Date: 2008-03-07 12:19 Subject: just to catch you up. Security: Public Tags: europe 2008, finances, health, life, uni, writing

Laptop is glorious. Feels safer, somehow, to have access at work when my Europeans are up. Feels more practical, too- can do writing for uni, research, while I'm in a more alert state.

Tickets for Europe are bought. That's the bones of getting there and back again- the inside of the trip, and the making my way from Manchester to London [and perhaps as far as Southampton- just need to work that out-] remain to be filled in.

Uni is settling in. I don't read as much as I should, or spend as much time on my actual coursework as I should, and I'm hoping to reverse that trend with my new schedule. But it's fun- not grueling and tedious, but fun.

I need more exercise. Just need it. Want it. Will have it. Have joined the gym for swimming- that'll start this weekend, swimming. Also will be walking more, now the weather's better [yes, I'm a big California baby. I like it above 40, not raining, and not windy as hell before I go for a walk].

Finances are- for the first time in years and years, and mainly thanks to Your Money or Your Life, in reasonable short-term good order. I feel like I can start taking deep breaths about money, and build up a little something to live on as I get older.

I guess that's all. Still updates in The little AU from time to time as the fellows come by and talk to me. I've a MonaBoyd simmering, a bit of Firefly, and some PotC, but nothing really ambitious or exciting.

Hope you are all doing ok. Blessings on your heads.

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Date: 2008-01-15 15:57 Subject: Notes from Around Town [and LJ, and beyond] [apologies to the New Yorker] Security: Public Tags: compassion, critical thinking, despair-work, film, music, peace-work, plagiarism, politics, writing

Because I will be taking Political Science, and Critical Thinking this Spring Term, some things in my FL and around and about. (Sorry, no lj-cut today ;))

1) The gay rights meme: I dislike the wording of it [posted it last year, and had the wording pointed out to me then- a lot to think about since then]. Suffice to say my son's gay, and I do worry about his rights being restricted because of that.

2) Rudeness in LJ and other places: reading someone's journal is like anything else voluntary: You're free to leave, anytime. No need to flame them, email rude things, or start a brawl in comments. Save your sanity, and just leave.

3) notes from all over:

About the US elections:
from ithiliana13: Gloria Steinem and Melissa Harris-Lacewell on race and gender in presidential politics. Ithiliana says: "Steinem has not done enough to think about racism and intersectional theory, and it shows."

from dark_christian: Mike Huckabee, the Constitution, and 'God's Standards'

"(excerpt)[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

(thanks to zorya_speaks)

from The New York Times: Dennis Kucinich battles for your right to hear all the candidates, so you can make up your own mind.

about US policy
US Joint Chief of Staff would like to see Guantánamo shut down (thanks to nverland and she_gollum for surfacing the story and for keeping Gitmo front and center in my thinking).

About thinking:
from circe_tigana: A discussion (not stated truths) about the Cassie Edwards/Signet Publishing plagiarism situation, and secondarily, as Circe says, "a case study in the evolution of a created newstory in the internet age i[which] can't be beat." (linked with permission).
The Fallacy of Neutrality
Plagiarism is a Community Issue
The New P&P: Professionalism and Plagiarism, a not so classic tale of romance.

[A woman who, oh, 35 years ago, I took care of in daycare (and am still in contact with), is now a romance and sci-fi writer (among many, many other things), so I'm following this with particular interest because it is close to home.]

About writing:
from penknife: prompts at the potcfest as well as other ficathons are still available!
from dorrie6 ! axial_tilt multifandom pg fanfic exchange- today is last day to sign up</a>

Movies I recommend, or want to see, and what I'm reading about movies:
Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side; Wonders are Many by Jon Else; Black Light/White Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Steven Okazaki; Sweeney Todd; Comanche Moon;Women in Film by Jeannie Rose.

And what is a long, link-filled post without a present or two?
Ocean Surf: timeless and sublime by Dan Gibson (will reupload on yousendit soon); and Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye.


Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)

blessings on your heads. all of you.

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