are obscure), which in Spanish is roughly pronounced Judas. Now 4 years old, Judas is something of a minor celebrity in parts of Latin America. The donkey and Mr. Dunham arouse curiosity wherever they go.
"Judas is not just any donkey," El Heraldo, a newspaper in Barranquilla, Colombia, reported last October, when public health officials barred him from entering the country because of sanitary rules governing the import of donkeys. "He was born and grew up in a beautiful and well-managed hacienda.
"Jon is a well-mannered and shy biochemist," the newspaper continued in its description of Mr. Dunham, who did in fact earn his college degree, from Denison University, in biochemistry. "He was unsatisfied with living in the materialist realm, with the eternal anguish of getting the dollars for the gluttony of consumer society: laptop, new car, Chanel No. 5, cellphone, the latest release by Madonna or Shakira."
Well, sort of.
The precise motivation for Mr. Dunham's travels is not entirely clear, even to him; perhaps it never will be, though at a minimum it is a journey of self-discovery and endurance. In the meantime, newspapers along his route have reported that he was walking for world peace or to set a world record or to spread the word of God.
"THEY always find something to say," Mr. Dunham said of the reporters who beat a path to meet him and Judas.
Mr. Dunham has relied on the kindness of strangers along his way through Mexico, Central America and, now, Venezuela. He keeps away from big cities, aware that they are no place for a donkey like Judas. He often seeks out a church upon arriving in a new town or village in search of a safe place to sleep. Judas helps him meet people, Mr. Dunham said.
Here in Tinaco, for instance, Mr. Dunham and Judas were resting in a park where artisans sell their wares. "I struck up a conversation with the quiet gringo and his burro," said Williams Exaga, 38. "I thought, 'Here's a chance to cure some of the animosity between our governments.' "
Mr. Exaga allowed Mr. Dunham to stay in an empty shack on a lot he owns where he hopes one day to build a house. The shack, Mr. Exaga explained, is in the middle of the poorest slum in the poorest town in one of Venezuela's poorest states, Cojedes. Mr. Dunham jumped at the opportunity.
Tinaco is a long way from where Mr. Dunham grew up in Laramie, Wyo., the son of a university professor. Although he studied biochemistry, he comfortably cites philosophers like Hegel and Sartre in the same sentence. Once in a while, he finds an Internet cafe to send an e-mail message updating family and friends on his trip.
Mr. Dunham, who was planning to enter medical school before his walk began, speaks some Arabic, having traveled by camel in Sudan, and some Tok Pisin, having spent part of his childhood in Papua New Guinea, where his father went on sabbatical. "The Bible," he replied when asked about what he was currently reading. "And some Plantinga."
That would be Alvin Plantinga, the American religious philosopher at the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Dunham also carries an MP3 player that he uses to listen to lectures by renowned professors. He said he had given away most of the books he read during the last two years.
"People probably start fires with the books I leave behind," he said.
His journey has had its ups and downs. While walking in the United States, he said, he sometimes was so hesitant to spend money that he ate discarded food, like half a cheeseburger or pieces of pizza. In Nicaragua, Mr. Dunham, who lacks health insurance, contracted dengue fever. Both he and Judas have battled parasitic infections.
He traveled by ship from Panama to Venezuela to avoid traversing the dangerous Darién Gap separating Colombia from Panama. Even taking precautions, and even though he carries almost no cash and little else of value, Mr. Dunham has been robbed twice. The most traumatic episode was in the harbor outside Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, where he and his donkey were on a Panamanian merchant vessel waiting to enter the country. Gun-toting pirates stormed the boat and robbed everyone.
MR. DUNHAM recently had another close call on a rural road in Guárico, a state in Venezuela's interior, where soldiers from the National Guard interrogated him for eight hours, trying to determine if he was a spy. They let him go after asking his opinion of President Hugo Chávez.
"I don't know enough to give an honest opinion of Chávez," Mr. Dunham said.
While Venezuela might at times seem like a hostile place for an American to be walking alone, he said he had witnessed greater generosity in this country than almost anywhere but Mexico.
One Venezuelan gave him an old prepaid cellphone (the first such device Mr. Dunham has owned). Others have given him food, clothing and shoes, crucial gifts for someone surviving on about $2 a day.
Over a breakfast here of Pepsi and arepas, the corn-based bread that is a staple of the Venezuelan diet, Mr. Dunham quietly ate under the beaming look of the cook, Ada Boza, 47, a housewife in Colinas de San Lorenzo who has prepared food for Mr. Dunham while he has stayed here. She lives in a shack across from where he is staying.
"Jonathan came into our lives a few days ago, and has shared with us his good spirit," said Ms. Boza as she doted on him and other visitors. "We will miss him immensely when he moves on."
What?
Intriguing? Insightful?
These are words to describe me?
What's up with people lately? For a good while, I was practically invisible. Now I'm all that?
Hmm. Weird.
I just love this e-mail.
And of course, my name is mispronounced, but ... hey, it's all good.
I feel the love. haha!
Hello my beautiful little Yum, Yum :)
It was so nice to receive your e-mail and read about your recent experiences. You are right on track little one! It is nice to see you back in your skin black panther. Yes, this is your power, your strength and your challenge. For your strength is formitable when focused, harnessed and directed, especially when the cause befriends you. You are very wise to study the black cat with the golden eyes; who moves as the night through the daylight. This is a very exciting time Yum Yum, I am very pleased you are stepping it up a notch. Feels kinda cool when you find yourself on your path doesn't it? Stay alert, pay attention to your intuition and feelings. Look beyond thinking, feel without touch, and understand with compassion...
Black panthers also have children little one. Nurture the female side of your self. See your inner beauty and let it shine; for without your sunshine life cannot sprint into being.
Leslyn and I would enjoy spending some time with you at Wildhaven. We will speak soon Yum Yum.
With Love, Mark
I found myself reading an article on divorce and legal options related. I can picture all of it happening in front of my eyes from memory because I used to work at a family law firm. Yes, I've had clients cry to me, and I was there to hand them the box of tissue paper -- a Kleenex moment.
I am not sure if the word "tragic" is the correct vocabulary to apply to such an instance. After all, that word implies that nothing -- absolutely nothing -- could have been done, as if it was some sort of natural disaster, which may or may not apply in the case of divorce. But I will still say that I felt sad ... sad for the fact that commitments are broken, lives are altered (don't forget the kids and how much this affects them), weaves of dreams undone.
When did the beauty of love and commitment start to be intrinsically tied to the false sense of security such as prenups?
Maybe life usually doesn't pan out the way we imagine it to.
But then again, I wouldn't know how that works in marriages since I've never been married before.
Who knows? I might turn out to be an old maid. :)
The thing is I don't know how it feels to actually have that special someone in my life. (The few that I previously had obviously weren't special enough ... or too special that they should have belonged on the short bus - haha!) So what I believe now is just my imagination.
I might feel lonely when I am left alone. But why should I be afraid of being alone? When that time comes, will I really be sad for still being single? Is it that scary? Or will I just be comfortable in my own freedom?
I don't know.
I just marvel at how powerful my imagination is ... that it dictates what I love and what I fear without actual knowledge.
Maybe happiness and sadness really are just states of mind, and none of it REALLY REALLY matters as long as the legacy you leave behind means something to someone.
I recently read this list of advice given by a mathematician, Peter. With his permission, I am reposting it because it made me wonder how much of it is true, and, well, don't we all wanna know "the secret??" (At least this is free of charge, unlike the Suze Orman crap, right?)
Well, please feel free to comment, as I want to know what you think of how much of this is applicable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are a few rules of thumb for spotting opportunities to make money:
1. Don't lose money.
2. Don't take big risks. I have heard many people say you have to to make money, but none of these people actually had any (nor do I). People who make a lot of money sometimes seem to be taking risks to others, because they knew something others did not.
3. Reject without examination any opportunity brought to you by somebody else. It is in their interest, not yours. This goes double for pyramid schemes, where you recruit others into business rather than sell the product.
4. Avoid following the crowd in booms and busts. People buy when others buy, sell when others sell. Thus, they buy high and sell low--a formula for poverty. This happens a lot in real estate, where the bubble just burst. To buy low and sell high you may have to go against the trend.
5. Do your own research and find out something other people don't know, then go with that.
6. Avoid doing things you don't like. Most people, for example, hate selling real estate; they can't make money that way. A few people love it and do well. It is not true that if you do what you love the money will follow--only sometimes (how many poor actors or writers are there?). But if you do something you dislike, you will fail.
7. Save. There's a book "The millionaire next door" that describes how frugal most American millionaires are.
8. Get assets that earn money but are not too risky.
9. If you can be a middleman when large sums of money change hands, and you get a cut, you will have money. Stockbrokers do this.
10. If there's a gold rush, don't prospect for gold. Instead, open a general store and sell supplies to the prospectors.
Someone wise once told me to listen with my eyes, to see with my ears, ... and, mostly, to process with my mind but to feel with my heart.
You just never know what you may find, but what you may find is everywhere around you.
Everywhere.
So stake a claim. Claim what is inherently yours: who you are, what you need to do, your power, your frailties, your responsibilities, your mission ....
You need not to "find yourself." You have always been who you are. You just need to be there for yourself.
Stake that claim.
Even when fear and doubt cross your path,
stake that claim.
I love my body, not for how it looks, but for what it does to give me time on this Earth.
This is why it is beautiful to me.
I love my mind, not for how smart it makes me, but for what I can actualize with its power.
This is why it is beautiful to me.
I love my heart, not for the fact that it beats and sustains me, but for what pure light I have in there to give this world.
This is why it is beautiful to me.
I am proud to go on the most difficult but fulfilling journey I call My Life.
And I walk with the knowledge that I am not alone.
Today, I decided to accept who I am.
Tomorrow, I will explore who I will become.
I will not allow doubt to curb my determination.
I will not allow fear to halt me on my track.
I await the golden sun to rise over the new horizon.
I await the glow of the moon to glisten in the darkness of the night where I meditate.
I thank the Universe and the Earth for life, for companions, for everything that I have been blessed with.
The Chinese say that women have a life cycle of 7 years.
Phase I: 1-7
Phase II: 8-14 (Turning point - years 12 and 13)
Phase III: 15-21 (Turning point - years 17 and 18)
Phase VI: 22-28 (Turning point - years 24 and 25)
Will my next turning point come towards my late 30s?
Like winter trees waiting on spring blue skies, I am waiting for the day that I finally realize my ability to stop all the things that hurt me.
WHY is it that I keep internalizing someone else's transgression?
Why do I keep thinking that when people give up on me, it's because I should have done things differently ... or done it better?
Why do I wear my heart -- along with other people's faults -- on my sleeve like a fashion statement?
And of course, I keep wearing it even after I get shit on, or robbed, or beaten down. I feel so poor.
What makes me think that this is the right thing to do and the right thing to feel for myself?
To make matters worse, I am now angry with myself.
And so, the hole drills deeper and deeper.
Happy lunar new year ....
Feb 5, 2008 11:10 PM
I know I seem like a hypocrite to you, that I pretty much asked you not to approach me in any shape or form, but then I go and look on your profile.
Why would I do such a thing? Why would I? I kept asking myself that.
It's because I've been having a tough time letting go of memories of you. It's not easy to phase out something I once considered an extension of myself -- you and my love for you are that extension of me. Yes, when I love, I love hard.
I have been afraid to tell you that I think about you everyday ... for better or for worse, even in thoughts of hate instead of love, in anger instead of affection, at least I think about you everyday. And with those thoughts about you, the part of me where you exist continues to live.
I have moved on, and I am getting stronger everyday. But I still haven't been able to shed the memories, love and what you are supposed to represent to me. I have been afraid to tell you because I believe you would take what I have to say for granted the way you did before, the way you do now. (and who knows? by the time I click "send," I will probably regret telling you all of this -- will you give me reason to regret telling you?) I don't want to befriend you because you never showed me you understand how to truly cherish friendship and alliance -- and in the end, I would be the one to suffer. I couldn't argue with the logic, reason and precedence that say you would attack my frailty with brute ignorance and blatant disregard. I couldn't allow you to take even more from me when you already have taken so much that you didn't deserve.
But ... I think about you everyday, even when you don't, even when you were determined to break me, even when you try so hard to forget me, even when you didn't and don't love me, even when you are with someone else, even when you don't care to consider how I felt then and now, even when you take me for granted.
So that's why I happened to look on your profile and ended up seeing my own face staring back at me in that picture.
I don't even know what it is doing on your profile. Why is my picture posted along with those of you making out with other people? I am much more than that, and your relationship with me had much more meaning and value than those with all of them -- at the very least, I cared, I loved, I was true and ever faithful, and, short of a few close family and friends, I know you more than anyone ever cared to. So it's insulting to have my image be posted next to those other ones. It makes me sad. Come on. Please take it off, and please don't use any images of me or any that make suggestions of me. I am not something to be shown around (especially considering what had happened between us).
And if you must know, I lost my job because I didn't want it anymore.
I am placing a lot of faith in you. Please don't give me reason to regret sharing this with you.
[This is why I was on your profile.]
The obvious truth (to me) is that I haven't been able to let go. Even though I am moving on, I haven't been able to let go of the part of me that I need to leave behind -- you.
For better or for worse, even in hate instead of love, even in anger instead of affection, even though you are toxic to my heart, at least you, as part of me, are still alive.
The love I gave you continues to be my cocoon. Even if I am bound, even if it is excruciating, like bound feet, my bones crush and deform, my spirit bend, my instinct is to keep my cocoon, my one and only cocoon.
And I want to let out a cry: "I miss who you were to me! I miss who we were to each other!"
You see, I never wanted to lose you. And I never wanted to lose myself.
But I can't.
How can I let you know my frailty? How can I let you know where and how to come in? How can I let you conquer me when you have already taken so much you don't deserve -- pillaged my treasures with brute ignorance?
I can't?
How would I wake up and look myself straight in the eyes in the morning mirror, knowing that you know what I don't want to know?
I owe myself dignity, and I promised myself more.
So now I just have to wait and hope for the next day and the day after that and the one after that might bring freedom and relief, a day when I can shed the cocoon that is you.
You came to me suddenly like a gust of wind from the bluest of horizons.
I came undone when you fell on me like white and grey ashes.
You loved me because you thought I was vulnerable and small and soft.
I never understood because I harbor the strength of the panther of the night.
But I loved and loved ... like green grass, like flowers, like soft sand, like sunset, like sweet berries, like all things good ... I loved.
Now,
I feel differently now.
(who knows? maybe I was wrong.)
I am stronger now, less confused now.
I am strongest where broken.
GRAVITY
Sara Bareilles
Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
No matter what I say or do I'll still feel you here 'til the moment I'm gone.
You hold me without touch.
You keep me without chains.
I never wanted anything so much than to drown in your love and not feel your rain.
CHORUS
Set me free, leave me be. I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity.
Here I am and I stand so tall, just the way I'm supposed to be.
But you're on to me and all over me.
You loved me 'cause I'm fragile.
When I thought that I was strong.
But you touch me for a little while and all my fragile strength is gone.
CHORUS
Set me free, leave me be. I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity.
Here I am and I stand so tall, just the way I'm supposed to be.
But you're on to me and all over me.
I live here on my knees as I try to make you see that you're everything I think I need here on the ground.
But you're neither friend nor foe though I can't seem to let you go.
The one thing that I still know is that you're keeping me down
There's no real punishment, is there?
There's no real karmic retribution.
None of that should matter.
His pain, his suffering does not bring me joy.
None of it can undo the carnage inside me.
So what do I want?
What is it that I am seeking from fighting?
Why am I still here?
Why am I not there, where I belong, where I can stand tall and strong like I am?
This is the day,
as everyday,
I will never look at the world with virgin eyes again.
My old self,
as it has been and always will be a part of me,
is absorbed into the earth,
renewed and transformed into something more like me.
Defying the curiosity about the past,
I face the intrigue of the future.
Today, I start the rest of my life.
Being umemployed isn't always bad. But it's bad when you can't stand being bored out of your mind. Yes, I'm bored. Even though I just got home from Bend, and I'm leaving for LA on Saturday, I'm still bored.
One might ask, "What do you do all day? Haven't you been applying for ..."
Yes, I have been seeking employment -- thank you for asking. But since I'm planning on moving to Bend, I've already filled out as many applications as there can be for jobs in Bend that fits.
Being unemployed, I obviously want to entertain myself with the most inexpensive forms of recreation. Well, so I read. I dinker on the internet. I learn things that you typically wouldn't be able to. With enough time and boredom, you learn things like Native Americans of the "Five Civilized Tribes" held black slaves in the late 1800s, and Don Cheadle (the actor) is a direct descendant of one of the 500 black slaves of the Chickasaw tribe. Or you learn that the people of Sichuan, China, are the first to use paper money and natural gas pipelines (made out of hollowed out bamboo, covered with a mixture of mud and salt).
But then, people would raise a very good question which I must confess that I do ask myself on occasion: So when will I see you on Jeopardy? I mean, you're learning all this stuff to go on Jeopardy, right? Coz it sure as hell isn't getting you a job.
Funny one should mention that.
You never know. Maybe my future occupation is one that will save human kind ... and your sorry ass.
Just you wait. ;-)
Your unemployed but hopeful/delusional friend,
Elaine
I am good at:
research
coordinating
planning
If all I do is to talk to people (who want to talk), understand them and their needs, and match them up to each other, that would be a fun job.
I am here watching a lecture on HIV in Africa (TED.com).
I miss teaching. I miss communicating ideas and knowledge. I miss bringing light to people's minds.
I am sad.
I feel like I've been emotionally brutalized,
like I've been assaulted.
His words are sharp,
His logic confused.
(All this, just to demand my picture to be taken off from his profile; he has not my permission to use it.)
What they say about
"Don't worry about him,
He's an asshole,
a fuck-up,"
I know.
"Focus on your present and future,
You have better things to do,"
I know.
But I also know that
I want to stand up for myself.
I want to finally have a say.
If I didn't have a say in love,
then I want to have a say in
where my image lies,
how a shred of me
is used.
I can't even do that.
"Don't worry about that.
Let go."
How do I let go?
How do I let go of
having so many times being
taken advantage of ...
... just because they could?
Should I let go?
Or should I fight for
what is legitimately mine,
and then let go?
Why should I settle for
being vulnerable?
No.
I will not settle for that.
Not ever again.
I recently became intrigued by animal totems.
What animals have come across in my life?
Cats have always been a great intrigue of mine. I like their movement, their cute little faces, their furry coats, their stealth, their cries ... but I don't really REALLY know why I like them. I just do.
Mice. Mice. I don't know why I intimidated, hurt and killed them or why I loved them or why exactly I felt bad for them. But maybe that's the cat in me. And I believe mice represented Sam at the time. Since then, I've stayed away and respected mice and other rodents, knowing that I could do so much damage to them.
I remember I "had" a spider. Poor little thing. I believe he knew I was trying to save it, so it jumped into an empty bottle I had. But I accidentally drowned him because there was a drop of orange juice left in that bottle. Sorry. I also had one that lived in my bathroom. I felt awkward taking showers, as he was called "Mr. Spider."
Fish. A recurring theme in my life is fish. What it means, its astrological representation, its movement.
Lately, it's been dogs. They are trying to show me that I have power to command.
Owls, bears, birds and elephants, too. I've been noticing and being attracted those. It's unusual. And I cannot forget sea creatures, like dolphins, penguins, whales, and octopus.
I know, it's bad, but I went on Brian's profile and did some spying. I wanted to know what happened after I hurled that box of sentimental stuff that I don't find sentimental anymore at his door (which made a HUGE noise) and left.
Well, looks like he wrote some stupid shit in his blog, put on the mood icon of "crushed," tuned his profile song to something as depressing as "Die Alone," and then posted a picture of him and me in his photo section ... along with a picture of him each with Braunwyn, Dana, Darcy, and, of course, Michele. What is this? The line-up? That's insulting to me. He treats me badly and shows me off like a trophy. It reminds me of the heads or ears that ancient warriors/brutes would collect after killing someone off.
How dare he put up a picture of me! So I e-mailed him to tell him to take it off.
And he looks gross ... very tired. Also has a worsening receding hair line. hahaha!
Yeah, honestly, I don't feel quite as bad anymore. I'm too preoccupied with impending new adventures, new life, new skills, new perspectives, ... everything. He's just too "old" for me.
Mark,
Thank you for introducing me to a different perspective. The Native American ideas you studied and believe are fascinating to me ... and I only know just an inkling. I eventually warmed up to the idea of having the penguin spirit and dolphin spirit. After some research, I found that I can identify greatly with these animals ... well, short of the swimming part. I don't know if I can swim anymore (weird? yeah, I know). I wonder if I have forgotten, even though people say one cannot forget how to swim. But then again, I haven't had the courage to try again. Who knows? Maybe this is a reflection of how this fish (me) hasn't found her "water" yet, which is causing her discomfort and discontent. I also feel like the dolphin/penguin and panther in me are intersecting. From this perspective, it shows that I'm in transition. So now that I have a few animals to work with, what now? I want to know how I can tell them that I know them now and how I can work with them.
To tell you the truth, silly ole me "wanted" to be something "cooler," something like a hawk or dragon or whatever ... if you catch my drift. It is all because I want to be something ELSE, something I imagine is better, and it's all because of what I told you the other day: even though I like parts of who I am, overall, I am uncomfortable with who I am, and I don't understand who I am. I feel that I've been underestimating myself ... and you know what? It's because I haven't given myself a chance.
The thing is, just because my parents never could give themselves a chance doesn't mean that I should not give myself a chance. The shoes they wear are different than mine. And if I feel that my shoes are uncomfortable on my feet, maybe it's because I need to walk in different terrain and need to find myself a set of gel insert for my shoes for added support!
Dude, my shoes are great, and they deserve my love.
Something interesting happened today. I got home, felt in need of a nap (the back adjustment you did for me made me very tired!), so I slept for a little time. Around 6:20 or 6:30pm, I opened my eyes, thinking, "Oh, time to get up. It's almost dinner time." My mind peacefully wandered for a short while. Then, suddenly, my heart (the spot where you laid your hand when we were talking about what I have locked up in there) started to feel anxiety. No, not anywhere else in my body BUT that spot. It lasted for perhaps 20 seconds. I looked around the room, up at the ceiling, and wondered: What the ...??! My mind raced to figure out what the cause was, but I couldn't think of anything ... not even the job hunt (job hunt anxiety feels different).
About 40 minutes later, Nora and I met online (you know, instant messenger?). To come to find out, around the same time I felt that surge of anxiety, Nora was also feeling anxiety as well because Liam had said something to her that made her feel bad/sad. Maybe I felt Nora's ... uh, "energy/feelings/whatever?"
I wonder what this is all about. Just so weird.
Have you felt that way before? I can only imagine you have. Or ... ok, this is weird, but here's a scenario: Does your heart literally, physically HURT when you are sad? My heart -- at or around the same spot I felt "Nora's anxiety" -- seriously HURTS when I am sad. When I told my college boyfriend, who made me sad one time, he had no idea what I was talking about. It gave me the feeling that most other people's chests don't actually hurt like mine does when they are sad. The thought of a heart condition has crossed my mind many times. I want to find out if that happens to other people. haha! Who knows? Maybe I'm a "special psychic weirdo."
I remember something else that's "weird," too. I thought an invisible person was in my room one time and was trying to tell me something. (yes, I did just say that.) Well, (if I am not just completely out of my mind) that person was trying to tell me the truth (I think s/he was tired of seeing me moping around - haha!). It was weird, but I appreciate it. OH! And I remember, when I was a sophomore in high school, I could locate the presence of people that I really want to see. For example, the boy that I had a huge crush on back then didn't go to my school. But when he comes to campus to visit unannounced, I would be able to "feel" his (what's the word??) aura. It was interesting. But I haven't been able to do it/haven't done it since then. Now, IF all that was real and wasn't just my own imagination, then I suspect the reason why I haven't been able to, uh, have invisible friends and to feel and locate people's aura is that I've been 1) using my brain (you know, SATs, school, college, grad school ... everything trained me to rely my brain really well!) and 2) I'm scared of it - yes, SCARED of it (I mean, seriously, how are you supposed to cope with it other than to dismiss it as hallucinations?). I don't even like looking into mirrors at night for fear of something unexpected ... and of course, it's just a stupid mirror!! I'm so weird! But if it's not just my imagination, then I think something I don't understand is at work. Please let me know if you understand it.
Anyway, I am curious to get to know you. I told Nora one time that you are interest and, frankly, you intrigue me. I told her that there is so much about you -- you are a person with depth. But that's doesn't quite describe it. See, you are among the first and few that gave me the feeling of a deep, dark blue sea -- I literally FEEL it. Does it make sense to you? I also told her that I believe you know something about me that I don't know but have been wanting to know. The strange thing is I have met you before in my "collage dream". But now that I met you, that dream is fading away from my memory. Maybe the dream thinks that it's served its purpose? I can't wait to tell you about me, too. I think you will get a kick out of my stories. :)
I wrote so much. There is no guarantee that you'll know what I mean, but I have a feeling that you will ... if you ever read this. Maybe I'll read it to you over the phone one day.
OK. Thank you for everything, Mark.
Lum Lum
City Tree by Dan S, inspired by stiletto.love.
Posts
