Africa, the biggest problem

Invisible Children: It has everyone abuzz. I entered the information today from about 32 evaluations by people who saw the film during cultural awareness week, and the overwhelming response was "we have to do something," "this has to stop"...But how? It is natural for us to see an atrocity and demand that something be done about it, but what exactly are we expecting? Do these people realize that this is not an isolated event? The entire continent of Africa is embroiled in one civil war after another. Rwanda, Liberia...Whenever America has stepped in and tried to do something about these things we only ever cause more trouble. You can't move into a country split down the middle and MAKE them stop fighting, even less can you tell them how to fight. Do we really want another Iraq-esque 10 year occupation? If the UN sponsors sanctions, who are those really going to effect? the government? the inurgents and militias? the people who are starving anyway? the people dying of AIDS because we won't make medication affordable in the first place? I just think it's really arrogant, or maybe just ignorant, to think we can just solve this. I have said all of this to say that I want to do more research. I plan to talk to Dr. Romig before I leave work today and ask about how our "Faculty Student Research" program works here, not because I have any plan to get academic credit for this, but because I need help. I would love to have people to talk to about this. I need to watch Hotel Rwanda. If anyone of you hasn't seen Lord of War, you need to. Talk to me; I'm thinking about having a viewing party for it. It's pretty rough, but so true, and we need to know. Let me know what you think, if you have any ideas, or questions that you think need to be asked, if you want to talk about this too, maybe we can work something out.

p.s. I found some interesting articles at CrimesofWar.org under their War in Africa section. I am emailing myself "Natural Resources & Conflict in Africa" by Paul Collier to read more carefully tonight.

bad, good, better, best

i was going to start this post with the question "is it ridiculous that i think video games are bad", but i'm not even going to do that anymore. i don't believe that this is ridiculous. although i do not claim that all videos are bad, i do not think that eny of them are good much less the best for my future husband and childrens development as simple, communal, and spiritual beings. it's just that i want rj to be the very best man he can be, and grow into a man even better than that. i don't think that time spent playing video games is beneficial or even neutral to those ends. he and chris can give me loads of smartalec propaganda about what they have learned from mario, but as of yet i have not received one serious refutation of my claims. i guess the better question is whether it is ridiculous to hold up such a high standard for my husband, but i really believe that the answer to this is negative also. i know that this isn't a very good explanation of how i feel, i could argue a lot of trivial points, but i believe that this is true. let me know what you think

Currently Listening Fevers and Mirrors By Bright Eyes see related

Wedding Planning

as promised this is a post about wedding plans. the two biggest things left to be decided are my hair and the cake.

i have thought a lot about my hair and messed around, and truth be known i don't have to make a decision about it until the last minute. however, i do like this sort of look a lot:

i had wanted peonies with the roses in our bouquets but thought it would be too much trouble. then i saw this and decided we have to so i can have one in my hair. i think this will go really well with my dress and be a good compromise between my relaxed style, and mom not wanting it to be too messy, and also a good compromise between too quirky and too plain.

then comes the cake. since i found out that i can't have gluten we have waffled between several option. the first of which was my suggestion that one time wouldn't hurt, but mom thinks i will get sick, so my second suggestion was, i can go without, to which mom and rj both disapprove, for different reasons; rj always hates for me to do without anything (for the most part), and mom says that we do have to do the dumb feeding each other thing. so the two remaining options are a regular cake with alternative flours, or cheesecake. i keep instinctively saying no cheesecake, but i don't know why. i like it a lot, and it will taste nice. maybe its just that i don't want something to be weird because i can't have, if it was weird i would rather it be because i just said so. anyway, this is the look i want, only with strawberries instead of roses. with cake-cake we would have strawberry filling, with cheesecake there isn't anything to fill:

anyways, any input is helpful. i love you all!

confusion

does everyone feel so constantly overwhelmed and confused by the things that come at us day after day? by the weight of our choices and our complete inadequacy to face them? i am so tired this semester. i am barely motivated to do my school work in the same way that i normally get at the very end of the semester. is it related to my health? i don't know. i feel sometimes like i've been programmed to blame everything i feel on a health problem, when maybe it's something else entirely. maybe i'm stressed out about getting married. maybe it's how much harder my classes are as i near graduation. maybe i'm just a weenie who's been taught to think of myself as sick all the time when i'm fine, i don't feel any worse than anyone else, and i just need to get over it.i have a small kernel of an idea developing in my mind and a very loud voice telling me that it will fizzle out and fail like most of my big ideas. i'm not sure how much of an ongoing problematic situation has been my fault and how much of it has been someone else's self centered disrespect for my continued pleas, how serious it is and how much i am once again blowing it out of proportion. where does the balance come between not settling, and being reasonable about your expectations of another person? is it unreasonable to be scared that just like your friends and family members the perfectly normal guy you marry will turn into a tyrant that makes you feel miserable and small and helpless as soon as the deal is done, and that i will end up divorced like all the rest or else suffering quietly for years? is it absurd to feel like it is absolutely hopeless to think that any of the challenges ahead of yuo can be resolved?

*deep breath* *sigh*

this is just a whiney post attempting to be honest about how i feel and get things from inside to outside of me. if you don't like whiney people ignore it.

Currently Listening So Says I By The Shins actually a shins compilation by RJ. see related

"I'm with you in Rockland"

I don't know if you have ever read Howl by Allen Ginsberg or not. It is a very important poem to me spiritually. When I read the last stanza for the first time, I cried, thinking about friends of mine who are so far away, some physically and some who are just gone. Even when I don't know where they are, or what they are going through, even when I don't see them for months at a time, it's like I send a part of me out to be with them. Just like my Granny watching football from the couch and yelling for the players and making fists and getting all worked up, I am wrestling their giants with them. Then it occured to me that this is how the Holy Spirit works. It is hard for us to understand what it means for the Trinity to be three and also one, but this gives me a little glimpse into the mystery. The Holy Spirit of God living in us, Emmanuel, is not a seperate entity of God, like another personality. It's him, sending a part of himself out to wrestle our giants along with us. I can not even begin to measure the extent to which knowing this gets me through my day.

This brings me to why the first part of the poem is important to me. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,....." I go to Literature classes and here about how the writers that we read today were a group of friends 40, 90, or 150 years ago, and I think that some of my friends have the potential to be that; to have works read by college students one hundred years from now. I also see them going through the things that Ginsberg lists. It's just so easy to get dragged down, and be discouraged, and not even know how to keep on going much less why. I feel like these friends of mine, if they are ever going to make it, ever going to survive, they need more than me with them, they need the Holy Spirit like I have. That is the hope I hold on to for them. That is why this poem, that seems tawdry and scandalous to us, is so important to me.