Why I Am Thankful
If the world were shrunk into a village with only 100 people, that village would have:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 would have a college education, and 1 would own a computer.


If you woke up this morning with more health than illness... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ... you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or wrath... you are more blessed than three billion people in the world, about 60% of the world population.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If your parents are still alive and still married... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.

If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful... you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.

If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.

We're a fortunate group of people...

AND THERE IS MUCH TO BE DONE!

(from http://www.kanji.org/kanji/jack/personal/100peop.htm)

This is really yesterday's entry...
One of the problems with Yale is that far too often all the best stuff happens at once. This is immediately apparent in the dining halls, when you have jus grabbed your cheesecake only to realize they have pecan pie too. Yesterday, I found myself having to choose between (1) tea with Judy Woodruff of CNN fame, (2) marching to the Yale Investments Office with a group of protesters (all friends of mine) to delliver a petition demanding disclosure of where Yale invests (it's not a pretty picture), and (3) hearing Howard Dean speak about the media and the election, accompanied by Evan Thomas of Newsweek and Martin Nolan of the Boston Globe.

So what was I to do? Well, since they were at different times and I didn't technically have any work due until after break, I did all three. Yay for politically informed, activist me. It was great. Coincidentally, I was eating dinner with the Treasurer of the College Dems, who was really excited about the fact that even though we'll be in the off season for a while, we need to do what the GOP did and work every bit as hard as we did during election season. Great. So much for the respite. :)

What is the good life? or, the Adolescent Existential Crisis strikes again
I don't know what I want to do with my life.

Well, I kind of do. I know I want to be an archaeologist, teach at a beautiful and conveniently-located university, work adjunctly at a museum, and write books.

At the same time, I get these strange, antithetical urges to break the rules. The rules that say that a smart, driven Yalie should get ahead -- not necessarily financially or prestigiously, but in terms of maintaining high acheivement goals. It's not that my goals don't sound incredibly fun; it's that they're intense. Every so often, I wonder about my ability -- or anyone's -- to withstand prolonged intensity.

One of these urges is to just have kids (and, I'm finally reconciling with this, getting married) and do a realtively simple job that allows me to spend as much time with them as humanly possible, such as teaching elementary school. Not that teaching is easy, but it's not exactly "publish or perish." Every time I see kid I want one, so I can vicariously enjoy the holidays through him/her. Is that wrong? I don't think so. Just to be at home with them, by the fire, making cookies...the joys of domesticity... WHAT am I saying??

The other urge is just to be a bum and travel around. I mean, who doesn't want to get rid of all their burdensome stuff save what they can stuff in a backpack, and live sub-simply? I watched a film in French class last year about how easy it is to get food without buying or stealing it. Agriculturalists reject so many fruits and vegetables that aren't shaped like the commercial standard, and just leave them in piles or in the fields. Some people even go through garbage cans and find fresh, obviously unspoiled food that restaurants and others have rejected. When I think about it, our consumer society makes me sick, I love traveling, I'm not materialistic, and I love just spending time thinking. I would be the perfect Kerouackian dharma bum. It's so exciting to think about breaking the system and just beeing free and guiltless.

Then again, what would become of my Yale education? We are SO entrenched in our society's expectations. And archaeology is just cool. And so on and so on...


...but still...

Let it snow...
Early this morning, a light snow, the first of the year, began to fall. It was beautiful, and almost (but not quite) seemed to justify the Christmas decorations strung along York and Broadway and the sickeningly premature barrage of holiday commercials. I swear they didn't appear last year until after Thanksgiving. I almost feel legitimized in my desire to sing carols and buy eggnog, but I should probably restrain myself. I don't want to burn out all the excitement. But I confess, I did order a gingerbread latte at Starbucks yesterday. Poor Thanksgiving, getting overlooked as the Christmas season starts earlier every year. Is it a sign of our culture growing more eager for the commerical blitz of December? Or are we just running out of things to be thankful for? Whatever it is, I'm fully guilty of it. I love Christmas so much that it's worth it.

So, perhaps to lessen the post-election blues (man, am I still moping about that?), life has decided to give me a break. School has been much less stressful since the last of the midterms passed, and despite the looming specter of the big research papers, I feel pretty good. I even want to continue environmental and other activist campaigns. Best of all, I get to go home in 10 days. It was 27 degrees outside this morning. Eeeep.

Wasting time is back on the agenda! For the first time this semester I feel generally relaxed. It hope it lasts. I'm thinking it won't. :)

We Shall Overcome
It is starting to be better.

After that first morning, when I walked outside and sunk into a brilliant day of silent streets, it began. Iced with smooth aqua, the city gleamed in the cold air. In place of the nearly tangible tension of the day before, the streets were silent. Everything was low whispers, dry leaves grating on the asphalt in the bitter wind. Then the faces: the red-rimmed eyes, the channels left by night-old tears, the mouths like closed doors. There was comfort in their sadness, bcause we had all been bit players in a failed revolution, and the comfort was the all.

Last night I laughed freely with one who before had filled me with deep-dug bitterness. Love and openness are stronger than we think.

It is starting to be better. In church today, we were told that no story, either of victory or defeat, is final. That despite our frustration, our path still lies before us, unaltered, and we are never done. That victory often breeds hate, because the losers dwell in bitterness, but that we must cling to love, though it be unfashionable. That we can learn to look at those who disagree with us, even those who would hurt us, and see the same human hearts, beating, the same wind filling all our lungs.

"The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Those were the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. Before him, they belonged to Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister. He was speaking in hope of the abolition of slavery. Thinking on those times, how can we not see the truth of those words? How can we not see that the liberal voices of the world are the ones that still echo the truths of history?

Enough with the cheesiness; how 'bout a joke?


It's scary but true.

A New Day Will Come
Tolkien on hope:

"Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens." -Gimli, II:3

'Far above the Ephel D?ath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.'

"Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes."
-Gandalf

'Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old [stone] king's head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. "Look Sam!" he cried, startled into speech. "Look! The king has got a crown again!"
The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony yellow hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.
"They cannot conquer forever!" said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.'
(IV:6)

"The War is not over (and the one that is, or the part of it, has been largely lost). But it is of course wrong to fall into such a mood, for Wars are always lost, and War always goes on; and it is no good growing faint."
~ Tolkien, on the end of WWII

"Ours is but a small matter in the great deeds of this time."
-Aragorn

"Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."
-Gandalf, V:9

Though here at journey's end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the day is done,
nor bid the stars farewell.
-Sam, VI:1

The polls are tied tighter than the knots in our stomachs. I want desperately to be optimistic, but I just feel that Bush has too much power to let this get away from him if the election is even remotely close. The only chance I believe Kerry has (and it is not as unlikely as one might think) is winning by a large enough margin that large-scale litigations become moot. The Supreme Court belongs to Bush, and if it comes to that again, we will surely have our first President who served eight years without ever being elected. It's possible no definitive result will emerge until after the would-be inauguration, which I find ridiculous. The electoral college has to go, and a consistent way of recording and counting votes must be found. The fact that an election could conceivably last several months is the clearest sign I can think of that our system is a mess. Enough ranting. Let us now hope.

The weather here is gloooomy. It makes the fall leaves strand out even more. I'm excited about the election, Halloween, and November in general. Today my friends and I went to the Salvation Army to buy costumes. Claudia is going to be Sherlock Holmes and recruited me to be Dr. Watson. I'm not sure how convincing we're going to be in said roles (crossdressing again...hmm...), but it sounded fun!

John Kerry is going to win. I can feel it.