You'll all be proud...

I did not break anything (chairs, walls, myself, any other people, etc.) during the Red Sox epic collapse in this game/this season. Well done me!

IT'S OFFICIAL

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00397911.2010.523921#preview

Shanah Tovah (Happy Rosh Hashanah)!

Hey all,

In a few hours, the annual Jewish superholidays will begin. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the ten days in between (called the Days of Awe) have become for many Jews a period of reflection upon the past year and a transition into the new one to come. The celebrations and rituals vary considerably depending on the Jew in question, but typically, Rosh Hashannah marks the reopening of a spiritual book of your past and the beginning of fashioning your "book" for the upcoming year, the days of awe being a chance to see what has transpired in your published year and how you can use what has happened to build next year's book, and Yom Kippur as a placement of that book on your bookshelf featuring a plea for a healthy and full book year to come.

There are many traditions to be told about how Rosh Hashanah is celebrated (and this is still ever growing!), and if you're interested just ask and I (or Emma/Isaac) can talk about some of them, but a typical tradition that you can find almost anywhere is to give one other blessings for the upcoming year without expectation to receive. Usually we say "Shanah Tovah U'Metukah" (Have a good sweet new year), but I find that that gets to be too mechanical, especially if you happen to say it toward a person you've had a close relationship with. I'd like to take some time share my own blessing with you all, along with a few that I've found to really resonate with the work we do and the free love we seek to spread. Since this is the first time I've introduced this to you all, I'll do an altered version of it. Feel free to do it as well-- these blessings are intended to be pluralistic :-).

Here goes:

Thank you all for giving me the year(s) of experience, lesson, passion, and love that have come to meld seamlessly into my own. May much life, love, and experience fill your year to the brim, and may it spill to all that surround you. May you find all that you seek, and may everything you forget to find show up alongside your path. May you find solace and peace in being, happiness and humility in doing, and curiosity and inspiration in thinking.

May you live for you, and share it with all that you find.

PS: Here are some alternative interpretations of this tradition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlcxEDy-lr0&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRaQSbuTiBg

http://sichaconversation.org/

http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/holiday_resources/high_holiday_prayer_card_2011.pdf

Is this real life?

Two things happened today that have continued to nag at me:

1. Ma and I were at an ATM, and she was depositing some checks. Our ATM in town doesn't work, so we go out of town and inevitably have more than one to deposit at a time. And yes, it takes some time to go through the works. By 'time' I mean 5 minutes or so. Maybe 7. No possible way more than 10. So, a car pulls up to behind us at the drive-through ATM as she's depositing the first of two checks. Within a minute, the car behind us is YELLING out his window. The person using the ATM in that car was actually waiting outside the car, in front of the car (it was hot, he was sitting on the passenger side, so I guess he just figured he'd do the ATM thing standing up instead of sharing his password with the driver of the car). After the yelling continues for a few full seconds, I turn around to see man-outside-car telling man-inside-car to calm down, but he's laughing and thinking the yelling is funny. Then man-inside-car starts beeping. We're finishing up deposit number two at this point. Maybe a full minute and a half has elapsed since their car pulled up. So I told my mom I would deposit my check after we pulled around and got back in line so impatient man-inside-car could have his friend, man-outside-car do whatever he had to at the ATM. As she takes the car out of park and takes her card from the ATM, he starts clapping. Clapping with his hands out the window. And the yelling continues. Really? Man-outside-car just laughs, never reprimands or says anything to him. It's all a joke. Being rude is funny, right? Making mountains of molehills is useful, right? Have we really become so impatient in our immediate-gratification filled world, that we have forgotten what common courtesy is? You wait your turn in line. It's normal, and everyone has to do it. If  you're running late, you should have left earlier.

2. We're backing out of a parking spot at the mall, and as we go to turn right (to go towards the road which is on our right, at the end of the aisle), we're inevitably going to be on the left side of the aisle for a moment. At that moment, wonderfully enough, a wonderful ass of a teen-aged girl comes flying around the corner in her white 2011 Audi, slams on the breaks to avoid coming head-on with us, and begins screaming at us to "get on the right side of the road" (her statements were a bit more colorful). As we get out of her way, she notices that I'm looking at her. I don't know why I did, but I did, and we made eye contact. You would have thought I threw a racist slur and some spit in her face. She continued screaming, except this time her whole body was getting into it. Were the cars not moving, I'm pretty sure she would have gotten out. I have no way of knowing, but dear lord was this girl upset.

These aren't even the only two times I've experience things like this in CT/RI. It hasn't been often, but considering this never ever happened in the past five years of my life, I'm actually shaken. Are people really this mean? Is this real? Is this what America is heading to? My children will grow up in more of this? What happened to patience and kindness and understanding?

I'm genuinely horrified.

Surviving a Move / Falling for Firefly

I feel like my time is going to be compromised in a couple weeks time, reluctantly heading back to why I’m actually in Oregon: grad school. Classes start in just under two weeks, and I think this year is going to be busier than the one that I had before. While I’m excited for the non-class related components of my program—my research assistantship and having practicum experiences within schools—I am not excited at the prospect of 12 credits worth of work on top of those two commitments (about 32 hours a week, technically). Watch that first step of grad school, cause that second step is a doozie…

But the positive development has been moving into a new place over the past week. My first place was a solid place for the beginning of my time in the Eug. However, there were many drawbacks that I was especially tired of: I was car-dependent if I wasn’t going to school (which I could actually bus or bike to) and the surrounding area was lacking and isolating. I enjoyed living next to the football and baseball stadiums (Oregon’s football stadium, Autzen, is one of the loudest places in the country to watch a sports team play) for the sheer convenience of crossing the street. But it wasn’t really me, and it wasn’t going to fit with my longer-term needs (e.g. a “walkability” score of 49). In essence, I think I need to live with people—as you guys can probably understand, I get motivated by being around lovely individuals, and it doesn’t matter what happens to be on the agenda.*

So the new place is a three person house, where I will be living with two guys in my program. The house is a five minute bike ride to work and to school (both of which are walkable), there are parks and places to go to, I’ve got a porch with a backyard, a basement with a table (I’m hoping you are all reading that and thinking: Die and Beirut), and a wonderfully sunny room. All of these tidbits make me much happier, thus far, than living on the opposite side of the Willamette River.

*Appropriately, Isaac, my bro, and I were all at the apartment together for my last weekend there, celebrating with friends coming over for a grill as well as floating the Willamette with a pink floaty chair with two cupholders, a freshwater alligator named Gary, and a river turtle. Yes, it was awesome. Yes, you should have been there.

But the move was surprisingly not as painful as I thought it was going to be. I was all packed and ready to go on move-in day (see, Elise, I can do things before the last minute, I swear!), I had help from two of my good friends here, and Gillian was up two weekends ago to help organize and sort things. I honestly can say I couldn’t have done it without the help, so thank you very, very much. I know that I’m going to enjoy myself more as a result in my new digs.

To my Firefly loving friends (I know you are out there), I decided when during the course of the season I loved this show. In episode 3 (“Bushwacked”), the crew is boarded by an Alliance boat, and the crew is individually interviewed about their experiences on Serenity (a clever way to give some background for the crew). But it is precisely when Wash is asked about his relationship with Zoe that I fall in love with the show, after having seen Zoe’s response to the interview questions:

HARKEN: You fought with Captain Reynolds in the war?
ZOE: Fought with a lot of people in the war.
HARKEN: And your husband?
ZOE: Fight with him sometimes, too.

HARKEN: Is there any particular reason you wish to not talk about your marriage?

ZOE: Don’t see that it is any of your business is all. We’re very private people.

WASH: The legs. Oh yeah, definitely have to say it was her legs. You can put that down. Her legs, and where her legs meet her back. Actually, that whole area. That, and above it.

And a little while later…

WASH: Have you ever been with a warrior woman?

You can’t take the sky from me…

Free edumacation???

Along the same lines as Isaac's post a while ago. Found a site with free educational videos. And by free educational videos, I mean on every single thing, from how to do an integral to what the hell happened 2 years ago when we hit rock bottom. You can even ask him to provide info he don't have and he'll create a video.

Damn this world is gettin crazy smart. And closer together too. Love it.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Sorry I keep posting links

But I figure you can all form your own opinions on articles that I find interesting.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2092425,00.html