Better Way

I'd just like to say how much I am loving this old music video at the moment. Aside from having some great instruments you don't see much (especially in the "official" music video, which doesn't allow for embedding... speaking of which, if anyone can furnish me with a list of the instruments used for that video, I would greatly appreciate it), there are some pointed lyrics throughout the song. See if you can guess which ones caught my attention:

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

While there may be certain drawbacks to no longer being a full-time student, one of the things I've been enjoying recently is the guilt-free pleasure reading. While it may seem odd to some of you that Infidel would be pleasure reading for me, those of you who know me well are not at all surprised.

I'm not sure exactly what I expected in retrospect, but this book shook me to the core. At times I agreed, and others dissented, but was glad for the insight into Ayaan Hirsi Ali's remarkable life story. While I understand that her experience may not necessarily be representative of the whole, many things struck me throughout the course of the book, and I think that may have something to do with some of the life changes I am currently experiencing and the society and religion wherein I operate.

Overall, two passages have stayed with me in the week since I finished reading it. The first was her account of she and her sister's circumcisions, which happened against the will of her parents and in quasi-secret. I am a rather stoic person while reading books, but at this point I wept. Too personal to recount, I leave you to experience it.

The second passage is condensable into a single quote, which is perhaps a good summary of how I feel about the plea to protect people from hearing about the atrocities that occur to women, domestically and abroad. The context is Ayaan speaking about the consequences she faced and faces as a result of discussing openly and frankly her life and concerns for her fellow women. It reads as follows:

People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no: I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.[emphasis added]

While I would caution readers to expect a difficult read in terms of some subject matter and values and beliefs that may challenge their own, I take encouragement from this statement in what I hope will be my life's work - making sure that women's voices are heard, that their difficult testimonies are not borne in vain, and that I will not allow myself to become an accomplice to injustice.

Everybody loves a free thing!

Hello, hello...

My cousin over at Ollibird is getting fancy downright generous! with illustrator. There's a free PDF of her bird valentine's cards for download. You should check them out, because who wouldn't want sweet/slighty naughty FREE v-day cards. And take a peek at her store while you're at it, which features such awesomes as a simple yet cool meal planner and a sweet visual rendition of a Beatles song (which both happen to feature my other love: the oh-so-hip/awesome color mustard). As a wonderful bonus, her husband is also incredibly talented - you can access his work at Ollibird, too!

Mountains Beyond Mountains

In a recent letter to a friend, I told them that I'd been having trouble "settling down" since getting married. I understand that some people have always dreamed of having a husband to properly "care [for] and feed", but to be honest I hadn't seen this in the arrangement of my tea leaves. Not that I'm against being married or having a family, just that it had come rather unexpectedly. I followed my statement to that friend by saying that I supposed I'm not the sort of person who ever really settles down - more of one that gears up.

In light of my recent embrace of this part of my existence, I have been gearing up (told you) to start volunteering again with WomanStats and help out with PR stuff for an up-and-coming new philanthropic website for social entrepreneurship ventures abroad called the Tipping Bucket.

Part of my re-entry into my old crazy life is due to my recent completion of Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, a spirited landmark biography of Paul Farmer, a favorite icon for IntDels (as I call them) and WLs (as Paul calls them). As most of the people who read this blog have most likely already read the book, I'll let those of you who haven't look it up and leave you with a few quotes I particularly liked.

The first, on menial tasks that people, especially people of my age and position, end up doing in the fight for good:

"Long ago in North Carolina, Farmer watched the nuns doing menial chores on behalf of migrant laborers, and in the years since he's come to think that a willingness to do what he calls "unglamorous scut work" is the secret to successful projects in places like Cange & Carabayllo. 'And,' he says, 'another secret: a reluctance to do scut work is why a lot of my peers don't stick with this kind of work.' In public health projects in difficult locales, theory often outruns practice. Individual patients get forgotten, and what seems like a small problem gets ignored, until it grows large, like MDR. 'If you focus of individual patients,' Jim Kim says, 'you can't get sloppy.'"

Here's to unglamorous scut work... to a worthwhile end. I still hold that it's possible to get lost in doing unglamorous scut work to a useless end.

And the second, I thought was beautiful. Especially since there are people, close to me and not, who think that what I'm trying to do with my life - what I think is most valuable, urgent, and important - is useless or just plain crazy.

"I think, sometimes, that I'm going nuts, and that perhaps there is something good about blocking clean water for those who have none, making sure that illiterate children remain so, and preventing the resuscitation of the public health sector in the country most in need of it... Lunacy is what it is." - Paul Farmer, on the Bush Administration's effort to block multiple sources of aid to Haiti (speaking of which - sort of an odd choice to lead the current disaster relief efforts? Just saying).

Thanks, Paul Farmer, for being a lunatic, and inspiring similar lunacy in others. And thank you, Tracy Kidder, for helping us get to know the man behind my current "light" reading - Pathologies of Power.

Bountiful Baskets - Change the way you eat in Provo!

Dear Friends,

My sister-in-law introduced me to this amazing new program running in our area. It's more or less a no-overhead food co-op, in the true sense of the word. This isn't a "co-op" where they charge you up the yin-yang for mealy apples from somewhere you've never heard of. This co-op doesn't even really have a physical location. This co-op is pure awesome.

Their website is from the stone ages, but it gets the job done. The story, near as I can piece it together, is that the Bountiful Baskets idea spread from AZ to UT. No more detail is offered on the site.

The money collected from the site is pooled and used to purchase food at wholesale prices from distributors that food services and restaurants usually buy from. They then equally distribute the purchased goods into the baskets which are then assembled by volunteers and picked up by you. My understand is that the money collected from your area ends up in food that comes to you.

These are my spoils from the first week. It rung in at 33.8 lbs - coming out to about 44 cents/lb. I ordered the "basic" basket which is half fruit half vegetable - the exact contents vary.



This, in my opinion, is a revolutionary way to get healthy food to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it!

SUPPORT BOUNTIFUL BASKETS! (and hopefully they'll start a dropoff in Provo :) )

http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/