Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places

I am SOO SOO SOO ready for Christmas because I am SO SO SO ready to get away from my work. I expected to be driving through North Carolina right now. Instead I'm still sitting at work waiting for files to download to make a proof for the printer. What I expected to take twenty minutes has turned into four hours. I've never felt so sorry for Bob Cratchit. I've never felt so much like Bob Cratchit.
I can't wait to get out of here and down to SC. I like my Christmas warm, humid and outdoorsy and SC is the perfect place for that. Going down South for Christmas is wonderful. Not only do you get a vacation from work you get a vacation from winter, the WORST, most deadly time of the year. Woo-hoo.
Oh, the file just came in. So long and Merry Christmas!

Free Rice

Here is another addictive little way to waste time on the internet. Play the Free Rice Game. It's a very simple game. A word appears and you pick the correct definition out of a multiple choice of four. If you get the answer right you get a harder word and move up a level, if you miss the word you get an easier question and move down.

The best part is you can justify your mindless game playing because each word you get right provides 20 grains of rice to feed the hungry. So far 9,481,828,970 grains of rice have been donated. An Indiana computer programmer created the game when his son began to study for the SAT.

I accidently spent about two hours playing tonight with friends. We donated over 3,000 grains of rice and as a bonus I learned the word "pettifogger" which is a dishonest lawyer. I'm looking forward to employing that word in my daily speech. Aaron, Jared, Sarah H, Jess and I got to level 46. I can hover comfortably around 41. How well can you do?

After Great Pain

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

-Emily Dickinson

Good Luck Aaron in your finals!

Makes Sense to Me

Sometimes when I get bored, I like to read candidate web pages. I think it's interesting to try to go straight to the source. I like comparing their design, their tone, their policies. It's much better than playing solitaire or minesweeper. The other day I was reading through Barack Obama's page and I found this:

Improve Transportation Access to Jobs: Three quarters of welfare recipients live in areas that are poorly served by public transportation and low-income workers spend up to 36 percent (!!!) of their incomes on transportation. As president, Barack Obama will work to eliminate transportation disparities. Obama will double the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program to ensure that additional federal public transportation dollars flow to the highest-need communities and that urban planning initiatives take this aspect of transportation policy into account.

I thought what a great idea! It seems like such a simple, practical solution to a very large problem. Decrease poverty by making an easy, reliable way for people get to work. This solution came to mind again when I read the story "Exiled to A War Zone, for His Own Safety" in the New York Times. From the article "his manager called from the mall to fire him, saying he had had too many late arrivals and absences. Augustus tried to protest that his commute from Park Hill depended on two capricious bus lines, but it was no use."

Back In The Saddle Again...

So I got a "new" assignment today at church. I'm back in Nursery. Woo-hoo. Me and the two year olds got some crazy connection going on. That or I'm in purgatory until I have kids of my own, because there's really only three ways out of nursery: move, die or become pregnant.

Okay, I'm joking about the purgatory part. Sort of...But I really do enjoy nursery. It's a very egalitarian and accepting place to be. I get hungry, they get hungry so we all have a snack. I like blowing bubbles and drawing, most of the two year olds do too. I enjoy the lessons topics like I am grateful for fish and my hands so I can teach with some real passion. It's a great place to be.

PU-239

Aaron's says this post should be called "Learned My Lesson" I went out for a run in the woods this morning, tripped and now have a very swollen twisted ankle. I had so many plans for today and now I'm barely able to hobble from the couch to the bed. Big thanks to Sarah H for helping me get back to my apartment. She found me a stick to use as a crutch so I didn't have to crawl and escorted me the long cold way back.

But I won't call the post "Learned My Lesson" because I haven't. I sprain my ankle every year running in the winter woods (slippery leaves, slick mud and stiff muscles all contribute to my downfall) BUT it's still so worth it. I much rather enjoy the freedom and scenery of the woods than suck car exhaust by running by the road or always run in endless circles on the track.

Anyway, I'm wasting my day away on the couch. I read a while then turned the tv on and watched the movie PU-239. I haven't seen a film so powerful in a long time. The movie tells the story of Timofey Berezin, a Russian worker who receives a lethal dose of radiation when he prevents a disaster at a deteriorating nuclear facility. The authorities at the facility make him the scapegoat for the very disaster he prevents, abandoning him to his eminent death. Knowing that his wife and young son face starvation without him he decides to steal a small amount of weapons grade plutonium in hopes of selling it in the Moscow underground. It's a testament of a parent's love in the darkest places and times. The movie made it much easier for me to stay in one place.

A Warning: The movie is not rated, HBO made it, but it is for mature audiences.

The Golden Compass

I've been enjoying the coverage of the movie the Golden Compass. I've listened to several reports about concerned parents, upset religious groups, opinionated theologians, pleased moviegoers and critics. In all the debate I'm becoming convinced that I may be the only person who has actually read all three books of Philip Pullman's Dark Material Series. And Aaron, because I made him read it too.

In 1995 I came across The Golden Compass in Lexington SC's trailer of a public library at the tender age of 12. I saw a blue-ish book with a girl riding a polar bear and I thought this is going to be good!

It was. I immediately became a hard core atheist. Just kidding! The book was fantastic. Lyra, the girl on the cover, is one of the strongest, most resourceful, and empowering heroines you could hope for. The story was mysterious, imaginative and beautiful. In Lyra's world every person's soul is manifest in the form of a "daemon" which takes the form on an animal mirroring their personality. Children's daemon's shape shift until their identities become more certain.

In Book One, Lyra and her daemon Pan find out that children are being kidnapped and taken into the north for gruesome experiments. When her best friend Roger is snatched, she sets off in an attempt to save him. Meanwhile, the authorities realize Lyra fits some prophesies and possesses a very special tool, so they pursue her. The book follows Lyra through adventure and intrigue to the very edge of the world.

Reading it, I laughed, I cried, I gripped the pages so tightly my knuckles turned white. The book's ending left me sobbing. SOBBING. I cried harder than I had ever cried for a book. SPOILER SPOILER: The authorities experiments provide a way to destroy someone's soul, so not only kill them physically but completely annihilate them. Destroying a soul releases a massive amount of power which they use to break into a higher spiritual dimension. After witnessing the killing Lyra is determined the death will be avenged. End of book one.

With that kind of ending I snatched up The Subtle Knife as soon as it came out which was 1997 (age 14). Turns out the bad guys who did the soul destroying have a plan to climb higher and higher through the spiritual dimensions to do battle with god who they call The Authority. They're creating a kind of Tower of Babel to topple a god they believe is oppressive and damning. They want to restart things, reorganize, recreate the mortal existence with Lyra as Eve.

The mortals and heavenly hosts assemble to different sides and war begins. An earth kid, Will comes along. With a powerful knife he assists Lyra to continue to break through dimensions. A pair of gay angels appear to assist the kids along.

The Amber Spyglass 2000 (age 17) continues the adventure. Lyra and Will go into the world of the dead to try to help free the souls trapped there by The Authority.
Lyra is pursued by a murderous monk who has already been pardoned by the church for murdering Lyra, the plan being if Lyra is killed, no new Eve, no new world. Everyone runs around, battles are fought, The Authority is killed but instead of choosing to begin things again, Lyra declines the role of Eve, seals the dimensions and everyone lives happily ever after. Whew.

It's kind of a hard series to summarize. I had to leave out dust which is a the particulate matter of sin, soul sucking zombies, the air balloonist, gypsies, witches and the rabbits on wheels. I liked the books. I think they give a great opportunity to really consider spiritual and mortal existence. I obviously disagree with the author's representation of God's character but it's a book which gives a good hard look at what it means to have a soul, to live under the authority of God, to exist immortally. How many books have enough faith in teens to let them grapple with such wonderful questions?

Sadly Pullman's questioning is quickly overwhelmed by his own assetions. In the last two books he gets preachy, really preachy, knocking out questions with quick sometimes tacky answers about the impossibility or evil of an omniscient deity.

So shield your eyes or go see the movie. I don't really care. But it is about killing god. And the nature of our souls. And riding Polar Bears.