A milestone victory for Liz!
So this is going to sound utterly ridiculous, but I'm pretty darn proud of myself... I drove from Greece to my job on East River Road this morning - ON THE FREEWAY BY MYSELF! Woo! I've been doing minor little spurts of freeway driving, but this was quite monumental. The last time I did any significant freeway/highway/expressway/whateverway driving was back in November before Unisys switched venues from Farmington to Rochester. So this is a really lovely sign for me :)
my friend, Mike, and I went to see "An Inconvenient Truth" the other night. WOW. If you're reading this please DO go see it - not as a political plug, not as a liberal urging you to do something, but as a member of the world community asking you to take one simple small step to help out Mother Earth and our other world members. There were two scenes that disturbed me the most - one being that if we allow emissions to continue the way they are, there's a strong probability that the polar ice caps will melt and flood over some major areas like Manhattan, Florida, Frisco Bay, India, Norway, and the powerhouse of China - holy pandemic. The second image that hit home was seeing the drought in the Sahara. The Earth is so cracked and so dry - it doesn't even look like earth. Now being a little bumpkin who grew up in the countryside on a makeshift farm, I spent lots of time climbing trees, playing in the crick, gardening with my mother, raking leaves in the fall and creating snow caves in the winter - so to see the earth so cracked and bear makes me want to give up showers for a year and give that water to the Sahara. Like seriously, the earth was stepping stones, if you missed, you better believe your leg was getting stuck between the cracks, and who knows for how long they go on? Oh it hurts.
Last night my parents and I watched the 20/20 special on the division in this country between red and blue states. WOO! Hello heated debate with my mother and stepdad (but he's not a good arguer because he flip flops and is usually arguing the same point I am, but just likes to argue for the sake of it). So pretty much my mom and I fell into the trap that was noted in the documentary, when political debates start, people start yelling to win their side of the argument (which inevitably is never won) and then they don't retain anything learned but leave with a stronger sense of why they're right and their opponents are wrong. Had I been more rational and actually listened to my mom I bet we could have come up with something. Instead I threw around a lot of, "that's bullshit!" and "so you the stockholder don't mind the laborer not making a decent wage or having health care because YOU'RE profiting!?" Ooh we couldn't talk after that one... I still think I'm right, (and that most of the conservative Christians in the South are nuts) but I'm making a new vow to at least listen and hear the other side before telling them that their argument is bullshit. But my mom did say I'd make a great lobbyist in DC.
At 1130p, just after we'd all went to bed the phone rang and my mom answered. I got the whole story this morning when I woke up, and it reminded me that sometimes there are more important things to argue about. My brother and his wife are expecting their 4th child in several months - I'm not sure if they were out or at home, but I guess EJ's wife, Jamie, tried to get up and couldn't because she was in a tremendous amount of pain - the next thing he noted was that there was a lot of blood running down her legs (and I don't know if she was wearing shorts or not). Mom said he was crying and really upset (and I've never seen him like that). But I guess they took her to Emergency, and we haven't heard anything from him since last night. We're all trying to accomplish the same goal here, aren't we? Life a good, fulfilling life, love others, and leave something better for the next generation?
"Be the change you wish to see in the world" -Ghandi
my friend, Mike, and I went to see "An Inconvenient Truth" the other night. WOW. If you're reading this please DO go see it - not as a political plug, not as a liberal urging you to do something, but as a member of the world community asking you to take one simple small step to help out Mother Earth and our other world members. There were two scenes that disturbed me the most - one being that if we allow emissions to continue the way they are, there's a strong probability that the polar ice caps will melt and flood over some major areas like Manhattan, Florida, Frisco Bay, India, Norway, and the powerhouse of China - holy pandemic. The second image that hit home was seeing the drought in the Sahara. The Earth is so cracked and so dry - it doesn't even look like earth. Now being a little bumpkin who grew up in the countryside on a makeshift farm, I spent lots of time climbing trees, playing in the crick, gardening with my mother, raking leaves in the fall and creating snow caves in the winter - so to see the earth so cracked and bear makes me want to give up showers for a year and give that water to the Sahara. Like seriously, the earth was stepping stones, if you missed, you better believe your leg was getting stuck between the cracks, and who knows for how long they go on? Oh it hurts.
Last night my parents and I watched the 20/20 special on the division in this country between red and blue states. WOO! Hello heated debate with my mother and stepdad (but he's not a good arguer because he flip flops and is usually arguing the same point I am, but just likes to argue for the sake of it). So pretty much my mom and I fell into the trap that was noted in the documentary, when political debates start, people start yelling to win their side of the argument (which inevitably is never won) and then they don't retain anything learned but leave with a stronger sense of why they're right and their opponents are wrong. Had I been more rational and actually listened to my mom I bet we could have come up with something. Instead I threw around a lot of, "that's bullshit!" and "so you the stockholder don't mind the laborer not making a decent wage or having health care because YOU'RE profiting!?" Ooh we couldn't talk after that one... I still think I'm right, (and that most of the conservative Christians in the South are nuts) but I'm making a new vow to at least listen and hear the other side before telling them that their argument is bullshit. But my mom did say I'd make a great lobbyist in DC.
At 1130p, just after we'd all went to bed the phone rang and my mom answered. I got the whole story this morning when I woke up, and it reminded me that sometimes there are more important things to argue about. My brother and his wife are expecting their 4th child in several months - I'm not sure if they were out or at home, but I guess EJ's wife, Jamie, tried to get up and couldn't because she was in a tremendous amount of pain - the next thing he noted was that there was a lot of blood running down her legs (and I don't know if she was wearing shorts or not). Mom said he was crying and really upset (and I've never seen him like that). But I guess they took her to Emergency, and we haven't heard anything from him since last night. We're all trying to accomplish the same goal here, aren't we? Life a good, fulfilling life, love others, and leave something better for the next generation?
"Be the change you wish to see in the world" -Ghandi