Say what you will

about enjoyment of food, delicious dishes from varying cultures, etc. For example Ethiopian places are known for their wonderful vegetarian cuisine (at least, to my formerly vegetarian self...although I was probably always was more pescatarian/flexitarian) and I contemplated trying other Ethiopian dishes recently. But when health is put to the test, I think the Raw Family people are really onto something. (Although I think that it may be wise to refrain from storing some foods, like fruits blended with vegetables, lest it turn into something weird.) I think it's good to start with eating simple healthy salads. Hmmm, after reading this, maybe I should get another food dehydrator. And this Why I Say I Am 95% Raw is cool. It nicely sums up what I thought when I read the original book, which I still have, though I respected the information in it.
Huh. Music video???
Other musical video...

Back to basics

Illness makes me consider it would be better to go back to some basics.
Healing with light site.
Can I be positive? Positive while sick? I hope some people will stay positive and healthy despite waves of negativity resulting from fear and ignorance. Positivity, positivity.
I do need to read about that shower of light.....
Maybe listen to a happy Beatles song...
Here Comes The Sun.

Some women of the North and South

Not much mentioned in my textbooks in school, but thank you internet.
Rachel Weeping for her Children
Grimkes. Grimkes and the Bible.
Three Quaker maidens of Waterford

Old dauguerreotype

Not exactly the conservatives of their day...

Life findings

Today I took a picture of a sundial. I have a camera now, for the first time in ages. The sundial is in the background of the digital clock on the newly activated phone. Now I just have to figure out how to get stuff on computer without e-mailing it. Which I could do if I wanted to pay for that.
Hey, pang or nostalgia. What do you speak of now? Old buildings in Johnson City, NY? Late evenings with library books in the upstairs of a home on an island in the Pacific Northwest? Different environments. Like two examples off a list of a hundred. Vive la difference.
(And when I read the words of strangers, oh how some court difference!)
A line came to mind: "haven't I been given everything, my life?"
It's from a poem called Sequel.

Sad and, but, yet...

De los amores no entiendo
y del dolor fui el primero
pescador, no soy bella
como duele el esmero
como duele
--De Los Amores

The Miracles song on the radio

Could be playing on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. Wet plants, rainy, rural, high school kids. The Big City. The Small City. Seattle to the Northeastern U.S., New York, Pennsylvania. In the car on a highway at 3 o'clock in the morning. During a strange season in flat, suburban Illinois. Co-ops, community gardens, army bases across the U.S. In graduate school, at a "good" corporate job, or in the background as you're barely scraping by and gaining a better understanding why some people might think about throwing themselves off a bridge because of money. To me it seems less like a love song and more like a lonely song. Maybe it could be playing on a bright morning in California, for an aging band member or groupie, a former go-go dancer. If only you believed... I think it was on the clock radio in Virginia recently and got in my head.
Maybe it's a good antidote to certain negative voices in the media.

School/work/etc.

Interesting to note that Mrs. B worked on the same floor as I did today. Opposite end of the building. Well, in theory. According to the class schedule. Perhaps it depends on her schedule...
Free literature obtained from another campus yesterday: numerous periodicals stamped with red letters spelling out "WITHDRAWN," including WSQ Fall/Winter 09, SIGNS Winter 2010, Preservation Nov/Dec 09, Audubon's Northern Virginia Bird Survey (cool!) and some others.
I was looking at how the websites for women's colleges in Virginia have changed and holy crap is this one ever PINK. It reminds me of Poochie.

Free!

What I got today from the discarded materials library cart at the community college I attend and work at part time is still in my car. TBA.

Oh.

So I just found out that according to the goodreads page, the author of As The Waltz Was Ending, a book which obsessed me for quite a while when I was young, was married to W. E. B. Griffin. And apparently, he is friends with an author (biographer of Patton) who is my stepfather's friend. Maybe that's how I heard that Patton believed in reincarnation. I think so.
Emma Macalik Butterworth. As The Waltz Was Ending.
14 customer reviews, but no image.
~~~~~
The Long Ride Home. Interesting. I'd like to try that sometime. But I'd have to be listening to music or a "book-on-(media source.)" I can't read on a train. I'd like to see how West Point looks as it looms over the river. I have a few memories (I was either a child or young teenager last time I was there) of the place. Wow. I could have been such a New Yorker.

moment of zen

Drink super sweet Lemon Ginger Echinacea drink while staring at/reading the roommate's "refrigerator magnet" (which is actually this sweet message cut off a coffee bag): Wake the Fuck Up!!! Before bedtime.

Little window, FB

Tonight's internet experience: out of all the FB friends, the one who is most in need of medical treatment (and luckily has insurance,) seemed to be the most disappointed about Coakley losing. Because she cares! Another FB friend has orders to assist (though at this time not actually travel to) Haiti. And...some pictures just now fell out of the top of my closet. It is not so happy, this idea of things falling down. I thought so long ago and now I am reminded. But here and now, these were just some old pictures in a plastic container...Maybe I'll put one up...one of these days. If I can scan any. Guess that for now, I'll just pick them up.
Well, thank you for falling down like that. Peru pictures.
Also my other friend (who I actually strangely dreamed about being with me as she was dangling from a cliff a few sleeps ago, yeah, great, really thank you for falling down, box of photos) is doing more gardening projects!
A dream I wrote about on June 24, 2008 was a good one.

Let us see

what wikipedia has to say to us about bras, shall we?

This I just read

I watched the trailer for Brazil for some reason. But before that...
Break-in, Clementines, Postcard, Juggling.
Ah, Clementine.
Ah, Clementine.

This Year

For various reasons, I forsee myself getting rid of even more things that I have some attachment to but probably don't really need and I will learn to live with less, yes. Maybe that will be freeing.

TV oh TV

Fine form I was in for watching Jon Stewart and Colbert this evening. Among other things, I got to see a citizen pontificating on the greatness of her moment as an African American woman voting against same sex marriage in New Jersey, and a MUST-SEE musical number by Mr. C and Philip Glass for President O. with an awesome cat playing the piano. I love you. Not only that, but yesterday I could while away the time by pondering who it would be more awful to be stuck in traffic with, this crazy lady from Trading Spouses or Karen the Bridezilla.
Or a few horrible customers I have encountered.
Or a few coworkers on a few bad days.
Yay, Waitress. ;-]

The last CD I bought

I bought it in Sedona. It was the newest one by this guy: Wolf's Robe.
He said that traditionally there were many ceremonies for the men, to get them in touch with the more feminine side of themselves. Women as "live-givers" were considered to be more advanced than the men, and men as "life-takers" had to go through ceremonies to advance themselves.
(And with music!!!!)
~~~~~
On a different topic, I just read about Miep Gies. Now I am also remembering another book, another, and another. Weird. There's this actress, I recall a friend telling me she was her boyfriend's cousin, she was in this movie, and that was about the time I was reading them...Also I read books about ballerinas. And, oh, when I was younger, there were some illustrations of this book on a PBS show. Honestly, it can be spooky to think about the past. (Well, Adios, past!) Ack. Yesterday they were circulating some petition flyers at the public library. More budget cuts. (Maybe people should read nature more than words then. If they can!!!)

D. M. in Mehico?

Telenovela inspired perhaps?
Or something out of the "Old West" concept.
Personal Jesus video.

Messiah complex

Shall I enjoy this movie anyway?
There's not only white versions out there though.
People are still so uncomfortable with feminism.
I did enjoy getting sucked into Field of Dreams on TV a few hours ago.

D-words

Divinity, damnation, disgust, despair.
Yesterday I heard a story of a girl I used to work with (at the restaurant) who comes from a completely wacked-out family and just got pregnant by some guy who accuses her of wanting to ruin his life. Nice, right? Sometimes I think I hate tea partyers. I think I can easily hate people who are insensitive to poor people. And I think our president is not like that.

Colorful complications

Arise in communications, children, family/societal roles and such. I was thinking about this because a bunch of people I know had kids this year. (And unlike in the past, they were all women gave birth and it was all around the end of 2009.) Everyone acts differently about this. Some people are amazingly laid back, some are grateful but seem to be quite stressed, and some are in between. Some people have kids and marry early. Some never do either. Some adopt kids because they can't have their own. Some have a spouse to help them and some don't have that. Some people have large extended families around them and some do not. Some people care for all kinds of people and just not their own offspring. Everyone has different stories...

Sedona Excentric

Finally getting a chance to catch up on all that travel literature.

I think I am an American

One of these days I'm gonna go visit Binghamton, NY. I was a loyal little Latham-Albany-New Yorker when I was eight. And I hung out with Ph.D.s in bars in my mid-twenties, and thought about Italian and Irish and Greek diners, and Cixous and Christine and crumbling architecture. Messed up medievalists who liked drugs. Less messed up people who lived with gospel musicians. And I rode carousels all summer, and didn't sleep until 4 a.m. because that's when the apartment finally cooled down. And I drove to wacky little places that I sometimes didn't even know were actually in "Pennsyltucky." I could have lived there, actually, for longer. But I didn't. And I'm going to go back to Chicago, too. Most recently I saw Sedona. And L.A.'s suburbs. I passed little houses with Mexican music emanating from them on the way to a grocery store with a counter that sold foods like "lengua" and neighbors wished me "Happy New Year" and also I saw fake grass and palm trees and saguaros and solar wind farms. And "In and Out."

Beautiful movie

with beautiful award-winning (ha ha) music: Once.

At 4:20

I love staring at the flowers on the filmy black fabric which drapes the window glass in the late after noon light before the sun goes down.

Cover

Sinfonia Agridulce