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Thursday, December 21, 2006

I had a discussion with Marney yesterday about garage sales and how they just don't really have them in Northern Ireland.  Allowing people on your property to rummage through your cast-off possessions just never quite caught on here.  Something that is gaining popularity though is car "boot" sales.  The boot is the trunk of a car.  A location is designated in advance and people just fill their trunks with stuff and then meet up and pay a fee to park with everyone else.  Shoppers come and hop from car to car within the inner circle.

On a semi related note: I was thinking how ideal it would be to live a life so free from unnecessary possessions that I would never have to have another garage sale in my life.  No clutter.  Just to give away a couple items at a time as I no longer need them or realize I don't use them any more.  Stop buying junk that I don't really need.  Use what already I have in creative ways.  Go shopping with a purpose instead of waiting for items to emit a siren's call towards me.  Remind myself when I see stuff on sale that the hassle of storing it until the day I would supposedly "put it in use" might not be the worth the hassle of the $2.36 I would save buying it then and there instead of waiting until I needed it.  How easy would all that be?  Not quite sure but I'm going to give it a try.  I'm luckily in a position where I've whittled my possessions down to very little so I have the luxury of seeing if this would work for me. 

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Saturday, December 9, 2006

I finally put up the Thanksgiving pictures that I promised I would.  Click on THANKSGIVING to access them.  Thank you so much to those of you who celebrated with me that day.  You made all the difference in the world.

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Friday, December 8, 2006

O Lord, You have searched me and You know me.
You perceive my thoughts from afar.
You are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue You know it completely, O Lord.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Where can I flee from Your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, You are there;
If I make my bed in the depths, You are there.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,
Even the darkness will not be dark to You,
The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
     Search me, O God, and know my heart;
     Test me and know my anxious thoughts.
               - selections from Psalm 139 -

My own pride would try to let me think that I'm so very complex,
But God's wisdom reminds me that He knows me inside and out.
He knew my failings before He created me
And no choice I make can come as a surprise to Him.
"For You created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother's womb."
So I come to Him with all my fretting and dark thoughts
And trust that He meant what He said when He spoke the words,
"My grace is sufficient for you"

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Saturday, December 2, 2006


Dear Grandma,

I just read an article yesterday called Who You Callin’ Grandma.  It made me sad.  It talked about how many women are struggling with accepting their role as a grandmother because they already have full, vibrant lives and also the author wrote how having grandchildren can sometimes just become one more thing on her to-do list.  These are some of the things that were written. 
 

• Having just quit after 12 years as a family court judge, my friend Susan Baker is now trying to set the limits for her own grandmothering. But the end of her legal career merely signals the beginning of another, as an author. She feels bad that, because of a long-planned book signing and a scheduled day on the bench, she couldn't drop everything for a week when her oldest daughter, Susan, had another baby last November. "I felt really guilty about that," Baker told me. But her new career is important to her. "I love those little kids and I do want to have a relationship with them," she said. "But I'm not willing to give up my writing or my traveling. I'll be the best grandmother I can from a distance."
  
  For Baker this means she's available in emergencies, but will not show up at every game or holiday event. "I tell them it's not important for me to come to their birthdays -- they don't even know I'm there. But I'll stop by and spend an hour or two when it's just them and me," she adds.
  
  So listen up, Fisher-Price. For your next early-learning game the image of the grandmother should show her writing checks. We give money to the parents for rent and down payments on apartments, and we chip in on "extras" like after-school tuition, saxophones, and private schools. (Heck, I bought Ryan so much stuff Morgan said she didn't need a shower.) We also have more energy and better health. Today's time with Grandma is no longer baking cookies; it's more likely to be a Stones concert, the Planetarium, a camping trip, or waiting for her at the finish line of the MORE marathon.
  
  By the way, I got the name thing resolved. Ryan started calling me Bobbie, after her Russian babysitter referred to me as "Baba." Well, I suppose it's better than "Babushka." And though that Saturday I couldn't help Morgan while she set up her apartment, I did convert her old room at my house into a playroom for the girls, and they're welcome any time. Just as long as they make an appointment!
  
  - Adair Lara
  
   

I just really have a hard time dealing with this concept.  I suppose it’s because you’ve always been there for me.  You were only forty-two when I was born.  You could have easily said, “That’s nice that I have a grand-daughter now, but I’m awfully busy with my own life, housekeeping and church groups.  I’ll try to fit some time in with the grandchildren but my own kids have got to realize that I am an individual and I can’t just put my life on hold because my status has changed from mother to grandmother.”  But you didn’t say that at all, instead, you volunteered to watch me as both my parents had to work to make ends meet.  We formed a bond closer than any I currently possess with anyone in this world.  You loved me and treated me as though I was one of the most precious things in the world to you.  Tears are even spilling out of my eyes as I type this because my feelings for you are so strong.  I realize that some of these new grandmas might not want to change their lives around to accommodate a new arrival, but thank you, THANK YOU that YOU did.  I wouldn’t be the person I am today if you hadn’t taken me under your wing and invested in me like you did.  I don’t blame these women for not wanting to make all the sacrifices you did because you definitely poured yourself out in innumerable ways and it took a lot out of you.  You gave up so much.  I do want you to know though that I worry for all these kids who are going to grow up without a grandma like you.  I also worry for all these women who are going to live so-called more fulfilling lives but might wake up one day to realize that the grandkids are grown and don’t have time for them.  I will always, ALWAYS have time for you, Grandma.  And God so help me, you will never be one of those abandoned, elderly people who no one visits because their children and grandchildren are too busy living fulfilling lives or that they decide that they will just try to “be the best grandchildren they can be from a distance.”  No.  You invested in me as a child and you have reaped a granddaughter who would lay down her life for you and will look after you until you go home to be with the Lord.  I’ll do none of this because it is my duty but because you raised me to know the importance of a loving relationship.  You taught me to love through loving me.  You might not have traveled the world or have an autobiography to your credit but you have me and I’ll be more faithful to you than they would ever be to you.

Love,
Your Granddaughter



As a side note, I had Kathryn read this today and she said the article basically was condoning selfishness, not just in grandchild/grandparent relationships but in humans.  It basically celebrates living for oneself rather than others.

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Friday, December 1, 2006

Casino Royale.  A new type of James Bond emerging on the silver screen.  I grew up watching Roger Moore with my mother.  Somehow the comment "Wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am." made it into my repository of phrases after seeing the actions of Bond and hearing people comment on them.  Casino Royale made an attempt to show a Bond that wasn't cut off from humanity and actually allowed himself to feel.

There is something about Bond movies that I think can cause men to want to be manlier men and make women want to be more gorgeous and alluring.  It's only a movie, but we can be stirred to be something more than what we are.  What's it all for though?  Bond may be amazing and confident but in the end he is just a man who knows it's only a matter of time before he's dead.  When M tells him she knew it was a mistake to give him 007 status so soon he retorts back that it's a mistake she won't regret long given the short life span of 007's.  Bond can seemingly get all the gorgeous women he even remotely desires but he lives his life never loving and always waiting for betrayal.  For all his charisma and charm, he effectually has close to none of the things that people tend to value most in life: love, relationships, trust.

This movie reminds me of a quote from another movie named Russian Dolls.  The protagonist Xavier sums up his quest for love with these words: "If I think about all the girls I've known or slept with or just desired, they're like a bunch of Russian dolls. We spend our lives playing the game, dying to know who'll be the last. The teeny-tiny one, hidden inside all the others. You can't get to her right away. You will have to follow the progression. You have to open them, one by one, wondering, 'Is she the last?'"  What a sad game to play.  I have no clue of how many men and women view love in this manner.

Bond doesn't exist, but he can still capture our attention.  I hope that when I meet the right man he won't wall me out emotionally or even wonder what doll I am in his quest for the "last" one.  I hope he'll let me love him and love me deeply in return.  Poor James Bond, all the women he loves just end up getting killed.

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Thursday, November 30, 2006

Tonight, I mixed words together that I shouldn’t have given that I live in Northern Ireland.  Belfast is really thriving and prospering now that the troubles have not shown themselves strongly in the past several years.  Many immigrants are coming in from all around the world, but especially Poland.  Two very kind Rotarians gave me a home last night on their way back to Hillsborough.  We were talking about the population growth and I began to say that Belfast was poised to explode… but before I could finish, Irene kindly jumped in an advised me that those weren’t the best words to use to describe the changes in Belfast.  I acknowledged that was the worst possible choice of words to put together about the city and I made a mental note to put the words explode and Belfast on opposite ends of the spectrum.

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Wednesday, November 29, 2006

I visited Dublin yesterday and came back this morning.  I was only in the Republic of Ireland for less than twenty-four hours but in that short period of time, my visit allowed me to see Northern Ireland in a different light.  What threw me off was the whole “Irishness” of the Republic.  You could actually call people there Irish without offending anyone.  Of course you’d call them Irish.  What else would you?  It’s not necessarily the same when you live in another part of the island that just happens to be a part of another country called the United Kingdom.  In Northern Ireland you don’t see as many flags.  Flags have connotations that go along with them that have the potential to cause people to fight and hate here.  I can only begin to wonder if it is identity that causes all of this walking on egg shells.  Some people consider themselves Nationalists while others think of themselves as Unionists.  The stereotypes are that the Nationalists are Catholics and that their extremists are called Republicans whereas the Unionists are Protestants and their extremists are Loyalists.  Life is not cut and dried like that so those stereotypes do not apply through and through.  What happens though is when one group tries to negate the identity of the other and say that their own identity is right or better, it causes a huge rush of anger because one group is denying the other’s identity.  When the Union Jack or the Republic’s flag is flown there are so many strong connotations that go along with either and someone’s feelings are bound to be offended.  It feels odd to come from a country that identifies so strongly with its flag and then move to a land where flags are almost considered contentious.  If I slip and call someone from here Irish, I am excused as a foreigner, but someone from here has to know the layers upon layers of nuances that come with being from Northern Ireland.  If they call themselves British and loyal to the crown, one part of population hates them, but if they call themselves only Irish and desire that the north be united with the Republic of Ireland then they can be perceived as disloyal to the United Kingdom.  If they want to march to show their roots or beliefs, someone, somewhere is bound to be offended.  So much hurt doesn’t go away quickly but they are doing their best to strain towards a future where no matter how people identify themselves, they won’t have that identity negated.  It’s a difficult task but peace is still gracing Northern Ireland for the moment.  It’s many people’s wish and prayer that she stay permanently and help people be exactly who they are without anyone arguing that they have to change. 

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Saturday, November 25, 2006

I've been slowly reading through Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  I've been putting together sections that really made sense to me that I wanted to share.  On page 95 he talks about pride. 

• We say the people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not.  They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.  If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about.  It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. 

He also wrote some things about love within a relationship.  They struck me as making a lot of sense.

• A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way.  He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry. p.83

• Ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. p.84

• Love as distinct from "being in love" is not merely a feeling.  It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit p.85

• "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise.  It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.  p.85

One day, my friend Ruby stopped by my room to offer me some extra garlic bread she'd made and somehow we got on the topic of judging people.  She allowed me the opportunity to read aloud this section of Lewis' book that really made me focus on how we tend to judge people.

• Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.  When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God’s eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C.  When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God’s eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.
  
  It is as well to put this the other way round.  Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends.  Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler?  That is why Christians are told not to judge.  We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material.  But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.  p.71
   

• ...Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another.  They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven.  But I have come to see that they are right.  What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure – or enjoy – for ever.  One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at.  But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both.  Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it.  Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not.  The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.  pp.72-73

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Friday, November 24, 2006

I used to always think that it was never a bad idea to stop and ask for directions until something unusual happened the day that I was in the Botanic Garden and realized I didn’t know which path to take to get to the Physical Education Center (PEC).  There was an outdoor worker picking up some leaves nearby so I stopped and asked him which way I should go.  He shook his head vehemently at me and pointed towards a small sweeper vehicle close by.  He kept insistently pointing in that direction so I finally went over there and spoke with the driver of the vehicle.  I explained my predicament, all the while knowing if I had just taken one of the two paths I would have already been almost halfway to my destination.  The man shut down the sweeper and listened to my request but didn’t know exactly what I was talking about.  Finally, a bystander jumped in and said that I was heading the right direction.  The driver told me the man I had asked directions from was deaf and dumb.  The U.S.A. is really politically correct nowadays so I wasn’t used to hearing that terminology.  I thanked all the people for their help and went on my way.  Once I was a ways down the path, I stopped a moment and reflected on how ludicrous it is to ask a “deaf and dumb” person for directions.  Moral of the story: asking for directions isn’t always everything it’s cracked up to be.  ;-)

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Thursday, November 23, 2006

Stories and pictures from this lovely Thanksgiving day will be inserted once I get them written and downloaded.

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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

The days have dragged as it got closer and closer to T-day.  Thanksgiving is a holiday I feel ferociously protective of.  I do my best to unleash my claws on Halloween for taking up too much spotlight and I lash out at Wal-mart style Christmas that doesn't let you give Thanksgiving it's due respect because you are so harassed by the message that you're not on the ball if you're not out at Staple's at 6 a.m. the day after T-day for the door busters for Christmas gifts.  STOP IT, commercialism!!!  STOP taking a lovely holiday away from us just because it gets in the way of you profiting from Christmas.  Let us gather with our families in our homes and don't badger us to get out there and shop since we have the day off.  (I know, I know.  I'm not even in the states at the moment, nor was I last year.  I guess this is just pent up rage from previous years of seeing it happen and not being able to journal about it.) 

I love you, Thanksgiving.  You are my most favorite holiday because of what your heart is.  I want to be a more grateful person and you knock on my door every year and make me tow the line.  So even though I can't spend you with my dearly, beloved family this year... and even though it looks as though the turkey person here pulled out on us at the last second... I WILL celebrate you with my friends in all your radiant gratitude.  I WILL give thanks to God for His goodness and blessings.  I WILL sit down and toast my friends and wish them good health and then serve them the most expensive pumpkin pie I've ever made.  (The cans of pumpkin were shipped here from the states when a compassionate friend {thank you, Russell} found out they don't have pumpkin in a can here.)

Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a great night with those you love.
 - said as I munch on a pumpkin cookie -

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Sunday, November 19, 2006

It's a promise close to ten years old now, but I've kept it.  Today is the official grand opening of the Robyn & Korah Serious Face webpage.  For ten years now we have taken these serious photos together and it is time that their seriousness be shared with all humanity.  The webpage is far from complete seeing as there are ten years of gripping moments from our lives that we needed moments to sit and be grave about such as her wedding, my college graduation, a ska concert, a visit to McDonalds, the first time I visited her home, and the like.  These are pictures sealed in time.  They are but moments in the hour glass of our lives.  A mere bucket of water in comparison to the ocean of our existence.  So I ask that as you go back and click on the red font title to enter the site the site, please, refrain from speaking and contemplate the seriousness that lies before you.

Sincerely,
K.D.W., et al

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Saturday, November 18, 2006

The huge news is that Grandma is coming to Ireland!!!  I found her an amazing ticket through Aerlingus into Dublin for the last week of April.  How cool is that!  I'm so proud of her.  We've been planning this forever.  Even Grandpa's not giving her a hard time about it.  She got her passport at 69 years of age in order to come and visit me.  Wow!  Aren't grandma's the best?

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Friday, November 17, 2006

 

It's great having the last name Winn in the states... It's not so great having the last name Winn when getting your mail everyday at an international house.  Click on the picture to reveal my predicament.

 

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Saturday, November 11, 2006

Lovely day of listening to the rain on my window and Norah Jones sing "Turn Me On."  Came across a group that pulled me in called Crooked Still.  Bluegrass/folk rock/Americana appeals to me more and more and more as time passes. 

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Thursday, November 9, 2006

It looks as though I might be getting some visitors in the murky future.  Momma is trying as best as she can to find good rates to fly on over but probably after February is the update.  I sure hope the rates are good when she has the chance to look.  Anna says she's going to be in Greece for a while so she is going to drop by and see me since she doesn't consider a layover at Heathrow as a real United Kingdom experience.  It's a good thing she's coming because I was missin' my EFT peeps like crazy.  Greg is in-between engineering jobs so he might be free to hop over for a bit and visit me then scoot over to Germany to visit Timothy.  Timothy might get a chance to come on over here which I still consider mind blowing since we said goodbye six years ago and he went off to Germany and myself to Tennessee.  So much life has been lived in the meantime so it is a joy to think that we'll be able to meet up again and pal around just like old time minus the Col Ballroom and Davenport, Iowa.  I'm still hoping I can get Kali to come since Bret said that's something he'd consider letting her do.  Aunt Sherry said she'd do just about anything to get over here.  I am completely stoked that my wonderful friend Dave is making time for me by leaving England and coming to Northern Ireland for the first time in his life.  It's ridiculous.  We met thousands of miles away in Guadalajara, he's traveled through quite a few of the states in the U.S.A., yet he's never hopped on over to N.I.  We'll get that fixed soon enough.  Then... the card of all cards to lay down to trump them all... Grandma's comin'!  My precious, lovely grandma is getting her passport so we can share the experience of being here together.  When I was doing my undergrad, I looked at her one day and said, "Grandma, how about I start saving money and then you and I can go on a vacation together to Ireland after I graduate?"  Well, I didn't know I'd get the chance to live on this island but God is gracious and here I am and here will soon be grandma.  Is it possible for life to be too good?  If so, then I feel at times I've exceeded the limits of what is fair.  :-)

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So, Janice told me 6 years ago that I looked like her cousin.  I never in my life thought I would get to meet her but I was proven wrong when I did meet her three weeks ago.  What do you think?  Do I have an Irish twin?  Click on Irish twin to see the picture.  Can you see any resemblance in it?

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This is me getting to enjoy the Belfast waterfront at night

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Thursday, November 2, 2006

Not sure how well exactly this might work but I am going to try it anyway.  If you have a slow slow slow connection please do yourself a favor and just stop reading here.  If you can download things halfway fast though, I made an mp3 recording/musing today for you to click on/download and listen to at your leisure.  It's just a test of sorts.  Please let me know how it works out and that will help me decide if I want to go ahead with more audio entries.  trueswingdove@hotmail.com

Anyway, here goes...
Click on the date for a musing from today 2006-11-02

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Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Last night was Halloween.  Boy do they like their Halloween here.  It was a little eerie to hear fire crackers going off almost non-stop throughout the night.  I was down at the PEC helping wash up the kayaks from the weekend trip and I asked the Belfasters, "Does this seem weird to you at all?"  On the way down to kayak club I was offered a biscuit (cookie) by three gangsters and a guy dressed as Heidi just because I smiled at their costumes as I was passing.  I disregarded caution and gratefully accepted a biscuit from them.  It was yummy.  As I chomped on it I passed by a shark at the door of an apartment.  The guy's hands and arms were disguised as a man's legs in the jaws of the shark.  Shark told me to come to his party but I told him I had to keep pushin' on.  My flatmate Adrienne says that Halloween is an excuse for girls to dress up like whores.  Saturday Night Live did a sketch where Molly Shannon was supposed to dress up "normal" for Halloween but she ended up coming as a "kitty cat prostitute."  I wish I could have found it on youtube.com because it's the perfect example to what Adrienne had to say.  Best I could come up with was this site that gives an example of kcp.  This morning I saw Snow White make her way to a car parked in the street in front of my room.  It was about noon and she looked pretty rough.  She had some smeared makeup and her perky red bow headband in her hair as she carried her children's costume crumbled up in her right hand.  Guess the party's over.

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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

In my searchings to try to connect with God more I came across some old Puritan Prayers that I thought were absolutely thought provoking.  I wish I had been exposed to them sooner.  This was one of the first ones I read.

Confession and Petition

Holy Lord, I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find Thy mind in Thy Word, of neglect to seek Thee in my daily life. My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, but I bless Thee that they will not stand against me, for all have been laid on Christ. Go on to subdue my corruptions, and grant me grace to live above them. Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection, but do Thou rule over me in liberty and power.

I thank Thee that many of my prayers have been refused. I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness. Go on with Thy patient work, answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it. Purge me from every false desire, every base aspiration, everything contrary to Thy rule. I thank Thee for Thy wisdom and Thy love, for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject, for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and remove my dross.

No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin. If Thou shouldst give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sins, or to have them burnt away with trial, give me sanctified affliction. Deliver me from every evil habit, every accretion of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of Thy grace in me, everything that prevents me taking delight in Thee. Then I shall bless Thee, God of jeshurun, for helping me to be upright.

"give me sanctified affliction."  The choice is, do I want what is easy and complacent for my life without struggle or do I want something more valuable but more painful to come by over time?  God, help me not to live a mediocre life.

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Monday, October 30, 2006

I knew there had to be an easier way to share my photos here and I finally found it.  Here's my new little trick I figured out.  I can now link you through this to pictures of Rachel's birthday party!  Tah-dah!!!  More pictures to finally come following this fantastic discovery.  Please push the F11 button at the top of your keyboard so you can see the pictures better.  Just push it again to make the screen go back to normal once you're done.

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Sunday, October 29, 2006

I had a blast kayaking this weekend in Gortin and I would love to write tons about it, but that will come at a time when it's earlier than 2 a.m.  For now I will settle on my surprise find of the day.  I was riding back to Belfast in a van when Emma's ipod spewed out "How High" by Madonna.  I'd never heard it before since it is off her most recent album, but I sat puzzled as my stereotype about her was broken as I listened to a contemplative Madonna sing.  I felt like I was listening to jazzed up version of Ecclesiastes.  Wierd.  I decided to put some of the lyrics up just in case anyone else wanted to have a mental jolt concerning their perception of the writer of "Like a Virgin."

How High - Madonna

It's funny, I spent my whole life wanting to be talked about
I did it, just about everything to see my name in lights
Was it all worth it? And how did I earn it?
Nobody's perfect, I guess I deserve it

Chorus:
How high are the stakes?
How much fortune can you make?
Does this get any better?
Should I carry on?
Will it matter when I'm gone?
Will any of this matter?

It's funny how everybody mentions my name, they're never very nice
I took it, just about everything except my own advice
Was it all worth it? And how did I earn it?
Nobody's perfect, I guess I deserve it

How high, does it make a difference?
Nothing lasts forever
Should I, will it matter when I'm gone?
Will any of this matter?

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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

I had a friend offer me a free ticket to a show put on by a hip-hop rapper called K'Naan.  I don't consider myself much of a hip-hop/rap person, but this guy pulled me into his music.  He did a song that made me think of my brother Jonas.  It was called, "What's Hardcore"  It's chorus simply said, "So what's hardcore?  Really, are you hardcore?  Hmm."  My brother loves hardcore and has talked about how you can spot the posers within the genre, but even beyond that, he has talked about watching an MTV show about the roots of rap.  He said that it's roots were in speaking out and effecting change.  I think that K'Naan has remained truer to Hip-hop/raps roots than most American rappers.  He is from Somalia and he grew up with death and violence.  I think I enjoyed what he had to say because he wasn't coming at hip-hop/rap from the sexual/gangsta extremes that it is today.  He said, "I can't help it if I make 50 cent look like Limp Bizkit."  I think I enjoyed what he had to sing about because he was keeping true to his life experiences.  His lyrics weren't about everybody in the club gettin' tipsy but things like, "I remain very little relieved, and at thug rappers, I remain very little intrigued, and can you blame me, look how we lived in the late eighties, throwing rocks at the crazy ladies, and when we'd play these, crazy games , the whole crew had crazy names, even had a cripple we use to call em lazy legs, but my faith remains, untouched and unchanged, still in my block you hear more shots than a gun range."  He wasn't my usual musical fare but there's always something to learn from people if you are willing to listen.  Unfortunately/fortunately, I listened to my craving for bacon and fried onions after the concert was over and had the most deliciously, decadent bacon & onion sandwich of my life after the concert was over.  It was totally excessive and I can still feel it sitting just underneath my heart even as I write this, but man, when bacon comes a callin' you don't say un-uh.

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Monday, October 23, 2006

I talked online with a former student of mine from Mexico.  Carlos cracked me up because he said, "You have a baby miss winn?"  I thought, "Where in the world did he get that?"  Quickly a line from the bottom of my website came up.  "My Biography - My baby.  I put hours into it.  I'll shout out to Aaron and Sarah for providing the background."  "Oh!" I said.  I explained the situation and thoroughly let him know that I don't have a baby here with me, gracias a Dios. 

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Sunday, October 22, 2006

What a great weekend!  I got in touch with some swing dancers finally so it looks as though I will be allowed the chance to lindy again.  It's rotten I don't have any of my vintage clothing with me because I'd get to wear some every week.  I met up with the dancers around 6 and had a blast dancing again.  They haven't had any girls who know Lindy really well for quite a while so they treated me like an utter princess.  I felt totally spoiled.
The luck o' the Irish must be rubbing off on me because I also won free tickets to see a comedian, Good Wil Hodgson  that night at the Belfast Festival.  I took a friend with me and we stopped into the Grill Room after watching the comedian.  I had heard the strains of a woman singing "Wade in the Water" They drifted through the doorway of the first floor of an hotel.  I was pulled through the doorway and I begged my friend to stop with me for a moment and listen to the music.  We finally sat down when a waiter asked us if he could help us.  I sat transfixed as the duo played an almost perfect set list of songs like Moon Dance - Van Morrison, High and Dry - Radiohead, etc.  I sat and enjoyed the music and didn't feel forced to talk because my friend is in music anthropology and knows how to just sit and listen to music without feeling awkward.  They closed with Heartbreak Hotel and I found myself humming and longing to dance to it in my mind on the street as we walked home.  Some nights are hard to top. 

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Friday, October 20, 2006

The era of my site being an orphan annie is now over.  My cousin Michelle reminded me that the time had come for me to start sharing my life in Northern Ireland and stop hogging it all to myself.  I sit here and a thousand things go through my mind to write about from the things I've experienced since arriving here.  I had a valid excuse for not updating for the first three weeks because I didn't have internet access, but even after I got it I've just been so busy adjusting to a new life and living out so many fantastic things that I haven't been collecting my thoughts here.  I miss it.  So... how do I eat an elephant?... one bite at a time.  From the thousand things I'll begin with the main one: I made it!  I'm actually here.  Years and years of dreaming and I'm finally on this island that is almost magical in the minds of so many Americans.

IT'S SO COOL!

I couldn't ask for more.  One of the first days I was here I looked out the window of my room to see this gorgeous double rainbow covering the darkened sky even while the sun shined on the houses straight in front of me.  It was like a lovely promise from God of good things to come and blessings in this new step in my life.  About a week later I was able to go to a traditional harvest service at the home church of my friend Errol.  He grew up in a rural area so he drove me and his fiancée (my unbelievably fantastic and wonderful friend Kathryn who has been a God-send and made my life so much better here) out there but on the way he stopped at a higher point on the mountain so that I could run out and gaze at the green from a higher vantage point.  I just stopped every mental process that I was capable of stopping and gazed at it all in utter silence until I turned back to them with a goofy grin of joy hanging on my face.  This is the place from the books I read as a child.  This is the place carved into my consciousness that I would get to see one day with my own eyes before I died.  It was all real and it was all spread out before me.  I thanked the Creator of it all for letting me see it and slipped into the car content to know that I am allowed a year to live in it.  I can't ask for more.  I really can't ask for more.

I am starting to put up videos at youtube.  The one of Rachel and Errol is from here.  There are more to follow.  I will also put up pictures of the adventures of me, Kathryn and Company.  Oh, and Happy Diwali to all my Indian and Malay friends.

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August 23, 2006

Dear Friends and Family,

I realize that it has become quite apparent that I allowed myself a break from updating every week since I have been home.  There was just so much to catch up on and none of it followed any kind of a routine.  I promised myself that once I get to Ireland I am going to pour some time into making a new format for the website and that I will start writing weekly stories again.  I needed the free time for certain but I am itching to get back into it.  I love this website and though it is pretty raggedy ann right now, it will be looking lovely again as the weeks progress.  Poco a poco as Cynthia would tell me.  It's all a question of time.  Like this picture right underneath.  I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to figure out how to put text into a picture.  Once I master that skill there are so many things I can do with that, but it's all a matter of time.  Now that I invested the 20 minutes to figure it out, there's a lot of cool things I can do with it now.

On a depressing note, I made an elderly gentleman fall over on an escalator today.  Boy was did I feel chagrined.  It started out all innocently enough.  I was purchasing plus size little girl jeans at J.C. Penny's when I heard the man ask about electric razors.  He wanted to buy one made in the U.S.A.  I perked up when I heard that because I have a very solid belief that one day the U.S.A. is going to wake up to realize that we have shipped away more jobs than we realized and then we will be sad because our economy will plummet and we will have to live without our jet skis and cable because we can't afford them anymore.  Slowly, we will rediscover our roots and pull ourselves up by the boot straps but not before a whole lot of ugliness occurs.  But I digress... anyway, I picked up my speed and caught up to him just as he was beginning to go down the escalator.  I told him I appreciated that he wanted to buy products made in America even if it was going to cost him more.  He began to try to show me his pocket watch.  I assumed that it had special significance that caused him to take pride in American products.  As he fumbled with his watch fob, I got a helpless feeling as we reached the bottom of the escalator and I didn't see him making any preparations to step off.  I knew what was coming as his feet hit the scary place where you have to make the hop onto stationary ground.  He landed on the vicious stairs that just kept pushing forward.  People nearby saw what was happening as I frantically got to push the big red button you're not allowed to push unless you trick elderly gentlemen into getting eaten by escalators.  I beat out a store manager for the privileged push by just a blink of an eye.  A crowd had formed as the manager helped pull the man from the stairs and asked him repeatedly if he was ok and if he wanted to sit down.  The man insisted he was just fine and proceeded to try to tell me his original story as the manager held his elbow and stood next to him like a mannequin with his right hand pointing towards a chair.  After 11 painful seconds of the manager frozen and the older man trying to preserve some dignity, the manager accepted that there was nothing more he could do and he moved away as people began to somewhat disperse.  The gentlemen went on to tell me that he had bought his pocket watch at a swap meet for three dollars and that it had been shipped all the way from China, so how in the world were we supposed to compete with something like that.  I pulled out my somber head shake of sorrow to show him I had sympathy and then I thanked him for giving me that lesson.  We both went our separate ways.  Me to go on to tell Grandma and Jordan of my shameful behavior and him onto hopefully buying more "made in america."  I shudder to think of the day when men like him are gone and all our money is in foreign countries.  Bye-bye National Forests.

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August 3, 2006

Dear Friends and Family,

Being at home has been fantastic but I have gotten out of routines that I established in Mexico, one of them being updating my website weekly.  I've been experiencing some little problems with it as I work to figure out how to design a different website.  I think I've got the problems figured out so I might be able to update a bit more frequently now.  I feel sad when I go to friends blogs and there is nothing new to read.  I don't want to put you in the same boat.  So, with that, I'll put up a couple things that have been going on lately.  I wrote my very last Viviendo en Mexico.  I'll put that up at the end.  One of the coolest things that has occurred lately is I went with my grandparents to Ollie Big Days.  Ollie is one of those little Iowa towns that you drive past on the highway and never think a thing about because it is too little to explore, but Ollie has a lot of significance for me.  It's where my father's family is from.  I can walk down the street and about every third person is related to me by either blood or marriage.  It is a place of roots and a slower pace of life.  It is one of the safest places I have ever been.  You can leave your front door unlocked because no one does anything.  Jonas says he wouldn't be able to handle living in Ollie because it's too quiet and nothing ever goes on.  I think that's the exact reason why I could live there.  I like being able to walk in the middle of the street barefoot and feel the warmth the sun has left in the payment after a long day.  I like walking my cousins out to the baseball field and letting them run around as a glowing pink sky says goodbye to me over a stretch of healthy corn.  I like taking a walk around midnight with my grandma and looking up and seeing the milky way again since a Wal-mart distribution center 3 miles from my house in Illinois polluted the night sky with its' stadium lights.  In Ollie, you run into little kids riding their bikes around town and two of them are distant cousins and two are neighbor girls.  You can walk to the post office, the main street tavern, relatives homes, the park in the middle of it all and pretty much nothing else because the town is dying.  It's not really sad, it's just the way it is.  That's Ollie.  We celebrated the big days for the first time in years this year.  The parade consisted of veterans, old tractors, shriners, some politicians and a couple floats.  Royal asked, "Where's the marching band and all the floats?"  Well, that's the way it is in Ollie.  We didn't have a marching band, but by golly, I had a good time and even got some of the candy scraps because the kids had more candy than they knew what to do with.  Ollie might not be everyone's paradise, but it feels like home to me and there is a security I get just from being there.  Money and a big important life can't make that materialize, but Ollie does it for me.

My last article that went in the Daily Gazette

Viviendo en México (Living in Mexico)

It almost feels too impossible for me to believe, but in less than four hours, I said goodbye to Guadalajara and returned to Chicago.  I came home last week.  It was almost anticlimactic.  After having lived my life in a foreign country for almost an entire year, it seemed ludicrous that I could just walk onto a plane and with the passage of only four hours; I could leave behind me a different language and a different pace of life.  I cannot even fly from one side of my country to the other in less time than that.  It floors me how technology has made it just as convenient for me to drop in and see my friends in a different country as to see my grandmother in Arizona. 

I am actually home!  Now that I am back, I keep marveling over the spaciousness of where we live.  I have been taking rides on the back of my dad’s motorcycle and have been shouting at him over the wind to pay attention to how pretty the fields look with all their perfect stalks of corn.  They just go on and on.  We live in such a fertile part of the world. 

When I used to travel a lot in the United States, I had friends from different states that would tease me about how flat Illinois is.  When they would really lay it on thick, I would just let them run out of steam and then I would begin describing to them the richness of the soil where I live.  I would paint a word picture about a freshly plowed field with soil so brown it almost looked black.  Sometimes when I see those fields, I get the urge to pull my car over and take off my shoes and dig my bare feet deep into the sun warmed soil just as beach goer would dig her toes into the sand.  I love the land and no matter how far away I keep going, I am realizing that my roots are here.  After living in a city of over six million, it does my heart good to look out from country roads and see miles and miles of growth and life.

So my time in Mexico is officially over now.  Any Spanish speaking I do here will be because I seek it out, not because it is a normal part of my everyday life.  I went to church on Sunday and Mr. Delgado welcomed me home in Spanish.  It was second nature to respond to him appropriately.  I am going to miss the language a lot.  It was not easy learning it!  I did not write to you much about the hard times, but those first four months were mentally exhausting.  I can now stand though on the opposite side of my year in Mexico and say that even though it was painful at times, it was beyond worth it for me.  I wish I could communicate exactly how the time there caused me to value my family more and treasure Mexican people. 

Being at home for me is straight up easier than living in Mexico.  No language frustrations, no cultural confusion, just the comfort of what I grew up with.  So with that said, I am going to enjoy these next two months before I set out on the next adventure.  I am going to take a break before heading overseas to start a new life in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I will not be speaking Spanish but the stories from there will hopefully be just as colorful.  Goodbye, Mexico.  Thanks for being so good to me.  Adios a todos.

 
Just for kicks, here's a pictures of what I longed for when I came home.  It was the end of the blackberry season but I was able to pick enough in order to create that one lovely, creamy, purple bowlful of my craving.  God is generous.  :-)

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July 12, 2006

Dear Friends and Family,

The past week has been a blur of returning home and spending time with family.  I wanted to put something better up than this but too much is going on.  I am going to be working on modifying this just as soon as I get a wee bit more settled in.  I've got tons of things to write about and good stories to share.  In the mean time, I'll try to put up some of my favorite Mexico pictures in my picture section at the bottom of the page.  Oh, and here's a picture of me and Dave (the President of the Rock Falls Rotary Club - my sponsor club for the Rotary Ambassadorial scholarship.)  This is my new hair cut, my first real hairstyle since 1993, I think.  Plus, I've been working out and I have a keen desire to know if it is making any difference.  (Laughing out loud :-)  I'll be putting more content up as time allows because I love this site and I feel like it's my way to connect with the people I care about so you can be certain I will not leave things like this for long.

Love,
Korah