Going to Guatemala the 13th to the 20th of March for a medical mission trip. We'll be working in Clinica Ezell doing eye and orthopaedic surgeries.
Pretty excited.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor | What the Dark-Eyed Angel Knows by Eleanor Lerman
The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor What the Dark-Eyed Angel Knows by Eleanor Lerman: "What the Dark-Eyed Angel Knows
by Eleanor Lerman
A man is begging on his knees in the subway. Six-thirty
in the morning and already we are being presented with
moral choices as we rocket along the old rails, through the
old tunnels between Queens and Manhattan. Soon angels
will come crashing through the ceiling, wailing in the voices
of the castrati: Won't you give this pauper bread or money?
And a monster hurricane is coming: we all heard about it
on the radio at dawn. By nightfall, drowned hogs will be
floating like poisoned soap bubbles on the tributaries
of every Southern river. Children will be orphaned and
the infrastructure of whole cities will be overturned. No one
on the East Coast will be able to make a phone call and we
will be boiling our water for days. And of course there are
the serial killers. And the Crips and the Bloods. And the
arguments about bilingual education. And the fact that all
the clothing made by slave labor overseas is not only the
product of an evil system but maybe worse, never even fits
so why is it that all I can think of (and will think of through
the torrential rains to come and the howling night) is
you, sighing so deeply in the darkness, you and the smell
of you and the windswept curve of your cheek? If this
train ever stops, I will ask that dark-eyed angel, the one
who hasn't spoken yet. He looks like he might know"
Heard this today on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Just really liked it.
by Eleanor Lerman
A man is begging on his knees in the subway. Six-thirty
in the morning and already we are being presented with
moral choices as we rocket along the old rails, through the
old tunnels between Queens and Manhattan. Soon angels
will come crashing through the ceiling, wailing in the voices
of the castrati: Won't you give this pauper bread or money?
And a monster hurricane is coming: we all heard about it
on the radio at dawn. By nightfall, drowned hogs will be
floating like poisoned soap bubbles on the tributaries
of every Southern river. Children will be orphaned and
the infrastructure of whole cities will be overturned. No one
on the East Coast will be able to make a phone call and we
will be boiling our water for days. And of course there are
the serial killers. And the Crips and the Bloods. And the
arguments about bilingual education. And the fact that all
the clothing made by slave labor overseas is not only the
product of an evil system but maybe worse, never even fits
so why is it that all I can think of (and will think of through
the torrential rains to come and the howling night) is
you, sighing so deeply in the darkness, you and the smell
of you and the windswept curve of your cheek? If this
train ever stops, I will ask that dark-eyed angel, the one
who hasn't spoken yet. He looks like he might know"
Heard this today on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Just really liked it.
Monday, November 23, 2009
A Grown Up Day
Today was one of those days when I realized that I am in fact, an adult. This may not sound like any sort of revelation, but there is such a stark contrast in my day to day activities that sometimes I forget. While I've spent today calling my home owner's insurance agent, taking Hubbell to the vet, getting the heater serviced, addressing Christmas cards and having a leak fixed in my condo, it almost isn't enough responsibility to balance out yesterday-which was spent hiking in the woods with the puppy, eating waffles in bed and watching an entire season of '30 Rock' in a pair of sweat pants.
Being a grown up is a lot harder than it looks.
Being a grown up is a lot harder than it looks.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1569390873/
http://www.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK//video/screenplay/vi1569390873/
"(Pointing to a homeless man on the streets) That image makes me think of a conversation I had the other day with a woman. She was a fastidious Judaic type woman in very sexual slacks. We were talking about the grid plan. I made the comment of how the grid plan emanates out of our weaknesses. This system of avenues and 90 degree angles. To me the grid plan is puritan and homogenizing in a city where there is no homogenization available. There is only total existence, total cacophony, total flowing of human ethnicities, tribes and beings and awareness and cruising.
She looked at me and said that she couldn't imagine it any other way. She said that everyone liked the grid plan. (coughs) And of course the question then is 'who is everyone?' I mean, whoever that is under the white comforter (pointing to the homeless man) cuddled up with 34th street and Broadway, uh, existing on the concrete of this city, hungry and disheveled and struggling to crawl their way onto this island with all their imagined rages and hellishness and self orchestrated purgatories- what do they think about the grid plan? Probably much more on my plain of thinking is let's just blow up the grid plan and rewrite the streets to be more of a self portraiture about our personal struggles than a wet dream of a real estate broker from the 1870's.
We are forced to walk within these right angles-doesn't she find it infuriating? By being so completely lesioned to the grid plan, with this idiom of 'I can't imagine changing the grid plan', uh, she's really aligning herself with this civilization, she's saying 'I can't even imagine altering this civilization', she's aligning herself with this meek and maligning morality that rules our lives- she can't imagine standing on a chair in the middle of the room and changing perspective, can't imagine changing my mind on anything, in the end can't imagine having her own identity that contradicts other identities. And when she says to me that saying everyone likes the grid plan, isn't she excluding me from everyone? Who doesn't like the grid plan? It's so functional. You can take a right, a right, a red light, a green light...it's so symmetrical. By liking the grid plan, you're saying you're going to relive all the mistakes my parents made, I'm going to identify and suffer through all the sorrows my mother did, I will propagate and raise dysfunctional children like they raised, I will spread neurosis throughout the landscape and do my best to recreate myself and my damages for the next generation..."
And such is the tone of the 1998 black and white documentary The Cruise following Timothy "Speed" Levitch, a tour guide of the Manahatten Gray Line double decker bus system. Timothy explains his relationship with New York City in the same way one would describe their relationship with a woman, or as he puts it "an angry vindictive woman". Originally joining the Gray Line tour bus system to meet women and get laid, he says that his purpose have become more pure and now he enjoys paying homage to New York, calling her a flower and hoping that she in return loves him as well.
His manners are flamboyant and his speech is one of a beat poet, voice reminiscant of Ira Glass from This American Life. The cameras follow him as he crashes from couch to couch, living out of a duffel bag. One shot shows him picking up an assignment at the Gray Line offices and the internal struggle he faces as he ulitimately refuses that assignment because it starts at a certain area and degrades his entire tribute to the city. In his observations about civilization, he concludes that "one of the greatest downfalls of civilization is the this need to work, to be employed. If I could do away with one thing in civilization it would be that. Well, it would first be my acne, but then that".
The relationship between the Gray Line tour company and himself is stressed. With the installment of mandatory uniforms for tour guides from "the regime", he huffs that "they are basically saying that their new policy is that Timothy "Speed" Levitch is not going to get laid by women he meets on the cruise". He describes it as an "anti-cruise", it is the attempt to imprison us on every level that we exist.
This hour and a half trip through the streets of New York City and the mind of Timothy "Speed" Levitch will certainly allow you to see the grid line and maybe a few other elements of life in a new life.
"(Pointing to a homeless man on the streets) That image makes me think of a conversation I had the other day with a woman. She was a fastidious Judaic type woman in very sexual slacks. We were talking about the grid plan. I made the comment of how the grid plan emanates out of our weaknesses. This system of avenues and 90 degree angles. To me the grid plan is puritan and homogenizing in a city where there is no homogenization available. There is only total existence, total cacophony, total flowing of human ethnicities, tribes and beings and awareness and cruising.
She looked at me and said that she couldn't imagine it any other way. She said that everyone liked the grid plan. (coughs) And of course the question then is 'who is everyone?' I mean, whoever that is under the white comforter (pointing to the homeless man) cuddled up with 34th street and Broadway, uh, existing on the concrete of this city, hungry and disheveled and struggling to crawl their way onto this island with all their imagined rages and hellishness and self orchestrated purgatories- what do they think about the grid plan? Probably much more on my plain of thinking is let's just blow up the grid plan and rewrite the streets to be more of a self portraiture about our personal struggles than a wet dream of a real estate broker from the 1870's.
We are forced to walk within these right angles-doesn't she find it infuriating? By being so completely lesioned to the grid plan, with this idiom of 'I can't imagine changing the grid plan', uh, she's really aligning herself with this civilization, she's saying 'I can't even imagine altering this civilization', she's aligning herself with this meek and maligning morality that rules our lives- she can't imagine standing on a chair in the middle of the room and changing perspective, can't imagine changing my mind on anything, in the end can't imagine having her own identity that contradicts other identities. And when she says to me that saying everyone likes the grid plan, isn't she excluding me from everyone? Who doesn't like the grid plan? It's so functional. You can take a right, a right, a red light, a green light...it's so symmetrical. By liking the grid plan, you're saying you're going to relive all the mistakes my parents made, I'm going to identify and suffer through all the sorrows my mother did, I will propagate and raise dysfunctional children like they raised, I will spread neurosis throughout the landscape and do my best to recreate myself and my damages for the next generation..."
And such is the tone of the 1998 black and white documentary The Cruise following Timothy "Speed" Levitch, a tour guide of the Manahatten Gray Line double decker bus system. Timothy explains his relationship with New York City in the same way one would describe their relationship with a woman, or as he puts it "an angry vindictive woman". Originally joining the Gray Line tour bus system to meet women and get laid, he says that his purpose have become more pure and now he enjoys paying homage to New York, calling her a flower and hoping that she in return loves him as well.
His manners are flamboyant and his speech is one of a beat poet, voice reminiscant of Ira Glass from This American Life. The cameras follow him as he crashes from couch to couch, living out of a duffel bag. One shot shows him picking up an assignment at the Gray Line offices and the internal struggle he faces as he ulitimately refuses that assignment because it starts at a certain area and degrades his entire tribute to the city. In his observations about civilization, he concludes that "one of the greatest downfalls of civilization is the this need to work, to be employed. If I could do away with one thing in civilization it would be that. Well, it would first be my acne, but then that".
The relationship between the Gray Line tour company and himself is stressed. With the installment of mandatory uniforms for tour guides from "the regime", he huffs that "they are basically saying that their new policy is that Timothy "Speed" Levitch is not going to get laid by women he meets on the cruise". He describes it as an "anti-cruise", it is the attempt to imprison us on every level that we exist.
This hour and a half trip through the streets of New York City and the mind of Timothy "Speed" Levitch will certainly allow you to see the grid line and maybe a few other elements of life in a new life.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
China's Lost Girls
This afternoon I watched a National Geographic documentary entitled "China's Lost Girls". It follows families from the United States as they go to China to adopt baby girls from the orphanages. As many of you know, China is very strict about their population control. Families are permitted one child per family-if they choose to keep a second child, it can cost them a fine of thousands of dollars.
Due to traditional cultural beliefs that men are more valuable than females, many parents will not "waste" their one child option on a girl. This results in abortions and abandonment of the baby girls. The orphanages are bursting at the seems with little girls needing homes.
They follow a handful of American parents going to pick up their daughters. These parents have never met these babies and many of them have been waiting for a year to see them. The adoption day comes and all the families are waiting in a common area for their daughters to be brought out. The jubilation can almost be felt through the television screen. It's like everyone is experiencing labor at one time.
One of the mothers goes to the park where her daughter had been found ten years earlier. With the help of an interpreter, she hangs a sign in the park that reads: "this little girl (picture is included) was found in this park on the 7th of November 1999. She is happy and healthy and living in the United States". As the sign is being hung, immediately a crowd gathers around them. People are asking questions about her adoption and about the little girl. One man gets emotional and states that he feels great shame about his country that they would not take care of this little girl.
In an effort to discourage parents from aborting babies based on their gender, it is now illegal for doctors to tell parents the gender of their baby. They have female doctors that are hired to go door to door to educate people on the value of women in Chinese society.
An unforeseen consequence of limiting females in the society is that now men greatly out number the females. Many women are kidnapped and sold to men of marrying age. The film interviews a woman rescued from her kidnapped marriage-she talks about being raped daily to produce an heir. And the vicious cycle would start over: her pressure to bear a male.
Another penalty that completely shocked me is the childhood obesity epidemic. The vast majority of children in China are only children and spoiled to an unhealthy extent-literally. The film goes to one of China's fat clinics where children are participating in mandatory acupuncture and aerobics classes.
It's not surprising that these parents would want to provide well for their child. So many of China's generations grew up in poverty and starvation, the pendulum clearly has swung too far.
One of the best books I've ever read is Wild Swans. This non-fiction piece tells the story of three generations of women growing up in China as their country leaves its traditional roots behind for Communism. It is the perfect complimentary book to this documentary.
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