Dimes in a Card

One of the most lovely sights I witnessed this semester which, upon reflection, I should've snapped a photo of, was a card that arrived in the mail for my roommate. She had recently sold a book to someone on Ebay, and the buyer had realized that my roommate had not charged her enough to cover the shipping cost and so had lost money by sending it. The buyer took the time to send an additional two dollars in the mail for her to make up for the cost, but she clearly had not had two dollar bills lying around, so she included some change as well. She enclosed a note thanking my roommate for the book and wishing her well.

This random, unexpected, thoughtful deed is so rare in this society of busy-ness and profits, it was almost shocking to see such a sight in the mail. It was truly a beautiful gesture and demonstrated the human drive toward connection and goodness that makes the world a more peaceful place.

A challenge to anyone who may read this - find a way to connect with someone unknown and pursue it. You never know how you might change someone else's life.

Harry Potter at Midnight

Despite my deep love for Harry Potter, before last month's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I" came out, I had never attended a midnight premiere. I had a quiz, a speech, and a paper due the next day, and I was attending the movie with a group of upperclassmen I did not know extremely well, so for the few hours leading up to the movie, I was debating whether or not I had made the right decision by going.

As soon as we reached the theater (at 9:30 P.M.) and saw the enormous line of Harry Potter fanatics bracing the cold for a chance to get a good seat, decked out in their costumes and alive with enthusiasm, I knew I had made the right choice by going. Who cared if I was up all night? I realized that it was not about the time spent watching the movie or even the movie itself that mattered in the end, nor was it about being among the first to see it. What mattered was the energy in the air, practically palpable and the unity that every member in every audience of every sold out theater felt. What mattered was the horseradish Luna earrings, the ash-covered Seamus face, the "Bros Before Chos" t-shirt, the bad-ass Bellatrix fishnet tights, and the two strangers who happened to look just like Harry and Draco stand up to duel by request of on-lookers. What mattered was that the legacy that is Harry Potter has transformed people, has created an exciting imaginary world that the entire Muggle world can share and love at once.

I had never before been a part of something so unique, and that hour of sleep -- totally worth it.

Crisis

A few days ago, I was at a daytime homeless shelter - and heard some humbling quotes I thought I would share.

The first was from a man who said, "You go to Marquette? You haven't seen me sleeping around there, then?"

The second was from a 20-year-old who told me about a time in her life less than a year ago when she went for two months with no food, just water.

“I’m homeless but I have something, I have friends, people who care about me. That means more to me than money, I live on faith, people give me the energy to get up in the morning.”

She learned today that the police have a warrant out for her arrest, and she said it probably had to do with some kind of trouble she got into when she was 12 years old.

I conducted a survey with five people there who are homeless. All of them said they have stolen food to survive.

I'm not trying to be preachy, and I know I can complain as much as the next person myself, but these are some thoughts that have been on my mind the past several weeks that I thought I would express.

-In my politics class now, we're studying developing countries, and we read excerpts from a book called The End of Poverty, written by economist Jeffrey Sachs. I was reminded in this that 20% of the world's population lives on less than $1 a day (extreme poverty) and another 20% lives on less than $2 a day (moderate poverty). The rest of poverty, such as the poverty we see in the USA, is known as relative poverty.

Here is a passage from the book about a family in Malawi, Africa. "She reaches into her apron and pulls out a handful of semirotten, bug-infested millet, which will be the basis for the gruel she will prepare for the meal that evening. It will be the one meal the children have that day."

-Thousands of people are dying every day of treatable illnesses and diseases like diarrhea and malaria when a $10 malaria bed net could save their lives.

-People dying of AIDS in Africa are crammed 3 to a BED because they can't afford treatment and the hospitals do not have room for them and don't know what to do with them other than wait for them to die.

- I'm taking part in an initiative here called RU4PK, MU? which is a coalition of student groups working to raise money for the flood victims in Pakistan. The United Nations labeled this flooding the worst humanitarian disaster since the creation of the UN, in which 20 million people are still suffering, more than the damage of Haiti and Kashmir combined. Much of the country is still underwater, yet the media has been pretty silent about Pakistan.

- I read an article recently (posted on my facebook wall) which talks about how thousands of girls in Nepal are not getting educated because they cannot afford the uniform and fees. The cost is around $15 per girl for an entire year of school.

I think it is important to constantly remind ourselves of these disturbing facts and realize how fortunate we are to have been born in this country with such amazing opportunities before of us. Everyone has bad days, and we should not de-legitimize our feelings when we suffer, but it is crucial to remember that the majority of humanity struggles every day to merely survive.

here's a link with some great ideas of ways to do this in creative ways proven to help people start to overcome their poverty.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/how-to-change-the-world/

I will conclude with a quote from Bono:

"We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies -- but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears? Fifteen thousand people dying needlessly every day from AIDS, TB, and malaria. Mothers, fathers, teachers, farmers, nurses, mechanics, children. This is Africa's crisis. That it's not on the nightly news, that we do not treat this as an emergency - that's our crisis."

MU-Hippie Enlightenment

Between Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, it gained on me what a "hippie" my Marquette experience is allowing me to become and how much I absolutely love it.

On Tuesday, I attended a lecture given by a Jesuit from San Francisco called "Eco-justice and Creation Care" focusing on how it is indeed a Christian calling to care for the earth and its creatures.

On Wednesday, I first attended a Center for Peacemaking-sponsored Skype lecture of a Hiroshima observer. He discussed how he felt he had lost his humanity when he had to move a Japanese body to eat his lunch and when he realized that the atomic bomb had saved his and his comrades life, seeing the price of his life with his own eyes. This gave me much to think about on what constitutes a person's humanity and at what point one loses it (and gains it back).

After that, I had an interview to live in the Global Village International Learning Community next year, which seeks to facilitate a welcoming environment for international students and a unique cultural experience for American students.

Following this, my roommate and I attended a second Center for Peacemaking event in which we learned about service opportunities abroad and what others have done but primarily, we Skyped with kids in South Africa about what peace means to them, to us, and our goals for our communities and our futures.

Finally, following this, we attended a lecture by the "No Impact Man" - Colin Beavan, who undertook a one-year experiment attempting to leave absolutely no impact on the environment. So much of what he said resounded with me and made so much sense. His description of the different kind of energy he felt when buying secondhand, the benefits of buying food from local farmers, the rediscovery of child-like pleasures, the comfort every human being searches for, his idea that if we can't entirely eliminate our impact, we can work to cancel it out by doing good things for the environment - planting trees, etc... It was very moving and empowering to realize how much we can do.

The week before, I had the ability to listen to a Palestinian speaker talk about how he envisions peace between Palestine and Israel and his efforts to instill peaceful methods of expression among the people there.

All of these experiences reminded me of the deep goodness in people and the inherent urge to connect to, not separate from, others throughout the globe. All of these people care enough about their passions and bringing about change through education and action that they were brought here to Marquette to share their stories. This is amazing to me, and I am so grateful for each of these speakers, for each one has moved me in a different way.

Milwaukee Wind and Laser Pointers

Although Milwaukee is an hour and a half from the "Windy City," we have been enjoying our fair share of the blusters the past week. And while this sensation causes some inconvenience - it was very difficult to cram in a few, precious last minutes of studying on the way to my Politics quiz as the wind battled it out with the perforated line in my 3-subject notebook - it is generally a pleasant feeling and almost comforting to allow oneself to physically be pushed along by a force more powerful than one's own resistance. As I was walking to rehearsal a few evenings ago after an unusually good day, I was walking through the tunnel-like passage between Gesu and Marquette Hall as someone who had a walking disability came walking through as well, facing me. The wind whipped at my back, pushing me along, and I began giggling uncontrollably, my arms extended in a "King of the World!" position to get the full effect of the wind, as the stranger and I shared a grin of child-like glee and kept on traveling along our respective paths. I continued giggling.

Mother Nature, bringing people together.

Tonight, while failing to accomplish any homework and snuggling with my roommates on our futon clicking through StumbleUpon, we noticed a dot of green light flitting around our room. We pointed it out to each other and followed it with our eyes for a moment until we decided to look out the window for its source. Straight ahead and to the left, we saw the green glow from a white car stopped at a red light on Wisconsin Avenue. It clicked off, then on again, and we waved at the car until the light changed. Now, perhaps this person was just being a creeper, or perhaps he saw our giant poster of Snow White on the window and was pointing it out to the fellow passengers, but I like to think he or she was simply trying to play with random strangers and we indulged him by playing back.

These two experiences are connected in their ability to enkindle the simple, unanticipated joy a person can get just from random human interaction. I wonder what delightful new experiences I will undergo this week. :-)

Pascha 2010

My favorite holiday unquestionably is Easter, or in my church, Pascha. It is the culmination of months of self-disciplining. It is the the "Feast of Feasts," the most joyful of all religious services. And in my family, it is the eagerly anticipated annual gathering of all our friends and family to a lamb roast in our backyard to celebrate.

My dad carves the lamb with his father, who began this tradition when my dad was a boy.

My goddaughter Julia and her twin Elena "Greek dance" in the grass.

Everyone gathers together to give thanks and to sing the Resurrection hymn, "Christos Anesti."

Moment at Gesu

In class, we discussed that every photo must tell a story. With this in mind, I have begun searching for moments I might otherwise overlook and figure out the story they tell if I were to capture them in photographs. The first I noticed occurred last week. As I was passing Gesu Church on the way to my dorm, I looked over to see a very elderly couple holding hands and struggling to hold open the church doors to go through together. It was quietly, strikingly beautiful. I pondered about their story: how they met, how they fell in love, what struggles they have endured together. Then I thought about all of the marriages that take place in Gesu every week. How many of them reach this point, the point of having lasted, for better or worse?

While there was absolutely no glamour or sexiness surrounding this tired couple, they, to me, seem to be the picture without words of the ultimate goal on a wedding day: not the dress, not the guests, not the cake. This - unexciting, mundane, fatigued - and profoundly remarkable.

Beginning

Well, Internet, I have to admit that I am a blog snob. I've long been skeptical of the idea that everyone's diary entries need to take up space on the Web. However, seeing as I am required to create a blog for my Intro to Digital Storytelling course, and as more and more media conversion to the digital world compels me to become comfortable forming and voicing unique opinions via Internet, I've been working on reconstructing that particularly cynical view into one that recognizes blogging to be an expressive outlet as well as a way to spread information and ideas easily and aesthetically.

My own blog, I've decided, besides discussing elements of my class, will focus on various "snippets of life" I observe, and in this way, I will attempt to promote awareness in both myself and in anyone who happens to read my blog of the subtler, yet equally lovely moments in which I find joy every day. This will tie into my class as I will work to capture photograph-able moments in words or pictures to tell a brief story with each snippet. It will also be my personal compensation for the fact that I have entered the blogosphere as I will seek to articulate simple moments that are widely overlooked in this fast-paced, instant-gratification, technology-driven society. Finally, I hope my snippets will perhaps make someone smile.

Ahhh... I did it. I've written my first blog post.

And to quote King Theoden as he prepares for the madness at the Battle of Helm's Deep...

"So it begins."

:-)