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/

G&C

Go big or go home.

Howdy Blog-o-friends.

Perhaps you, like me, find yourself constantly dreaming up new ideas and slightly more exciting directions for your life. This can range anywhere from craft ideas like a new kind of nouveau-retro headband to a full-on performance art piece or, in my case, a new career.

The problem of dreaming of a new career would be that in order to make it happen, there would be a lot of steps involved. It might be intimidating, because your spouse might have more talent in his pinky finger than you have in your entire body in said given career. And you might decide you don't care and to just go big or go home.

A few seemingly short months ago, I had resolved I was going to do it - I was going to apply to the photo program. I had agonized, I had sought professional opinions - it was finished. Case closed.

Then, my head got rattled around a bit on some asphalt and I decided to graduate instead.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The lucky thing is that for this career, you don't HAVE to have a degree. You just have to work your patootie off.

Here's what I see in my future at the moment:

1. More promo shoots.
2. Learning about photoshop.
3. Paid shoots.
4. More learning about photoshop.
5. Continual patootie-workage.
6. Home studio.
7. Career bliss.

Wish me luck.

And check me out at http://achaquejourmaphoto.blogspot.com.

Teaser:

Common courtesy & an MPA

I was walking to work today listening to Arrah and the Ferns when my iPod-budded ears were invaded by the sirens of several emergency vehicles in succession. For each vehicle, most other vehicles on the road stopped, but almost none moved out of the way. I stood thinking about how this seemingly obvious road rule is now all but ignored and it reminded me of how our patients have all but no regard for scheduling. One walked in just yesterday having been scheduled for a weight check (a quick and easy in and out sort of visit that can be done by a nurse) and said that she had two other unscheduled children who also needed to be seen for various illnesses (not so quick or easy, and not something that can be done by a nurse). And then she was upset she had to wait a half an hour to be seen.

Anyway. In all of my workly bliss I have been leaning more towards applying for BYU's MPA program. I feel that that would be the best way for me to continue learning about the subjects I feel most passionately about and end up in a career that's interesting to me. *grits teeth*. It also means the GRE.

Thoughts?