I read this story today on the internet and really liked it. Somehow I related it to the fast I'm currently participating in. Sometimes you have to cut something out of your life completely to see the role it was playing.

TWO WOLVES
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a
battle that goes on inside people. ...He said, "My son, the battle is between
two wolves inside us all. "One is Evil - It is anger, envy,
jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt,
resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego."The
other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and
faith."The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his
grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"The old Cherokee simply replied,
"The one you feed."

Think of how much we could grow and how much good we could do the world if we were able to fast from all that is bad. A lovely thought.

Gearing up for NaNoWriMo!!!

NaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month has, for the past 10 years, encouraged individuals to allow themselves to insanely undertake the furious writing of novels during the month of November. The goal is to write at least 50K words of your very own, original, never-seen-by-the-world-before novel. It's a fun, exciting, productive, and completely crazy undertaking that hundreds of thousands of people take on each year.

This will be my fifth year taking up the NaNoWriMo challenge. I have "won" the challenge 3 of the past 4 years I've "competed" and am hoping for a 4th Certificate and another year of bragging rights.

The process of trying to write a novel requires for some people absolute isolation, the right soundtrack, or a nervous breakdown....for myself it requires feedback. I need people to bounce ideas off of, chat with and who can gear up my crazy-center just right. I need people who can get excited when I tell them that my fictional main character just punched/kissed/broke-up with/ran away from some other completely fictional character.

Will you help? Will you be one of my team? Will you let me excitedly share my story or exercise my writer's block frustration?

Ideal helpers will be available for chatting by way of phone or gchat. Those who are available late at night when I do most of my writing will be especially appreciated.

Let me know if you'd like to be part of my audience/support/feedback group for this November.

Thank you, thank you, thank you in advance.

~ Valerie

So Much... Too Much... and I'm a pirate.

I've had so much to say and have been thinking about blogging for several weeks about several different subjects but have seemed too busy to do so,and now (as I wait for the work day to be over so that I can begin packing for vacation) I find myself wanting to fill the time and wanting to "be busy".

But as I said, it's several different subjects, so I may not write on them all, I may defer posting some until I've had time to tweak them, and I may split this into several posts; so I apologize in advance for what may be a jumbled post and for the current run-on sentence.

To begin...I've been noticing lately that I am in fact, fairly happy at work. This is sometimes an odd realization considering how little I like my co-worker, how often I have to deal with lunatics and high-maintenance personalities, and how long I've been unhappy at work, but nonetheless it's true. It might just be that I'm happy because I've been busy in general, and that leads to being active and challenged, and that leads to me being happy--at work, at home, wherever. But I'm not sure. I certainly have felt somewhat dissatisfied with my interactions with dancers and Baha'is and with my social network in general, but with the exception of the occasional moments of dissatisfaction I've been happy in most all places.

And how did I get so "busy in general"? I took up piracy. (Is the government listening? I hope not.)

Yup, Piracy has made me a happier person. I've had my justifications for it-->I'm getting material I could easily get at the library, I'm watching television shows that were put out there for "free" viewing the first time, I never would have paid money for the things I'm pirating therefore I'm not depriving anyone of money they might otherwise have had, and I'm not contributing to wasteful and toxic production of cds, dvds, and books.

So far I've re-read (as most of them I checked out of the library either as books or audiobooks before) 7.5/10 of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I've listened to the BBC recording of a Douglas Adams book and read another by way of a thrift-store-purchased tree-made-information-storage-depository as a follow-up. I've listened to another 3 audiobooks I can't recall the titles of at the moment, I've watched the entire 3 seasons of Battlestar Galactica, all the episodes of Trigun, and started in on The West Wing, I watched parts of several other TV shows, some of my favorite cheesy 80s movies, and a handful of newer films. I got a kick out of how watching 3 French movies in a row made me start thinking in French again and then how watching The West Wing made me renew my desire to get a law degree. (Reading all the Anne Rice however did not make me want to become a vampire, although it did make me appreciate the in depth study into the struggle between the relationships of right&wrong vs. good&evil.)

Piracy? Check.

Next topic: Environmentalism/ Sustainability & Consumerism

Too big a topic to not have it's own entry.

---

Visit my other blog here

On my mind, in my prayers

I've known Mara since we were young teens, or possibly earlier. Then, in college we were roomates for a year...well, a year cut short by her getting married. During our time together I got to know her and got to know her amazing family through her love for them. I spent some time with her and her mother through that year and saw one of the strongest similarities between mother and daughter that I have ever witnessed. And their relationship was not like any I've ever known. They are both strong, independent women with headstrong ideas and ideals.

Mara's mother, Stephanie, has a blog that I've been reading for several years. During the past few they have chronicled her knitting projects, her family gatherings, the birth and love affair she's had with her grandson Liam, and her struggle with pancreatic cancer.

Stephanie is now fading. Her family is with her, she is still lucid, and she is still knitting, but the time is short. I am honored to have known her and been able to follow along through her blog and those of her family members as they have taken this journey.

If you are of the praying sort, please keep the Dornbrook family in your prayers. They are an amazing, warm and loving family and deserve all the courage and comfort possible during this time.

Melinda Gates & other women of influence.

I read few of the stories of the 50 Women to Watch from the Wall Street Journal. Some inspiring stuff in there. I really enjoyed the article on Melinda Gates. They really give her some high praise on her ability to mix humility, grace and gravitas. I was particularly struck by the following:

Nor does Ms. Gates, born a Roman Catholic, publicly discuss her faith. Her speech in Toronto, though, challenged anyone who would put dogma ahead of AIDS prevention. "In the fight against AIDS, condoms save lives," she said. "If you oppose the distribution of condoms, something is more important to you than saving lives."

~Melinda Gates

Check out the article here

---

Visit my other blog here

Feminism/Morals/Values

Hey look, some people agree with me:

I was well-prepared for a career as a journalist, but I was sadly ill-prepared for a career as a strong, solid woman, with all the gifts and capacities that that word once implied. The character traits I should have been cultivating were neglected in favor of ever-stronger intellectual skills, and as a result I've spent the past few years playing catch-up.

While there is value in higher education, it doesn't teach the most important life tools—how to be a nurturing, kind, patient individual. It doesn't teach you how to be a mensch when you're sleep deprived or running a fever. It doesn't teach you how to be loving or lovable. These days, my ambitions are to acquire and internalize these qualities, and to strengthen myself as a woman, internally—not vis-a-vis what I look like through the eyes of a man, or how "successful" I am by society's standards. And the more I cultivate these inner qualities, the deeper and richer my life and my relationships become.

In addition to my ambitions as journalist, I had spent years striving for the perfect body, the perfect clothes, the perfect apartment—in short, all the external trappings of what I thought would make me look and feel good about myself. Needless to say, none of it ever worked for long.
~Andrea Kahn

Kind of hits on what I was discussing a few posts ago about how society today is ill-prepared for creating meaningful marriages and families. Our core attributes are sadly malnourished and the values that are most prized in society--ambition, independence, and a keen fashion sense ;) do little to prepare you for life as a spouse and parent.

I also on the same website I read an article by someone who agrees with my long-held interpretation of "Grease":

As readers here probably know, the story of Grease is about a girl and boy who meet one romantic summer and believe that they have fallen in love. The girl arrives unexpectedly as a student in the boy's school in September, and they are both shocked. She is taken aback by his cold and crass behavior, and he by the realization that he would lose his friends and his macho identity if he dates her as he had that summer, showing her love and respect without approaching her sexually. The tension in the film grows out of the inevitable choices that must be made: either the boy will have to give up his entire social community or she must--to put it bluntly--have sex with him. We all know what happens.

Now I never read it so literally as "she had to have sex with him", but I did read it as--she had to abandon herself, and all of her ideals and moral ways (Sandy went from being "lousy with virginity" to a smoking, drinking, high heeled, leather clad dominatrix of sorts) in order to fit in with HIS society, and THEN she could choose her keeper and "tell" him what to do ("you'd better shape up...because I need a man").

I still cringe every time I flip past that movie on TV and wonder how so many women could love it so much.

Outside of the catchy tunes it's a blatant smack in the face of feminism. It disguises the objectification of women as sexual liberation. Sure, Sandy is free to do what she wants and be with who she wants, but she'll only really be happy if she abandons her moral ways to "become" exactly what a man wants.

It's the sexual freedom of choice women have waited so long for--so long as that choice isn't virginity.

---

Visit my other blog here