Adventures in Linguistics

Act I, Scene 1
JOSIE is headed to New York for a Ladies' Weekend at OLIVIER and JULS' lovely apartment. OLIVIER is leaving town but will have one evening to spend with JOSIE and JULS before leaving for a bachelor party at the END OF THE UNIVERSE. OLIVIER texts JOSIE to discuss arrival times and dinner.

OLIVIER: Hey josie! Excited to see you tonight! Do you have an ETA? Also, I'm trying to plan dinner. I was thinking guacamole and chips to start, then chili and rice. K?

JOSIE: OMG Livvy you are amazeballs!! Cannot wait to see you. I have a meeting at 1, expect it to run an hour, and then head down, so...6 or 7, depending on traffic??

OLIVIER: Great! Does the menu agree with you? Juls thought you may not be a fan of guac...And yes, my balls are amazing. ;)
JOSIE: Ummmm guac is not just a food, but a lifestyle choice for me. Everything sounds fabulous including your balls. lololol
OLIVIER: Perfecto! Wait til I dip them in chili!

Act II, Scene 1

JOSIE continues to prep her legal philosophy presentation in the SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY.  OLIVIER continues to be excited.

OLIVIER: Spicy balls!
OLIVIER: Spicy balls!
JOSIE: Oh my goodness I can HEAR you being overstimulated lol
OLIVIER: I'm trembling with excitement! 9:22 AM

JOSIE: hahahaha oh Livvy it's only been a month and I miss you so
OLIVIER: Ditto! Hurry up and get down here!
JOSIE: On it boss!

Act III, Scene 1
OLIVIER dispenses words of wisdom as JOSIE gets ready to go to class.

JOSIE: I'd tell my law prof to screw but I am terrified of him. I think he's a Highlander I don't want to challenge him.
OLIVIER: Law profs seem terrifying, but they're all fragile souls, otherwise they would be practicing law instead of hiding at a law school. Tell him I said that.
JOSIE: hahaha I will tell him and then give him your address. He's very sweet but his brain is terrifying

Act IV, Scene 1
OLIVIER revolutionizes the English language.  


OLIVIER: Btw, that blog about our wedding was incredible!!! So touching and well-written. You are amaze-vag.

Fin.

Love and New York

This past weekend, I had the supreme pleasure of singing in the wedding of my dear friends Julia and Olivier.  It was nerve wracking and occasionally frustrating and absolutely amazing.  I love singing, and this is the first time I've sung for friends with whom I am this close.  Luckily, I was able to sing the processional - "Ave Maria" - from the side of the altar, thus staving off a complete sobby meltdown upon seeing Juls come down the aisle in her stunning dress.  The ceremony was beautiful and I felt like I was getting a special treat as I sang from the front of the church; looking out at all of the happy faces there to celebrate Juls and Liv's special day made my heart grow three sizes with every hymn and psalm.

I spent that weekend in the company of old friends - Juls, Liv, Ben, Lucy, Katy, Lee, Dan, Tiff - and new ones.  The night before the wedding, Lucy and Lee and I went to see The Hunger Games while we waited for Ben to make his way to New York, then engaged in a traditional Olivier orgy of food and drink.  On the day of the wedding, Liv, Ben and I went on a rescue mission to the post office to pick up presents for the mother and father of the bride that had been trapped there.  (It's not a wedding until you've defrauded a government agency!) Later, I curled my hair perched on the edge of the couch while Ben napped and Katy buzzed around getting ready.  I felt so lucky to share this stunning weekend with people I love so much and for so many reasons.  These are people who know me better than anyone, and who bear me up when all else fails.  I am nothing without my friends.

Normally, any weekend with this group leaves my heart singing, but this weekend in particular was exceptionally stunning.  I felt throughout as though I was in a museum dedicated to love - love of all kinds, of all shapes, of all sizes and details.  From the time I arrived on Thursday for the rehearsal, much was made about the impending clash of cultures - Julia's family is Irish, stoic, dryly hilarious, and somewhat feelings-averse, whereas Olivier's French/Puerto Rican blend is effusive and more or less a whirling vortex of bisous and hugging.  There was only one sure thing: it was going to be spectacular.  And so it was - there were so many moments of beauty in these connections and interactions.  Those two families are definitive proof that love is a many splendored thing.

That's what I thought about, the whole weekend: just how many kinds of love there are, and how many were on display.  The ease of conversation between long-distant family members brought back together.  Little stories about everyday life that shape sisters and parents and children.  The drive to produce an orgy of food for visiting friends the night before your wedding.  Fussing over getting everything perfect for the ones you love; snapping when it isn't, glowing when it is.  Worrying about the welfare of a pigeon who has taken up residence on a balcony in Queens, and her two eggs.  A musical war between inappropriate rugby songs and old Irish songs and, mysteriously, rap.  Unfunny non-jokes made to ease the nervousness.  Shaking hands at the podium.  Hugs and yelling and dancing.  Tears.  Nested hands.  They're all manifestations of love, and it is nothing short of miraculous that so many of these wove a soft blanket around this wedding.  I believe in miracles, yes.

There is one more love that I couldn't help but notice that weekend...the love you can have for a place.  The reception closed with Sinatra's "New York, New York," with the dance floor packed with dangerously-high-kicking friends and everyone singing along.  There are New Yorkers who can be obnoxious about New York, but there is no denying that there is something special about it.  You cannot visit New York and not feel it's frantic, beating heart, even in the quietest neighborhoods, and you cannot, having felt this, question that your time in New York, there in that moment, wherever you are and whatever you're doing, is just one small part in a long, grand, strange, wonderful story that has been written for centuries and will go on for many more.  At 3 in the morning I looked out the window of the Cuckoo's Nest, from the afterparty, and watched Juls laugh with her friends, in her stunning, billowing dress, head sailing back, one small moment in the life of the City but so in control and the sole owner of the night, and thought, "this is a special place."  And it is.

Congratulations, Juls and Liv.  I couldn't be luckier to know you.

This Above All: To Thine Own Self Be True

POLONIUS

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

                          Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3

My friend Kym and I seem to be creating quite a little echo chamber of sentiment this week.  She incorporated my recent post on the Tragically Hip into her thinking about her life and where it would and should take her.  She  is in the process of thinking more about who she is and who she wants to be, and this, I think, is when you really know you're going to be okay: when you're able to look at the good and bad of your life and face it all with an understanding of who your past makes you and just how much freedom you have to choose who you will be.  I loved how Kym understood my babbling about nostalgia, and the way she was able to use it as a lens through which to consider herself.  It can be hard to figure out how to balance a longing for former glories with the need to direct your life forward.

Kym's considerations of her life and future reminded me of something my Mom did for me.  When I was young, I was really freaked out by going to the bathroom at my elementary school, and this meant that I would often come home having walked a mile while desperately having to go to the bathroom.  Mom had a talk with me about listening to my body (presumably while thinking "this is just great, my child is going to make her bladder actually explode. Why did I have children, again?"), and the next day I opened my lunchbox and found a note that read "This above all: to thine own self be true" and this:

That's a little cat from a Red Rose Tea box.  Red Rose has been including these little things - called whimsies, adorably - in their tea for decades, and we used to have a lot of them.  I've kept this little cat since then, and it's probably the possession I've held onto the longest; I've had it since I was 6 or 7.  It reminds me of several things, first, of course, being of how amazingly lucky I am to have a mom who not only thought it was appropriate to counsel her elementary school daughter via Hamlet, but also knew she was correct to do so, since my reading level was such that I could figure out that older diction and not get thrown by "thine."  It also reminds me that listening to myself is what will keep me on the right path, and that it takes continual reflection.

I bring this little cat with me whenever I'm feeling nervous or trying something new.  It was with me at my high school and college graduations, with me at American University and Assumption College.  It was with me at orientation when I started my Ph.D at Boston University.  It was with me when I debated the Cambridge Union Society and when I sang the National Anthem for the first time at the DCU Center.  It was with me when I went to Obama's Inauguration and when I was inducted into Phi Sigma Tau, the Philosophy honor society.  I was with me at my book release parties, at opera recitals, and next to my computer when I sent articles off to journals and conferences.  It will be with me at many other key intersections of my life, because it will never stop being the most useful reminder I have.

This above all: to thine own self be true.

You'll Never Walk Aloooooooooooneeeeeeeee

Sometimes I have bad days and I'm cranky or sad or fighty, but I know in the end that I'll be okay.  I know this because every now and then one of my friends will text me something like this:

And the text "Hi! What is new? I miss you and this reminded me of you haha"

My friends rule.

WARNING: School Incoming!

This semester's Murderer's Row:

• Development of American Constitutional Law  This class was taught in a early-90s high school looking room this morning; it was a little trippy.  However, the professor is a new one named David Glick and all early indications are that he is awesome, starting with his Bachelor's degree in Political Science and Astrophysics.  Yes really.
• Approaches to the Study of International Relations  I'm currently planning to make IR my sub-field (Political Theory is the major field; American Politics the minor field), so I'm taking this core to prepare.
• Freedom  How can you go wrong with a name like "Freedom"?  Taught by my favorite professor - Dr. Judith Swanson - and full of Hayek, who I've been meaning to read more of.  Can't wait!  
• Quantitative Research Methods  This is not going to go well.  I was going to take this last semester put it off because I basically managed to pick the four hardest classes in the program for the same semester.  Thus I have read two syllabi for this course from two different professors coming from two different backgrounds that say, essentially, "this is useless for Political Theory people."  Obviously, more knowledge isn't a bad thing, and I probably SHOULD learn this, but since I'm almost certainly going to struggle, I'm a little resentful.

This is my last year of classes in my Ph.D program.  It seemed to go by so quickly, and in many senses it did; but on the other hand, I can practically feel my brain trying to make space for more smart up there.  My program isn't perfect, but it's been a wonderful environment for me to argue and talk with so many people like and unlike me.  While I am not as close to my classmates as I might wish, thanks to the commuting, I was thrilled to feel genuine joy throughout today as I saw my friends - Erin, of course, without whom I would be entirely lost, and who inspires me with her great attitude and ridiculously fantastic smile, but also seeing Tai Yi and Fatima and Doug and everyone else made me so excited to start a new year.  I'm really lucky.

How to Tell if You Are True Friends

Pretty much every time I get a wedding invitation, I make some stupid joke about being there with bells on when I send in my response card because I am a gigantic dork and can't help myself.  Apparently, the idea of appearing in public with bells on is very appealing to me.  Now that you know this, you can imagine the childlike glee with which I opened the following RSVP card.

This is undeniable proof that the wonderful couple that sent this is indeed a pair of true friends, and will be true friends until we're shriveled, old and ultimately dead. 

"Will not be there because heard there would be people with bells?"  BISH PLEASE.  If you cannot appreciate the joy of being there with bells on, you go ahead and keep your lame self at home.

Books Yay!: Journey into America, by Dr. Akbar Ahmed

Most people have belts of life events, when everyone you know is getting married, or having a kid, or buying a house/condo, etc.  For nerds, there’s an occasional Publication Belt, and this is one of my favorite instances of said phenomenon.  I went to American University with Frankie Martin, who worked as a researcher on Dr. Akbar Ahmed’s Journey into America project, which resulted in this book.  I’ve followed the press and the team as they’ve progressed through this project, and I believe that they are doing essential work.  I also appreciate that Dr. Ahmed was wise enough to pick someone so level-headed and rational as Frankie to work on this project.  I cannot imagine a better team member and truth be told, the more I think about it, the more I rue the absence of projects in my life into which I could rope Frankie.  Besides being a top notch academic, he’s also a wonderful friend with a high tolerance for weirdness, which is essential in my relationships.  I remember one day when we were going to a Baltimore Orioles vs. New York Yankees game with him at Camden Yards, and when he met me at my apartment, I was decked out in head to toe Red Sox gear and drinking milk out of a martini glass because all my normal glasses for milk were in the dishwasher (and also because I am super, super classy).  Frankie was completely unfazed by all of this, and still went to the game with me, which turned out to be an eventful one since an End of the World style thunderstorm came up in the middle of the game and we stayed in the stands, watching the water drain off the field before the game resumed.  This is the kind of academic you need – one who stands with his demented friends even in the face of alarming weather and against all sanity.  Perhaps this is why the resulting book is so compelling.

Journey into America seeks to create an anthropological profile of Muslims in America and to pair it with a brief, relevant history of Muslim immigration and origins.  To do this, the team went to over seventy-five cities and more than a hundred mosques, interviewing Muslims, neighbors, other religious leaders, and other “men on the street” to better understand how individuals and communities approach their relationship with Islam.  The depth of this study provides a true portrait of how Muslim life in all its iterations proceeds.  No branch of Islam is left unexplored, and no environment is missing.  The inclusion of non-Muslim voices adds to the work as well, and adds significantly to the cultural and social study of the Muslim community.  After all, no one lives in a vacuum, and it would be a poor anthropological study indeed if it was limited to Muslims alone.

The resulting view of Muslim life is both surprising and completely predictable: Muslims come in all stripes and shades, and they all have complex relationships with their American identity.  Some are traditionally devout, some are devout in a more modernized way.  Some are inclusive, some exclusive.  This is not, however, to say that their Muslim identity is irrelevant.  In all of the cases shown, the subjects showed some tension between their Muslim identity, in which their religious identity stretches into their cultural life, and the American society, which is overall much more morally inclusive and undisciplined.  I think that this would probably be the case for most religious groups; America’s inclusive nature means that pulling out any one group will show that the group has different codes of conduct and ethics, which would generally seem more strict than American society at large.

I do feel that this book suffers from a slight shading of personal morality from two of the main players, Dr. Ahmed and researcher Hailey Woldt.  Dr. Ahmed obviously feels that there are serious moral deficiencies in American society, particularly amongst women, and I do feel that this comes through in some of the writing in an nonconstructive way.  These sentiments are often backed up by agreement from Woldt, an adult convert to Catholicism, whose more conservative Catholic views mirror Dr. Ahmed’s sentiments on American moral consequences.   I think this is a simple consequence of the reality I mentioned above – that any religious group will appear morally disparate from American morality at large – but it is a bit unfortunate that this comes through in the presentation at times.  It makes it a bit jarring for the reader.

I have high hopes for this book, because I think its description of Muslim America can go a long way in normalizing and “de-villifying” Muslims for Americans suffering from post-September-11th Islamophobia.  Dr. Ahmed also emphasizes the importance of dialogue in healing the wounds and misunderstandings that cut both ways.  Indeed, when Dr. Ahmed and his team interacted with more isolated Islamic communities, a clear detriment to their relationship with their immediate community and larger environment could be seen.  This is an important book and an important perspective, and I hope that it comes to occupy a place in our public discourse.

Crossposted at The Outpost

 

Don't Waste Enough Time on the Internet? Read These Blogs!

It's the weekend after Christmas, so I'm kind of catching up and relearning skills like Making It To Frank* On A Routine Basis and Not Having Panic Attacks About Phantom Due Dates. One of the things I have on my catch up list is posting something about various friends' and wish-they-were-my-friends' blogs. This way, you can read my FRIENDS' blogs and hopefully transfer ideas about content to ME so you'll be reading one of these and thinking "boy, look at all this awesome hilarity that Josie posted for my benefit!" And then I'll feel better about the blogger Tourettes that I suffer from.

Here Comes the Boogey-Mom
My friend Erin started this blog after her long-dormant writing bug came back with a vengeance. She's just starting out, but there have already been stories about Boston Terriers (and other dogs), her adorable children and the challenges of parenting, Johnny Cash, monsters, and witches. That seems like a pretty good deal for a fledgling effort, PLUS Erin is a great writer and knows the difference between they're, there and their, so already I'm gonna say you're ahead of about 95% of the Internet. Based on my knowledge of Erin, I am going to guess that other topics will eventually include fashion, bats, literature, and art, along with more about the kids and Gosh the Boston Terrier.

On Cardamom and Cast Iron
This is Celia's blog, and look, I can't really offer you a lot of blogs written by wizards, but I think that Celia is a pretty good substitute. Celia posts about her family and their travels (as a Navy family, they have lots of those), and about her cooking. This is where the wizarding comes in. Celia is always talking to me about how she's whipping some kind of of magical concoction, oh and by the way it's vegan or vegetarian or gluten free and oh PS, she started with some kind of insane French recipe that was like 97% animal products and gluten, but she makes it healthy and delicious. Look, I don't know how she does it, so I assumed magic about seven years ago, and that's been working out really well for me so far. The pictures alone are worth a click, and the recipes are always great.

Scrittore Creativo
The Lucy has a blog! She started it in the middle of her MFA and then discovered that blogging consistently during a grad program while also trying to avoid neglecting home and hearth is actually really hard, but now that she is DONE WITH HER MFA HOORAY, she has rebooted the blog. She does really excellent movie reviews, amongst other things, which is great for me since apparently I really like reading movie reviews but never ever going to movies. Yes, it is weird, and no, I cannot explain it. In any case, Lucy also posts about entertainment in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area as well. I can vouch for Lucy's great taste, so this is a great guide.

The Bloggess
I discovered The Bloggess when I read a story about a Christmas miracle that happened on her blog. ...No, really. She was offering 20 $30 gift certificates to people who didn't have money for the holidays, and when they quickly got snapped up, people suddenly started offering to donate as well. $42,000 later, she had coordinated Christmas for hundreds of donors and giftees. How cool is that? I liked her style and kept reading older posts, and man, she is funny. You will laugh your ass off. It's just as valid a workout program as those idiotic balance ball shoes1

*I always think that everyone knows this, yet I always have someone pop up all "ARE YOU CHEATING ON RICH WHAT IS GOING ON" and I have to explain that my marriage is not in fact falling apart. Frank is my trainer, and he is awesome and everyone should go to him because he has some kind of voodoo magic that makes you love him even though he is kind of maybe evil. Also he has a tire you get to hit with a sledgehammer. It is like adult recess except with Frank and Diane supervising and no map tag.

Bonus Book Review Brought To You By Canada: The Hockey Sweater

So I'm sure you've all adjusted to my very well executed schedule of Wednesday book reviews (...snerk), but I HAVE to bust in with a review of my new favorite book. I came home on Thursday of last week and had a package from Amazon...but I had not ordered anything from Amazon! I opened it up and found this:
Now, let's be clear here. I love surprises (I'll be 30 in three years, people) and I love the Canadiens, so any surprise that involves adorable Habs-based books is going to be a win. I still did not know who it was from, so I harassed my friends via email and found out it was a gift from my favorite Canadian/Leafs fan/hockey player/Torontonian/lumberjack/kilt-wearer/nocturnal cuddler/wrestler, Ben! Ben is awesome, and was very nice after the USA-Canada game in the Olympics, all things considered. (He is wrong about Gretzky a lot, though.)

Anyway, this gift was a base level of awesome, but then - THEN! - I read it, and all my dreams came true, including several I didn't even know I had. The story is about a little boy who has a Rocket Richard jersey that he loves into oblivion. His mom orders him a replacement, but the store sends a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. HORRORS! He wears it to a game, gets shunned by children AND adults, throws a temper tantrum, gets told to go to church to repent for his hockey tantrum, and then prays for revenge. I am spoiling this because a.) I think all of Canada has read it already and b.) it cannot be contained! Here are some of my favorite lines and plot points.

• "Parents always want to punish their children and school is their most natural way of punishing us."
• "My mother said: 'If you wear that old sweater, people are going to think we are poor!'"
• "Dear Monsieur Eaton, Would you be so kind as to send me a Canadiens' hockey sweater for my son, Roch, who is ten years old and a little bit tall for his age? Docteur Robitaille thinks he is a little too thin. I am sending you three dollars. Please send me change if there is any. I hope your packing will be better than it was last time." Read: Mom is kind of a dick.
• "Besides, the Toronto team was always being beaten by the Canadiens." Still true!
  
• "Monsieur Eaton understands French perfectly, but he's English and he's going to be insulted because he likes the Maple Leafs." This is accompanied by a picture of Monsieur Eaton looking very Robber Baron-y.
  
• "I jumped onto the ice [in my Maple Leafs jersey]...The captain came and told me to wait; he'd need me later, on defense." KID SHUNNING!
• "[The ref giving me a too many men penalty] was too much! It was too unfair! 'This is persecution!' I shouted. 'It's just because of my blue sweater!'"
• [The curate tells him that good boys keep their tempers and tells him to go pray for forgiveness.] "Wearing my Maple Leafs sweater I went to the church, where I prayed to God." *page turn* "I asked God to send me right away, a hundred million moths that would eat up my Toronto Maple Leafs sweater."

AMAZING, NO?? Buy yourself a copy immediately.

STOP THE PRESSES

Several years I met a brilliant, phenomenal woman named Erin, and I got to live with her for a while (I KNOW!) and also get to know her, which was the best thing of all. She had this thing called The Sophisticate's Guide which was a guide to life. NOW IT IS A BLOG.

The Sophisticate's Guide

This is unequivocally the best thing in the history of blogging, barring a spontaneous resurrection, collaboration and publication of Churchill, Lincoln and Dag Hammarskjöld.

Required reading. Get to it.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

For those of you not on Facebook and thus subjected to the innundation of my page in photos, Rich and I got married this Independence Day. It was a complete blast and a wonderful day!Huge thanks to everyone who made it out and made it such a stunning day. More to come later, but for now, please feel free to swing by the ole Facebook or check out our wedding blog for some information on the day.

Housekeeping Notes: Hockey Season

Hey all,

I'm adding three links to the already ridiculous blogroll over there on the right. Hockey's over - go Pens - but this has been a phenomenal season for a variety of reasons. Let's just do a little recap.

1. Got to hit up the Sharks/Bruins game when San Jose came out to Boston this season. You don't get to see the Sharks and B's play very often since they're so far apart, and this game was even more exciting because at the time, the two opponents were number one in their respective conferences. We put up with a lot of trash talk from bandwagon fans, but were vindicated in a.) the fact that the Sharks beat the Bruins, and b.) the spectacle of a cop basically hurling one of said idiot fans into a wall for being obnoxious and bellowing "get outta here, go HOME" at him.

2. We also made it up to Montreal this year to see the Sharks play the Habs. There is nothing - NOTHING - like watching a game in the Bell Center, and being there in the Habs' 100th season was truly special. We had such an amazing time in Montreal...thumbs up for Hurley's, Sir Winston Churchill's, McLean's Pub, The Second Cup, Timmy Ho's, La Cage Aux Sports, La Maison VIP, McDonald's when McDonald's is giving out mini Carey Prices, crazy ass taxi drivers of Montreal and above all, Spa Eastman. I go to Spa Eastman whenever we go up north and they do such amazing work. Not only are their aestheticians phenomenal, but their location is on the sixteenth floor looking out over McGill University and is so unbelievably relaxing. Moreover, I was up there with Rich and a kickass woman I'm gonna talk to you about in a sec.3. The AHL All Star Classic was in Worcester this year.After a ton of work and coordination, the weekend finally rolled around about thirty seconds after I'd returned from the Inaguration in DC. We made a lot of new friends, particularly as we were picking the players, executives and mascots up at the area airports.Making important business contacts

It was a spectacular event brilliantly executed. The hockey season brings its stresses, but at the end of the day, we all know that the folks in the front office of the Worcester Sharks are super goddamn talented. It was a real treat to see that become apparent to the entire AHL. They had a great party after the Skills Competition at beautiful Mechanics Hall, which featured U2 cover band Joshua Tree and the NHL Skills Comp on the giant screen.Now, I don't mean to malign any of the people we picked up at the airport - they were all super friendly and fun to meet - but Rich and I got an even more exciting opportunity. We went to pick up the Stanley Cup and its escort, Mike Bolt, from Logan Airport.Saw Zdeno Chara and Marc Savard in bag claim along with San Jose Sharks GM Doug Wilson in bag claim; the Cup was coming back from the NHL All Star Classic in Montreal, so all these folks were coming from the same place.Here we are with the Stanley Cup in the back of the truck. Mike was a really interesting guy, even though he was completely exhausted. We can put the rumors that the Cup travels in its own seat to rest - it gets checked in a giant toughcase. I'm a little sad that all the pictures of me with the cup feature the most cracked out hair I've sported in the history of ever, but the fact remains that I'm right there with the Cup and that is the shit.
I loved the practice jerseys they worked up for the All Star season and of course I got Patrick Traverse's. Our friend and community liason dude Mike Myers designed that kickass logo - how cool is that? He is so talented. Besides doing a million things in the Sharks' front office, he also designs these freaking glorious goalie masks and bikes competitively. I don't think he sleeps. In any case, let's talk about the awesomeness on the loose that weekend, in the form of these fine bitches right here:That would be me, Trish (a school friend of whose awesomeness I was already aware) and Joanne. Rich kept running in to these two chicks from San Jose, and we finally all met up before the All Star Game itself at the hospitality room the Booster Club was running. Jenna and Joanne were out to cover the ASC for the San Jose community, and they were so goddamn fun it was hard to stand. Joanne might be my long lost sister, I'm not sure. So you've now got these two gorgeous babes on the loose, and even better, they're smart as hell and love hockey. They really made the weekend.

The additions I'm making to the blog roll are their blogs, plus a friend of theirs' who Joanne recommended. Joanne writes Ten Minute Missconduct and Jenna writes OverJennaRated. Check 'em out and give 'em some love.

Friends From Everywhere

This weekend, I'm going to head up to New Hampshire to see the brand new baby of a pair of dear friends. I drove up to a different hospital when their first child was born, too. These are friends who will be at my wedding this summer, who I can laugh with, who have one of the few children I willingly spend time with (certainly the closest kid I hang with), who I would go through a brick wall for. They are some of the most exceptional people I know - brilliant, noble and strong. I love them dearly, and I can't wait to meet their new son, whose texted picture I have flashed around to friends like he was my own blood relative.

I met these friends on the Internet.

The Internet is a funny place. I'm a part of the first generation or two of Internet users for whom the Internet is fully integated into their lives. I Facebook like crazy, I blog here, I check email continually, I Twitter, I connect with the Internet through phone and computer. With so much use, people like me are bound to meet other people floating around out there in the ether. Some of these people - just like people in the elevator or in the coffee shop - will strike a chord with you, and you'll become friends. I know all the stereotypes and the truths. The Internet is full of child molesters and weirdos...everyone's living out a personality of their own fabrication...bad people are out there trying to get you. I know all this, but I also know that some of the best people I know are people I met online.

I want to be clear here. Without some of the people who I have met, I would not be who I am. I never would have started writing creatively if not for Ubersite. If not for my creative writing, I would probably not have started writing speeches. Rich said at our Clearness Committee meeting the other day that he fell in love with me partly because of the way I wrote on that site...hell, Rich and I MET on Icecats message boards. I would not know The Lucy, who is one of my bridesmaids and who drove up from Pennsylvania to go to a David Sedaris book signing with me in Boston. I would not have an adorable little girl yelling "I love you Miss Josie" as I left her house. My life would be different. I start with this because I don't want people to pooh pooh what follows.

On March 26th, a woman who I haven't ever met died of leukemia in Texas. Her name was Amanda Amos, and she was the originator of the Cannonball Read project. She was 33, which is a ridiculous age for anyone to die, much less someone with a three year old son. She was sharply funny, incredibly well spoken and smart as a whip. She was a commenter on Pajiba, a movie site that I don't comment on very often but read daily. The response to her death has been overwhelming, and I cannot help but be moved not only by the tragedy of her death but by...hell, by the renewed hope for humanity the response has given me. People who had never met her in person were sending letters and books and flowers and all kinds of gifts, just to make her fight a little easier. The Internet might show us the worst of humanity, in the form of Dateline specials and horror stories from the evening news, but it so often shows us the best of it, too...the caring people can have for each other and the love.

The Pajiba crew is trying to get a coordinated effort going towards donating to a scholarship fund for Amanda's son. If you have an extra $5 this month, or an extra $20, please consider sending it to taking care of a kid who lost someone spectacular too soon in his life. It's tough out there for all of us -we need to help each other bear up until it gets sunny out again. Even if you're too strapped to send money, please consider donating blood or getting on the Bone Marrow registry. It's something good you can do that costs nothing and could make the difference in someone's life. Please consider it, for the sake of all the friends you have, had and will yet have, no matter where you find them.

2009 Budget = SOLVED

Last week, something great happened. The Swedish Pirate Captain - also known as Work Friend Joe - came around the corner with a paper in his hand. "JOSIE," he said, "I'm so glad you're here today! I solved the budget." Clearly, this was going to be excellent.

For those of you who can't read the writing (clicking will make it bigger), Work Friend Joe's brilliant budget plan for 2009 begins with "Giving Billions to Goldman Sachs." Then, a spur heads off wherein we "Appoint Goldman employees to key government positions." The other leg of the plan heads down by way of "Solar-Powered Healthcare" to "REPUBLICAN ROAD TO RECOVERY," then terminates with "Sarah Palin in 2012."

Is it so much less clear and/or logic-based than what's actually being offered by the Feds?

I Am So Organized

I know this will be amazing for everyone, but I have in fact accomplished more wedding planning, so I will once again share it with you. First order of business: my bridesmaids are awesome and have great taste. I told them that I didn't care what kind of shoes they got as long as they were comfy and some form of orange, and the three (AHEM, Ash and Cecilie) who have bought shoes have all rocked it out. Observe.

Celia (who will doubtless come at me all "eww you put pictures of my unpainted toenails on your blog whyyyyy"...cram it, lady, your feet will never attain my level of grossness and callousy creepiness) went with a pair of sandals from J.Crew that are totally cute and which she got on some kind of super sale for like $5. I am not usually pro-bows-on-shoes but the size and angle of these make them really cool.

The Lucy picked out these foxy sandals from Enzo Angiolini on Amazon. I love the brightness of the color, and the Enzos I have owned personally have always been comfy and great, so these should work out really well. I find it really interesting to see each woman's personality come out in the shoe choice...it's one of my favorite things (aesthetically anyway) about this whole planning process. Also on the favorite list: the fact that my wedding allows me to guilt my awesomest girlfriends into accumulating more or less at my whim. I'm gonna get married ALL the time! (Somewhere, Rich just had a spasmodic twitch for reasons unbeknownst to him.)

I probably don't even need to say that my sister picked these out, but yep, these are hers. I give her props for not only meeting the orange requirement (I don't know about the comfort requirement, but I do have faith in Sarah's heel-wearing abilities) but also for matching the color of the dresses almost exactly. I like the detail of the red platform and heel, too. These came from Amazon, too.
As a segue into bride stuff (via picture) from bridesmaid stuff (via intent), I love the idea of these little pendants used as bouquet danglies. They are of course from OliviaMoon, from whence my beautiful Alphonse Mucha pendant came. What a neat idea! I like them for all of our bouquets, so provided money and memory endure, I'll likely order up a bunch of initially goodness for everyone.
I ordered this jewelry set from BellaMink designs, and it arrived yesterday...it's seriously stunning and I totally love it. I ordered it up with a vague idea that it might work for the wedding, but now that I have the set in hand, there's no way I'm not wearing it. I am not usually one for pearls BUT as we know, I am a sucker for great color. I love the colors in this, and it will let me kind of nod to the more traditional in a way that works for me.

Our involvement with hockey in Worcester has brought a lot of great friends and acquaintances, but one of the somewhat depressing side effects of being involved with a minor league team is that the players and their significant others are much more likely to leave town eventually. The woman behind BellaMink is named Cristina, and she is the wife of one of the guys who came through Worcester. She was an absolute joy to be around while they were in town, and she recently started up this jewelry line, every single piece of which I totally covet. While she and her husband have moved on to a different team and city, it's absolutely fantastic to see her doing something with her clear talent and being so generous as to share her pieces with the wider world. Do yourself a favor and take a moment to toodle around her store, particularly since the Statement Necklace is Back and all that.

Finally, this decision was made earlier on, but these are our Save the Date cards (well, sans text...nothing personal, but I don't really want The Internet showing up at my wedding unannounced). There's this whole thing where I don't really give a crap about Save the Dates, but Rich has been all "well people DO STUFF on the Fourth of July so no one's gonna come," so needless to say I get all "I don't know what kind of crappy friends YOU have but my friends love me and they will come, and also a wedding is like a barbeque only way better and with more booze," and long story short we're doing the damn cards. Fine. However, I will say that I had a totally brilliant idea which resulted in these cards. The design is one that my Mom did. Yes, she is ridiculously talented, this is nothing on her watercolors or pottery, and it's extremely goddamn galling to be around someone who you can give, like, engine grease, some chewed gum, and a duck and who will then return to you some kind of frameable art. She drew this for my birth announcement, and I thought it not only was really cute but also that using the same design for my wedding lent a certain nice continuity to my Major Life Events.

Boy, I Sure Do Love THINGS!

Okay SO the power is back on, yay! It came on Thursday night or Friday morning (I was not at home so it's a little foggy in my memory), and all is...mostly well. The house no longer smells like fireplace, and the cats have been restored to their normal habitat which naturally made them freak out extravagantly, because if there is anything that makes me panic, it's being in a place I recognize. High five, cats.

I have been trying to get more serious about finding good body products that do what I want them to, and to that end I have a couple items I would like to share the love and tell you about. There will also be a section on why my boss and immediate coworker are awesome.

Okay, first group of things that are excellent comes from the Body Shop. I had a Body Shop party at my house a little while ago, and wound up with a bunch of cool stuff...you may also remember that I have waxed poetic about Body Shop items before. Every semester, I play this hilarious game with myself, during which I decide I Am Not Going To Drink So Much Coffee This Time. Then, about four days after the start of the semester, I'm asking Awesome Patti at Charlie's to inject a cafe Americano directly into my veins. I've kind of embraced this cycle of denial and eventual willpower collapse, so I continue to look for supposedly energy-producing stuff in the feigned effort to get off the coffee. Item number one up there is a collection of "Total Energy" well being products, which are full of good stuff like guarana and bergamot, which do in fact perk me right up. Are they equivalent to a stiff cup of coffee? No. But they do make the morning shower and prep time more revitalizing, and they smell good. The body wash is a great exfoliator, which I always need, and the body gel is fantastic. It's not like a lotion or a body butter, which I tend towards normally, but it's a more fluid gel that feels...not unlike aloe going on a very light sunburn (i.e., cooling and soothing, not that "ohmigodohmigod please make it stop" shock of putting aloe on a burn you got from falling asleep for four hours at high noon. Not that I have done this). The smallest container there is a pulse point balm, which is a nice pick-me-up in the middle of the day. There is a certain citrusy aspect to it, and again, it's not a Red Bull, but it does perk me up. Would that I could have had this during my 2.5 hour Ideology and Revolution class.

Item number two is a Deep Sleep pillow spray, which I totally love. Rich loves shopping at places like CVS when he's sick, and is much more willing to medicate himself than I am, for all manner of things. When I do give in and turn to drugs, I prefer to go for a more organic approach, and for this reason I decided to try this sleep spray out. It really does knock you out faster, and I find it helps me to better sleep through the night - I am the locus for a lot of cat activity (they like to be with me, sometimes under the covers...I kneed poor Flyboy in the head this morning because I didn't realize he'd wormed his way under there), and this means that I often am woken up and thus look like death the next morning. The active ingredients in the spray are jujube date, geranium, juniper and patchouli oils, and I'm not sure why it works so well, but it does.

Number three is Hemp Hand Protector. I have skin that's prone to occasionally ejecting every drop of moisture for no apparent reason; my feet get calloused very quickly, my elbows sometimes could be used for Brillo pads, and my hands do this thing that LOOKS like leprosy but as far as I can tell is not. Now, I'm also extremely judgy about people's handshakes, so as a result, I assume everyone is like this, and this turns into extreme neurosis about the whole pseudoleprosy thing, which means I'm always looking for really intense moisturizers. The Hemp Hand Protector fits the bill, not only by moisturizing extremely well, but it also seals in its work, so the moisture STAYS there. The smell...is not my favorite. It's very earthy and planty, but it's not aggressively so, which for me makes it well worth the benefits.

Number four is Monoi Miracle Oil, which I use for...everything. I put it on my feet, I put it on my hands, and I use it to finish my hair, which tells you everything you need to know about the lightness of it. It has this wonderful, super-light floral fragrance, and it makes your hair really shiny and soft, as well as moisturizing everything you put it on. I am particularly loving its addition to my Morning Hair Extravaganza, because I am fairly rough on my hair, and it rights all the wrongs I perpetrate on it. I usually throw some Humectress conditioner in, then some mousse (whatever I have, currently something from Garnier), and blow dry it upside down a little. I then set it in thermal rollers, and blow dry some more. Previously, that was it...I'd take the rollers out and gave it a little run through with a brush, etc., but now I put some of the oil on my hands, rub it around, then run my hands through my hair, and it makes it all shiny and stuff, and I usually finish by going in and harassing Rich to touch my hair. I am kind of an annoying fiancee.

Finally, we have a Moringa body scrub. One of the many things I like about Body Shop stuff is that they tend to last a really long time. I tend to find that a lot of scrubs and exfoliants require giant dollops of the stuff to really work, but with this one, it takes the teeniest scoop. The scent is really pretty and floral, and has some staying power, which I like. I tend to choose products on scent fairly often, but with shower stuff, I frequently find that the scent is going to wear off as soon as my foot hits the bathmat, and that's always disappointing. Not the case here, plus the exfoliating particles are hardcore without being excessive.

My Aunt also gave me body stuff for Christmas (YAY CHRISTMAS!), and it is fabulous. Origins does such a great job with their scents and quality of products, but there isn't one immediately convenient to me like there used to be in DC, so I tend to forget the extent of their awesomeness. I had never smelled this particular scent before, but I am stoked about it. It's a very light floral, and according to Origins, it's comprised of Tahitian tiare, jasmine, petitgrain mandarin, bergamot and basil. It's really lovely and unusual, and the specific items are fantastic as well. The body cream is moisturizing without being oily or pasty, the bubbly bath syrup (NB: Is "bubble bath" too low-tech?), and the perfume comes in a ROLLERBALL, YAY, which makes it nice and portable without risk of damage. Fabulouso!

So let's talk about my awesome coworkers. We've had a lot of shifting around over the past year or so, and now that things have settled, I am sharing a desk with the woman I work opposite days from. I have a fairly strong nesting instinct, so I put up a bunch of pictures and such on my side of the desk, one of which was a print of Alphonse Mucha's Princezna Hyacinta lithograph. Upon seeing that print, my coworker a.) recognized it as a Mucha work, and thus that b.) there were more of them, and proceeded to c.) find a stunning Mucha pendant for me for Christmas! How freaking cool is that? I love my coworkers. She picked the print above, which is one of Mucha's "Summer" works, and the photo above does no justice to the vibrant color of the print. Plus, the backing is a MIRROR, so you can check your lipstick, blind your enemies with reflected light, whatever. Awesome. It appears to be from Etsy Person Oliviamoon, who has a ton of different patterns and shapes.

In other awesome coworker news, my boss also gave me jewelry, in the form of a beautiful glass pendant on a steel cord, both from Happy Owl Glassworks. The above is just a sample of what they do. Mine is a rectangular bead that's white, with a sparkly, swirly green over the bottom two thirds or so, with a little spray of black on the edge of the green...it's an abstracted horizon line with the outline of a tree! It's so fly. Plus, as we all know, my desire to have things other people do not is extremely strong, and this is a one-of-a-kind item, per the Happy Owl folks.

More posting soon...Christmas, ice storm and follow-up snow storms threw me off big time, but I promise, more to come. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

Lost In Translation

I am not very good at Italian. That being said, I do make a stab at it every now and then in a social context, and success comes and goes. However, sometimes even my success gets rained on by that bastion of bastardization, FreeTranslation.

Here's an email I wrote:

Il semestre e quasi sopra e cio significa c'e lo tempo per uscire con gli amici! NESSUNE SCUSE, usciamo per il gin. O il vino. O il coca-cola. C'e il usciamo che significa!

Guardiamo le sue prossimo poche settimane e parlarmi quando voi avete un notte libera per uscire e divertirsi con noi. Scusarsi mi italiano cattivo...sono buonissimo per sarcasmo e giochi di bevere! ANDIAMO AVANTI!!

And what I intended for it to say (which it roughly does):

The semester is almost over and that means it's time for going out with friends! NO EXCUSES, we are going out for gin! Or wine. Or a Coke. It's the going out that matters!

Look at the next few weeks and tell me when you have a free night for going out and having fun with us. Excuse my bad Italian...I'm better for sarcasm and drinking games! WE GO FORWARD! [NB: I just like saying "avanti" with wanton enthusiasm.]

But lo, what miracles FreeTranslation creates!

The half-year and almost above and ioc means us and the time to go out with the friends! NO EXCUSES, we go out for the gin. Or the wine. Or the cocaine-cola. Us and the we go out that it means!

We look at little his neighbor weeks and to speak me when you have a free night to go out and to amuse itself with those. To excuse itself me bad Italian. ..sono good for % and games of bevere! We GO AHEAD!!

I'm now fairly sure that irresponsible use of FreeTranslation lead to at least a handful of international wars. It CERTAINLY explains the Italian government. This is why you need to not write your papers with FreeTranslation, ever, people.

The Lucy Has A Blog!

I know there are people reading along here who enjoy the Project Runway recaps, and if you are one of those people, you will be thrilled to discover that....THE LUCY HAS A BLOG!

It's called Scrittore Creativo and it is made out of awesome and puppies, so go check it out.

The Lucy at the Muppet Factory, and also one of the more fantastic pictures on the planet. Basically, the blog is made out of this.

Wa Aleykum As-Salaam.

Last week, I flew with my Mom and Dad up to Burlington, VT, to see my friend Frankie and his team leader, Dr. Akbar Ahmed, talk about Islam in America. Islam and I are in the throes of a somewhat tumultuous relationship right now, so it was wonderful to hear some reasoned perspective on the topic.

First of all, the talk was at St. Michael's College, which I had never visited and found absolutely charming. I met Frankie at their lovely Hoehl Welcome Center, where they graciously invited my totally unexpected self to a pre-lecture dinner. The dinner was wonderful, and was spent in the company of the Still100% Made of Excellent Frankie and several members of the St. Michael's faculty, all of whom were wonderfully eloquent and completely fascinating. I also had the priviledge of meeting President John Neuhauser, who just oozed compassion and friendliness; I obviously know little about his policies and the like, but just from his demeanor, it seems that the students, staff and faculty in Burlington are lucky to have him. We then all went en masse to the lecture hall, where we watched a short piece of the documentary being filmed along the Journey to American trip, then listened to a lecture by Dr. Ahmed.

Throughout his lecture, Prof. Ahmed emphasized the importance of dialogue, something regular readers will recognize as a topic I routinely bitch about. What kills me is the state of discussion in the US and the world today...when we're not being so politically correct we can't even talk about the topic at hand, we're being such extremist ideologues we can't find any middle ground. All of this is exacerbated by the capitalist bent of the media, who - intelligently, since they have bills to pay - lead with whatever is scariest, bloodiest, or most radical, and have begun sacrificing accuracy for the sake of shock tactics that get people talking and tuning in. Once you can get rid of all these hangups, you usually find that people are reasonable and willing to actually talk, but sometimes people are simply too far gone to break down those barriers. When you've built up such intense ideological concepts, breaking them down can mean restructuring your whole worldview, and that's a horrifying thing to consider.

Plus...the world is big. I know this is kind of a No Shit statement, but it is, and it's impossible to have a truly in depth understanding of what's going on out there from watching CNN or Fox for half an hour a day. There are also a lot of people in the world, and it's impossible to hear all those voices without actively seeking them out. This is particularly present for me during this campaign season. People have been dancing around the race issue, and the conclusions that other people are drawing from that have been various and weird. A couple of my friends have expressed confusion over the talk about whether white people are saying they'll vote Obama, but will actually vote McCain. From where I stand, in a blue state up North in a patch of suburbia where my small-public-school self attends college and comes from a middle-class household with two Bachelor's degrees and a Master's, race doesn't seem like a huge issue to me. BUT, I know it is. Living in DC showed me that, and working grassroots and formal stuff with folks from red states showed me that. Sarah Bunting gave a GREAT example of this when she was talking about Barry Bonds a while back:

"...they both had some good insights into why players take steroids and how we should think about Bonds. Joe Morgan is not known for making any damn sense at all, much less putting a fine point on an issue, but when Costas asked, "Is this about race?", Morgan responded, "It's always about race." He didn't follow up on that comment, and I wish he had, because…well, I don't think our issues with Bonds have to do with race....But it always comes down to the fact that a white lady like myself doesn't have to give a shit about race, which is why I wish the panel had dealt with that question in more depth. I would like to think that Bonds's race is not in play here, and for me, it isn't — what's in play for me is stuff like Bonds showing up for the 2006 season grossly overweight (and then every story is about his shitty knees…hello?). But if Joe Morgan can talk about how racial issues feed into our perceptions of Bonds, I want to hear it. If Joe Morgan can speak to a double standard when it comes to how white athletes act versus black athletes, he should. If Joe Morgan feels that black players are expected to be "nicer" than white players so that everyone is okay with having them around, he should say that, because I think that, for some people, without their even knowing it, that is true."

This is kind of the crux of both US politics and the Islamic/Western relationship. There is too much to know, and too much to figure out, and oh PS, one half of that has some pretty significant religious stuff to wrap the Western, Judeo-Christian brain around. We don't really understand the foreign mindsets involved - and in the case of the West, sometimes we don't even understand our own - and we don't acknowledge that there are divisions within those mindsets. There is more in play than the Cliff Notes, and we haven't even all picked the CLIFF NOTES up yet.

Islam is complicated for the West right now. The very day that I went to Burlington to see Frankie, I had a stressful morning. In one of my classes (not my Terrorism class, which would seem the obvious choice, because...jihad), we were discussing how the easiest way to understand how your small-p-political environment shapes all aspects of your life is to go somewhere really different from your home country. My trip to Egypt in 2000 came up, and I was asked to explain the Egyptians. It eventually came around to religious influence, and I agreed that they were certainly not a secular society. About thirty seconds later, I was listening to the professor explain that when Egyptians have a religious issue, they have "no problem with killing a couple hundred people to resolve it." What...the hell. Would you take kamikaze pilots as representative of the entire Japanese culture? How about the Crusades as examples of all Christians? Hey, if we're talking about Christians, how about the whackjobs who kill abortion doctors? Do they represent Christianity? The thing is...no one even batted an eye at that comment, and as someone later pointed out, in this post-9/11 universe, they probably didn't even see anything wrong with it, because we've been hearing, both sincerely and through clumsy language, that Muslims = jihadists. This is simply not so.

The problem, of course, is exactly that of the Crusaders and the kamikazes...they are parts of an enormous population. There are about 1.5 BILLION Muslims in the world, and I don't know about you, but I haven't had anyone come up to me all "so, are you a Muslim?" and then shank me when I say I'm not. Weird, since according to some, all Muslims are just roaming around waiting to kill non-Muslims. It does not help that I am in this Terrorism course right now, because as I have mentioned, all the books are called things like Future Jihad, and detail the horrors of the jihadist movements and the scariness of what's out there. And yeah, it is scary. These people are insane. But "these people" are also not "all Muslims." The truth of it is somewhere between the extremes of "Muslims are jihadists" and "Islam is a religion of peace."

The Koran is a giant, dense work, just as the Bible is. There's a lot going on there, and the Koran is also not supposed to be up to interpretation the way the Bible is...the Koran was supposedly handed to Mohammed from Allah himself. None of this "God told me and then I wrote it down" business...the Koran is the word of God, directly and specifically. Now, the worrying thing for me is what we were talking about yesterday in Terrorism class...the references that concern jihad are open-ended to a degree simply not found in the Bible OR in interpretations thereof, as seen in analyses of the Just War Theory. There's a lot of bad stuff in the Bible, as well, but it tends to be specific (as my Terrorism professor put it: "You don't read that today and say 'I'm gonna go find me an Ammonite to kill.'"). The dumbness found in the Bible is maybe best highlighted by the West Wing:

President Josiah Bartlet: ...I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I wanted to sell my youngest daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She’s a Georgetown Sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself? Or is it okay to call the police? Here’s one that’s really important, because we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you?

I mean...all kinds of trouble in there. Stonings, slavery, dumb rules about textiles. That being said, when it gets right down to war, the Bible tends to include a specific target and a specific time frame - not that this makes war awesome or anything - while the Koran often does not, to wit: "...and kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers." That's all the time, everywhere, constantly...oh, and by the way, murder <>

So, there's scary, open ended call for jihad in the Koran. Okay. But just like not many Christians are strictly abiding by the rules laid down in Leviticus, not many Muslims are abiding by the more alarming passages in the Koran. In fact, Osama bin Laden and his ilk have made public statements about Muslims who are not fully following the rules of Islam, and have even begun killing Muslims who eschew the more violent requirements of the Koran. THESE TERRORIST LEADERS ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE MUSLIM WORLD POPULATION. THEY ARE EVIL PEOPLE WHO HAPPEN TO BE MUSLIM.

So where do we end up?

I guess ideally we wind up in St. Michael's College lecture hall, listening to Dr. Ahmed tell us to talk and to listen to each other. We have to acknowledge that there are bad people out there, and that they can easily twist the documents of faith that we live by to perverted purposes. We have to acknowledge that the only way to defend against them is to be clear about why we are in the right, and to talk with each other so that we can one day shame and crush these vocal and violent minorities into nothing. But we can't do it the way things are going now. We can't do it with these pundits throwing horror stories at us and building walls of conjecture and extremism right through our common ground. We have to know what's out there, and find both the knights in shining armor AND the things that go bump in the night. We have to stop putting monetary gain above sociopolitical health and be realistic about the people and nations we deal with. We have to read each other's writings and listen to each others words.

And that will be a start.

Ahh Decision Making By Committee

Thanks to the joys of Facebook/the internet/magic, I was able to put my head together with my bridesmaids in Washington state, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Norway to finally make a decision on bridesmaid dresses. I am aware that I am kind of crappy at being a bride because I don't really give a rip about the fouffy details and thus forget that others are interested in them, so I am sharing this little nugget of successful collaboration with you now. Enjoy!