My family

Some of you who read my blog may know this but, for those of you who don't, I haven't always had that great of a relationship with my family. I've been fairly close to my mom - at least we've always been on speaking terms - but things with my dad have been pretty difficult sometimes and my brother and I just started rebuilding a relationship after probably 20 yrs or so of "on again, off again" connection. Of course, my niece's arrival in our family has helped immensely with bringing us closer together but this isn't about her.

It's about me. It's about me doing my own emotional work, struggling with my expectations, and facing my fears about being hurt in a space that's supposed to be safe. It's about acknowledging those childhood experiences that were shaping my interractions with my family and making conscious choices about whether or not they were serving my highest interests. It's about looking at those deep and bitter wounds that were unintentionally inflicted and deciding whether to heal them or to let them fester. In short, it's about re-establishing relationships within my family that are more beneficial to me and more authentic for all of us.

What I'm now discovering is possibly what many people have always felt - fear of losing their family members. Until now, it never occurred to me that not only might one of my parents die but that I would actually feel pain and sorrow and grief at that death. I realize that may sound dysfunctional but there it is. For so long, I've felt like it would be a relief for my father to pass on - then I wouldn't have to worry about possibly talking to him or him wanting to talk to me. I suppose I've always avoided the thought of my mother dying and, as my brother is younger than me and fairly healthy, the thought of him dying seems far away.

But tonight, I realized that my parents are both getting older and that death is no longer something I can think about with detachment. Now that we have something again, now that I feel safer with them and more loved by them, I don't want anything to happen to either of them. I'm afraid. I'm afraid my parents will die and I will have spent all these years distant from them and assuming that they would always be there. I'm afraid they won't know that I do love them and appreciate their care.

I'm not sure I'm okay with this - this new feeling of fear and anxiety. Wasn't it easier when I didn't care so much? Even knowing that life and spirit continue after the death of the physical form, I'm scared about them going. Is this part of what makes a family? Do we cling together because we fear being left alone - is that why we're willing to endure such psychotic behavior from each other? All I know is that the thought of any of my family dying seems unbearable.

So I have crappy taste

I know that Night at the Roxbury is an absolutely terrible movie but, I swear to god, it just cracks me up!! Heinous or not, I think it's hysterical! I think the synchronous head bobbing is just ridiculously funny. Not to mention all the other carefully synchronized yet random movements. Their constant optimism (i.e. oblivious to rejection) with regard to women is not to be underestimated either...

In case you're bored out of your mind

And want to become an Angel trivia nerd, check out these sites:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/jenoff/angelrev.htm
http://www.tvtome.com/Angel/index.html

Sadly enough, I have wandered through more than one of the episode reviews...

More citizen journalism

Pressthink has listed some thoughtful ideas about the current state of the media.

Finally, something happy-making

I haven't seen anything this fun or laugh-inducing in a long time - enjoy! Also - the rest of the site is really cool & somewhat random. I enjoyed just poking around looking at all the interesting bits of stuff...

Citizen Journalism

I just saw an entry over at craigblog (Craig, from craig's list) about Citizen Journalism. Although there isn't a great deal of web content around CJ yet, it looks like Backfence.com is working on putting together a CJ site. OhmyNews is currently being touted as a frontrunner site and, according to Poynter, GetLocalNews has been working the field for several years. Also, AFreePress has a Citizen journalism area.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. With the explosion of blogporters (my very own made up word) over the last year or so, I think we're going to see some amazing stuff.

I already have a tendency to put more faith in bloggers than I do big media reporters. I do so not because I think bloggers have the most accurate, unbiased, or reliable research but because most of them aren't writing to accomplish a hidden agenda or support a certain corporate viewpoint. It's probably six of one and half dozen of the other so maybe formalizing as "citizen journalism" will give blogporters more credibility and incentive for fairness and accuracy.

Is he for real?

Do people actually listen to Bill O'Reilly? Is he for real or does he fabricate the disgusting mass he vomits up on his show? I commented earlier this month on his "Save Christmas" campaign and he's now back again - claiming that all sorts of journalists are smearing him for sticking up for the baby Jesus.

I cannot BELIEVE that people listen to his ignorant, prejudiced, and downright hateful spewings and think it's good stuff. Is he a voice for ANY of America? If he is, then it's just more proof that those citizens seriously need some training in critical thinking. Well, maybe in any kind of thinking. I realize I shouldn't be surprised, considering the appeal of Rush Limbaugh, but I'm still shocked that anyone puts any sort of value on what he has to say.

More twisted priorities

Eyes on the Prize, one of the best documentaries of the Civil Rights Movement, is no longer available (new) in the US, or anywhere. It's illegal to distribute or produce copies anymore, due to the greedy, capitalistic nature of our copyright laws. You can possibly find old copies in libraries or educational institutions but buying a copy online will probably end up costing you between $700-$1500.

I'm so aghast that I can't think of anything else to say.

Recent musings

A couple of thoughts have been rolling around my head recently:

1. Have we proven that violence is truly not "the best way"? (thanks hcul)
2. Is education actually helpful to people?

Big questions for which I have no answers. I suppose most people would say the answers are intuitively "yes" and "yes" but I'm not so sure anymore. With regard to the first question - violence has been a mainstay of our lives about as long as we have history and lots of people would say that their lives are just fine. Why should people bother to change the way the think and live if they're happy with their lives as they are?

With regard to to the second question - how does it actually help? Don't the majority of college graduates in up in a job not remotely related to their degree? Public schools, apparently, aren't teaching kids anything but how to pass some extremely specific tests so I guess that education isn't too applicable to anything outside school. How much does our current educational system actually do to help people in their lives?

Academics spend a lot of time addressing these questions but I don't think anyone has made much headway. The educational system still blows out its ass and violence is still worshipped in our culture, even with all the complaints about its destructive nature. So if, on the surface, people are content enough with life as it is to not even think about something different, why do we hear so much bitching and moaning?

Mini blog tour

I'm not blogrolling these folks but they've got some interesting blogs. Check 'em out:

One Million Footnotes: great imagry!

Parking Spots: This is a blog but it's a SUPER fun site :)

Atheist Extraordinaire

On another note...

I'm thinking about using an old test blog I set up as a picture blog. I haven't been using my little Coolpix too much recently but I'm thinking it might be time to start sharing more photos with friends & fam. There isn't anything there yet, but I'll start putting some stuff there soon. I'll also link it from my sidebar...

I keep one other blog that addresses just happy stuff so I'll have to update it with my birthday stuff also. Although happy stuff does happen fairly often, I'm somewhat lax with the updates...

Birthday happys

Today is my birthday and it's been a lovely day. I wasn't sure what to expect, being out here & on my own for all these holidays, but it's actually been quite, quite good. I went to the barn this morning, rode and socialized a bit. Got a birthday/Christmas package from my mom & dad and opened all my gifties while on the phone with mom. THANKS for the presents and the love :)

Jneal called & sang happy bday to me, as did my mom, croed also called & parch called yesterday. My brother and Victoria called - I have an adorable laughy message from the little one that I'm going to transfer to digital once school is back in. I went to dinner with sbor and jewels at their friends' home and it was a blast! sbor told them it was my bday so everyone sang the song & it was just wonderful :) sbor and jewels got me "Being Peace" - one of Thicht Naht Hanh's books that I don't have.

I'm home now and extremely grateful for all the love and friendship I've been blessed with. I love you all and thank you for making this such a warm and fuzzy day :)

Heartless?

Hey - I love men as much as the next woman that loves men but, I have to admit, sometimes I feel a bit o' the heartless bitch...

On a different note, I never realized there were so many new words being created to describe the expanding queer community.

tidbittles

copyright, copyright, who's got the copyright?

NPR - whiter than they oughta be

I loved MS Photo Editor also :(

Interesting stuff, even though I've got my fingers crossed against ever having to work in the corporate maze again.

My life is now complete! Thanks, Emily, for guiding me to my superhero self...

A smidgen o' the season

I've haven't been scrooge-y but I haven't been a little Christmas elf either this year. However, I'm feeling a bit more seasonal cheer at the moment because I'm listening to my new Bing Crosby compilation of Christmas songs. No, it's not something you can buy in a store but it's certainly reminding me of my family Christmases. I love Bing's Christmas songs :)

Oh, I just gave up

and wiped the drive and have been reinstalling everything for the last four hours. I've still got quite a ways to go, am getting ready to reinstall Office and that usually takes a while. Reconfiguring Outlook will probably be the biggest chunk of time - especially since my Rules settings aren't saved & I have to recreate them all.

I've installed Thunderbird and was thinking of switching to it as my mail client but it doesn't have a calendar - something that's absolutely necessary for me. I had also thought about migrating completely to Open Office but, again, it's a question of whether or not I want to do the learning & migrating chores. I've been an MS Office gal for so long that while I could certainly use OO in a pinch, I'm not sure if I want to make it my primary toolkit.

When is it ever enough?

When will religious fanatics/conservatives/fundamentalists of ANY religion finally give it over and quit trying to force their beliefs on the rest of society? Probably never but I just had to ask. Even when I was involved with southern baptist churches I couldn't force myself to proselytize. With regard to insisting that the entire world celebrate Christmas as the occasion of Christ's birth, I'm just astounded that these envangelizers won't give it up!

From what I've heard, it's pretty commonly accepted that Jesus wasn't born on Dec 25. In fact, googling on "When was Jesus born?" brings up a whole slew of pages that say exactly that - here are a few:

• http://users.aristotle.net/~bhuie/birthday.htm
• http://www.new-life.net/chrtms10.htm
• http://www.biblequestions.org/Archives/BQAR373.htm
• http://www.raptureready.us/birthday.htm

Looks like even the "Christian" sites don't think Jesus was born on the 25th. I realize that my question is almost completely rhetorical - there is no real answer because most people who are that bought into their religious beliefs aren't willing to even have an open discussion about the issue. On an even lower note, I just came across this article that discusses Bill O'Reilly's current campaign to "save Christmas". I'm glad he's doing it - O'Reilly is just the sort of compassionate, understanding, and open individual that should be a frontman for Jesus. Or not.

Update on the computer situation

Thanks to no less than FOUR spyware-smashing utilities, I think my immediate computer danger has subsided. It's true, NAV still can't run its email protection and, more than likely, I still have issues with Windows Installer, but my machine seems to be humming along fairly well. You have NO idea what a relief it is that I don't have to reformat & reinstall everything. That thought was giving me nightmares, especially when I started listing everything I'd need to reinstall.

If all goes well, I'll leave things as they are for now and not go the reinstall route unless things start melting down again...

Copyrights and who benefits

I follow the fringes of the ongoing copyright & open source information battles and find that it's hard to have a lot of sympathy for the multi-billion dollar entertainment and software companies. I'm sure they're not the only companies affected, they're the ones who leap to mind first. I read a good article ("Who "Owns" Electronic Texts?" by Tharon Howard) a few years ago that explained the basics of how copyright law began and its original intent.

According to Howard's article, copyrights were never designed to protect the author/artists/designers' rights but the rights of the publishers. From what I understand from reading this Freepress article, patents were developed more along the idea of protecting the inventor. I don't know if patents are used in the entertainment industry but they are in the software industry.

The basis for copyright law originated in the 16th century and it seems the mindset hasn't really changed all that much. I'm all for compensating an artist for use of her/his materials and ideas but copyright law doesn't have the artist in mind as the primary beneficiary. I don't know but making any sort of serious and meaningful change is going to require a radical shift in how we think about shared information.

There is a small movement starting around open source information but it doesn't have any sort of official name/website and I wasn't able to find the links, but it's looking at the way we think about information & copyrights and trying to devise new frameworks. From what I understand of this new field of thought, there is interest in restructuring our information sharing in a way that's similar to open-source software. Obviously, this way of thinking directly contradicts the capitalist mindset so it probably hasn't gained a huge amount of support so far.

Here are some resources I found:

• Toward a New Politics of Intellectual Property
• Sold Out (this is pretty old but still looked interesting)
• Digital Enterprise's Intellectual Property resources
• A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net
• The Copyright Grab

It looks like James Boyle and Paula Samuelson are two prominent scholars in the field. I know there are others but they're using different phrases & I couldn't find them. I'll update the post if I can.

Post-less

I've been posting rather infrequently lately and wasn't quite sure why until today. The reason is this: I realized that much of my posting revolves around issues of peace, justice, oppression, politics, and outrage and that I'm tired of all my thinking revolving around such big issues all the time. Maybe that means I won't have much to say but I'm going to try & give it a break for a while.

When I talked about my concerns about education before, I had already begun feeling this way and it's only gotten stronger. I feel like sometimes I can't even carry on a "regular" conversation anymore. Everything seems to lead to 'doom-n-gloom' talk and I'm sick of being so serious, upset, and irritated at the entire world. It's hard, though, once you have some idea of the things that are wrong in the world - hard to talk about other stuff that seems so trivial and pointless. But sometimes, I think, those seemingly trivial and pointless conversations can be the grease that gets the wheels turning...

Quick school update

Did well in both my classes this term - glad for that! Next term is shaping up to be quite challenging. Here's my schedule:

Monday: LfC from 8-11:50, then Psych of CR from 5:30 - 9:10

Tuesday: Social Sustainability from 10-11:50, then Asian Studies from 12:30 - 3:50

Wednesday: LfC from 8-10:50, then nothing

Thursday: Social Sustainability from 10-11:50, then Asian Studies from 12:30 - 2:50, MDT from 3-3:50 and then Nonviolence from 5:30 - 9:10

Friday: NOTHING

Holy crap - Thursday looks like hell on earth. I'm really hoping I can make this work - at least for one term. I've got to keep both my mentor sessions so if things go wrong, I'll have to ditch a 4 credit class and add in two 2-credit classes or something. I also have to squeeze in a meeting with each of my faculty partners and probably (once every couple of weeks), a meeting with my Transformational Education group. I'll probably have a better idea whether or not I can do this after the first day of classes...

Not looking forward to this

but I'm going to reformat my main drive, reinstall Windows and start the excrutiating process of setting my PC up again. I've tried to get rid of the one lingering, malicious little bastard (I think it's Look2Me) but I've had no luck. I've found the bad .dll's but can't get rid of them, even booting to Safe mode or via a DOS prompt.

I wouldn't be that concerned about them but somehow, one of these little monsters did something to fuck up not only my Windows Installer but also my NAV email protection. I can't uninstall/reinstall NAV b/c Windows Installer is fucked up (or is acting fucked up). I've tried to use the Windows Installer utility that (supposedly) works around the Installer but it won't work either.

[ARGH ARGH ARGH]

I've spent this evening backing stuff up to my alternate drive & (for additional safety) some to CD's. What's extra specially sucky is that I've got a lot of little stuff that I've now got to find install CD's for and that means time digging around in the storage area. I am going to try one more thing - posting to a board I found - but I'm just sick of all the random weird shit & my inability to fix it!

Aaahhh...sweet nothing

I have nothing to post about right now except for how nice it is to be doing absolutely nothing. It's amazing how quickly the day goes by when you have nothing to do.

Hair-pullin'

Adware, spyware, scumware, whatever the hell you call 'em, they all SUCK! Those little bastards infected my computer just like a virus. I've spent the last five days (give or take) trying to exterminate my machine - trying to pry those little buggers out of here. Holy crap - if you have a constant Internet connection, it's almost impossible to get rid of those little creeps.

I'm running Spybot and Ad-Aware (the freeware version) but all that's doing is keeping them from doing serious damage - it's not keeping them off my machine. I'm gone for five minutes, I get at least 20 popup ads at least. It wasn't this bad before, I'm hoping it'll die down after a day or two. Honestly, I thought the situation was much worse. I was getting errors out the ying-yang, problems with Norton AntiVirus, and Windows Installer. All kinds of random seeming crap.

A shout out to hcul b/c he helped me run through a Windows repair the first time things went badly. That one repair didn't fix it but it got me looking around to try and get things back in shape. At any rate, a few more tweakings and now I'm down to merely annoying popup windows, at least the machine's running along fairly nicely now.

Update 12/12/04: I've started using Mozilla as my browser (thanks to a couple of friends who suggested doing so) and it appears that most of the infestation is under control. There still is an occasional flare-up but it's pretty low-key.

Universal truths to ponder

Here are some ideas, some truths, perhaps, that have popped up over the last few years:

• Thoughts create - even subconscious thoughts
• The universe is magnetic. We draw to ourselves the manifestation of our core thoughts & beliefs
• We can choose which thoughts, if any, to believe
• There are universal laws that govern portions of physical reality
• Language shapes our thoughts
• Positive & negative, good & bad - those judgements are relative
• We incarnate here to learn from the contrast between fear and love - hopefully moving closer to love. This means that maintaining fear-based beliefs may not serve our highest experience.
• Letting go or changing core beliefs is scary because then our whole reality can change
• We learn the most through relationship with others

These are not in any order of magnitude or importance. Take them or leave them as you will.

voice

solid, a presence
physicality of
crystal; of
clear, twinkling
faceted diamonds
softness of light
touching my face

[hand across my forehead]

drama wails
and weeps.
sound bringing
the feeling
closer
to
the surface; alas
the abandoned sock

Choosing where to shop is a privilege

Did you ever think about where you like to shop? I suppose most people do. But did you ever realize that not all people have the luxury of choosing to shop at a department store over Wal Mart? There are lots of people who shop at Wal Mart because it's the cheapest thing around and they can't afford to shop elsewhere. I was thinking about this when I was looking over the Choose Blue list of stores.

Aside from the fact that shopping at *only* places that support Democratic candidates is still extremely problematic (b/c the Dems are also part of the "big money/big gov't" problem), a lot the places that support Dems are either more expensive or can't be found everywhere.

blech. I appreciate the "shop blue" sentiment but I don't really see the Dems doing anything to help people really increase their standard of living that much. Of course, the Dems aren't gonna be doing much the next four years anyway, given the way the election is turning out. I have to wonder how much good anyone's gonna be able to do for a while after this regime is out of office - seems like they'll be spending their time trying to recover, not move forward.

I heard that the Armed Forces Network has NO liberal voices at all. I realize that probably doesn't surprise many but I hadn't considered it before. I looked at their program listing and saw Dr. Laura (holy shit) and Rush Limbaugh (vomit vomit). I also saw Paul Harvey and Dave Ramsey and others but I don't know who they are. I heard that Paul Harvey is conservative but I don't remember although I do remember listening to him all the time when we lived in Alaska.

To think

That most of America has overlooked something of such vast and far-reaching importance. I mean, with such earth shaking things going on here, why would we care about anything else going on in the world?

Finally, things are looking up

I just got a great haircut and some nifty new threads. I'm almost done with my schoolwork and am pretty durn ready for the break. My plans including riding my ass off and working out as much as I can get my tail to the gym! Hopefully, I'll be using the gym facilities on campus as I'll be there so much! I'm just happy to be feeling better :)

tidbittles

I was never a Seinfelder-watcher but I do watch the occasional rerun and I love the dictionary.

Better sit up and pay attention if you want to keep using TiVo to skip those commercials.

Definition of hypocrisy: The Bush administration telling the Ukraine it should be conscientious of the free election process. (btw - that's a paraphrase)

Watch out for those Indians and their "barbarous crews". Good for Boston, I guess.

Who's the biggest bully on the block, eh?

Once again, the Red Cross confirms America's status as a country as bad as any other (despite what we tell ourselves) when it comes to war.

Trying to find hope

I've deliberately refrained from spending much time following the details of the voting irregularities & recounts & such. I realize that, as an activist, that's like saying I bought a Land Rover and then used it to tow my 60 ft yacht to the river where I dumped gallons of used car oil into the water and then caught a bunch of dolphins for dinner. I know, I've shirked my responsibility to wind my guts in a knot, give myself an ulcer, and generally stay as surly and unpleasant as possible.

I've stayed away so that I wouldn't lose hope; I want to believe that our country's political systems (local, state, and federal) have some shred of decency and/or ethics left. But it's well-nigh impossible to believe considering all the information that's streaming out (except in mainstream media, of course). You'd think more people in America would wake up, especially after all the protests in the Ukraine. 200,000 people in the streets protesting an election they felt was unfair. What happened in America? Some people were in the streets (I was there for a short while) but not even close to the percentage that were in Ukraine.

Why not? Do we honestly believe that our system is fair and that there's no way foul play happened? Why are people so quick to write off the ongoing efforts to force recounts and address irregularities? Eh, Americans probably just want to not be bothered. They don't want their lives to be interrupted or to actually have to do anything. Shut up ya'll, The Apprentice is on.

Just tired

Tired of being a woman in this society. Tired of seeing nothing but perfect bodies, hair, makeup, teeth, and clothing and feeling like I'm never going to be beautiful enough. Tired of feeling dumpy and frazzly. Tired of being alone and feeling lonely. I was sitting here watching some mindless makeover TV show and found myself wishing that I could be that woman. The one who gets herself totally resculpted into a beautiful figure, flawless teeth, exquisite hair, and gorgeous face. Just to go and get everything done and not have to worry about it anymore (other than maintenance).

That's why I hate being a woman in America - because there is so much media telling me how beautiful I'm not that I can almost never remember how beautiful I am. It's hard to remember that I don't want to be that surgically altered person and that I like who I am. I want feeling good about myself not to be so hard.

At a loss

Before I moved to Portland, I was living in Charlotte, NC. Part of the fabulous moving experience was selling a bunch of my stuff. Since Charlotte's version of Craigslist is so pathetic, I had to try and sell my dining room table & chairs on my own. I wasn't successful so I ended up taking the set to a reseller's. They have been extremely unethical and are some of the worst people I've ever done business with. Here's their information:

The Resettlers Market Place
(704) 372-2917
1331 Central Ave, Charlotte, NC 28205

Stay away from these people. I dropped my furniture off in Feb, 2004. I didn't hear anything from them for several months so I called in on August 23, 2004. I was told my furniture sold June 10 for $333.75. Of that amount, I was to receive $201.45. The transaction number for the sale was 649515. I spoke with Lynne Adams, the owner of the company. He also told me that, as they only write checks once a quarter, I wouldn't be getting my money until the middle or end of September. I now realize this was a stall tactic but I didn't question him then.

On October 5, 2004, I called to find out where my check was. Lynne wasn't there and didn't return my phone call. I called again on 10/11, 10/12, & 10/14. He called me once and left a message saying who he was but didn't say anything about when my check was coming or if he'd even written it yet. Obviously, he wasn't there any time I called and didn't return any of the other calls.

On October 20, 2004, I called again and spoke to David, the man I spoke with when I dropped off my furniture. David told me that Resettler's was having big business problems, a.k.a. cashflow issues, and that I might get part, or all, of my money by the end of November. He went on to say that it takes new businesses a while to get up & running, etc., he was really sorry, he'd advocate for me, etc.

Well, here it is, December 2nd and still no check. I KNOW the only reason I'm not getting my money is because I'm not there - in front of their faces - to demand it. However, I'm feeling better now because I've spoken with Legal Services here at PSU and they're going to take some legal action for me. I've got plenty of documentation (including the contract) so, hopefully, there will be little trouble and, perhaps, some money soon. $200 may not seem like much but when you're living on a pretty limited budget, it's bills & food for the month.