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TGIF

This is what I’ve been encountering every morning this week as I’ve tried to get to work.

I’m pretty sure the universe is trying to tell me something.

Fortunately, the weekend is finally here! I’m looking forward to the return of this little guy and his dad tonight:

photo-50

And “O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful, wonderful” – my friend Janel is arriving tonight too! On Sunday I leave for a conference, so next week I’ll be checking in from St. Louis, Missouri.

Until then: have a wonderful weekend!

Colin’s Photos from Poland

Colin spent a couple weeks in Krakow giving a short course at Akademia Ignatianum. Can you spot him?

Ignatianum Poster

Here are some of his photos:

His photos of Auschwitz are haunting:

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Weekend Snapshots 4

FRIDAY

Sadly, our record-setting, unprecedented eight day streak of being on time for school finally, inevitably ended…

It was graduation weekend at the University of Virginia. At work we had our own graduation celebration and awards luncheon for international students. It was so inspiring to talk to the award recipients from all over the world. They will take away much from their experience here, but they will also have immeasurably enriched the life of this community in lasting ways.

Feeling invigorated, I headed to Helping Hands, the after school elementary service group where I work with a much younger set of future movers and shakers. One day these little ones might also set the world on fire. This session, we’ve been holding a supply and money drive for a wonderful organization in our community called Shelter for Help in Emergency or S.H.E. This agency provides services to and a safe house for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. (Find out how you can help S.H.E. here).

On this particular day, our kids just had fun making super easy bird feeders.

Rice Cake Bird Feeder

Directions: Make a hole in a rice cake and attach ribbon. Coat rice cake with peanut butter and dip in bird seed. Hang in a covered area…Voilà!

SATURDAY

“Chef Tedduccini”  whipped up a batch of pain au chocolat for breakfast. (Frozen Trader Joe’s brand…SCRUMPTIOUS)!

Chef Tedduccini

Our little renaissance man took a break from his labors to strum his ukulele:

Ukulele

Rained-out soccer games meant I finally had time to run a billion errands, starting with a long overdue trip to the blood bank.  My daughter scored me a Hello Kitty bandage by telling the phlebotomist that I should get a pink ribbon to match the skirt she was wearing, but that her favorite color was actually red:

Giving blood

Hair cut:

Hair experiments:

And…Happy reunions. Colin got back home just in time for bedtime hugs.

(Sure, he looks happy now, but just wait until I start meting out his punishment for having abandoned us for so long…)

SUNDAY

Quick day trip to Arlington to see my family, including my brother who was visiting for the weekend.

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The Best Advice I Ever Got, Pt. 1

I’ve gotten a lot of advice in my day from: “Don’t buy junks!” (thanks, Mom) to “Go to yoga!…please, please, PUH-LEEZE, Go. To. Yoga!” (uhhh…thanks, kids?).

I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from one of my professors in grad school. One of the first steps on the long and arduous journey to a Ph.D. was the  proseminar that all beginning graduate students in my department were required to take in our first semester of studies. The professor was a runner, and used to live in hilly Vermont. She told us that she would dread the last stretch of her daily run up a steep hill. Each step was agonizingly painful and it always seemed to her as if she would never reach the top. One day she decided that instead of looking at her final destination at the top of the hill as she ran, she would look down at her feet. She was amazed to find how much easier it was to get to the top of the hill.

“Keep looking down at your feet,” she told us, “Put one foot in front of the other. You’ll get there before you know it.” That piece of advice has stuck with me and I’ve passed it along to my own students and others who are facing long uphill battles.

My brother-in-law also received some sage advice in grad school. After having completed his degree, he was having one last consultation with his thesis advisor before he headed out into the wide world.

“I have one piece of advice for you,” this wise and distinguished MIT professor told my brother-in-law in his thick Greek accent.

My brother-in-law leaned in to receive the precious nugget of wisdom distilled from many decades of study and experience that was about to be bestowed upon him by his mentor…

“When you buy furniture, don’t buy CRRRAAAPPP!”

I polled friends and family to hear what they considered the best advice they ever got:

Colin:

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again.”

Child 1:

“Don’t get married to only one way of achieving a goal.” (I have to admit, I was worried about the direction this piece of advice was heading until he got to the second half of the sentence)!

Child 2:

“Don’t cry over spilt milk.” (I know I’ve said this more than once to my children, but I’ve usually added: “Just hurry up and get some paper towels to clean it up!”)

Child 3:

“Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

My sister gave me a few good ones:

“It’s o.k. not to talk during an awkward silence.”

“Relax-you’re not curing cancer.” (“But what if you are?!” my dogs might ask – see yesterday’s post).

“When you’re really stressed out about a situation, think about how much it will matter tomorrow, next week, or next year.”

“Don’t put off traveling the world until you’ve retired and have time and money to spend – you may not have your health or life by then.”

“Don’t burn your bridges.”

C.:

“If you’re having fun, then you’re doing the right thing.”

X.:

“Be a whole person. Life is more than work.”

W.:

“Just because someone asks a personal question, it doesn’t mean you have to answer it. Secondly, you don’t necessarily need to elaborate or provide explanations when you answer. It’s your business, you chose which bits of information you want to share.”

M.:

“Holding onto hatred or anger only hurts yourself.”

K.:

“Don’t forget to eat breakfast!”

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given? Please leave a reply!

Tomorrow: More great advice.

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IMPACT

Thanks to Rev. Wikstrom for the photo!

This evening my family attended an IMPACT meeting that filled the John Paul Jones Arena. IMPACT stands for Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together. Quakers, Mennonites, Jews, Presbyterians, Catholics, Muslims, Baptists, Pentecostalists, Unitarians…26 member congregations in all come together once a year to address an issue of social justice in the Charlottesville area in what is known as a “Nehemiah Action,” modeled after the “Great Assembly” described in the book of Nehemiah.

IMPACT is a well-organized grassroots movement that has made a meaningful difference for thousands of the most vulnerable members of our community. Every fall, the group conducts research to study and identify areas of concern. The group identifies a specific issue to address and draws up a practical proposal to solve or alleviate the problem. Congregation members are then mobilized in the kind of numbers that are meaningful to policy-makers, who are also invited to attend the Nehemiah Action.

In the past, IMPACT has addressed issues such as public transportation, health care, and affordable housing. Here are just a few of IMPACT’s success stories:

  • Lobbying for Sunday bus service, night bus service, and the creation of a new bus route between the county office building and low-income neighborhoods.
  • The creation of the Free Dental Clinic, which serves uninsured patients, who had to go without dental care or who had to be seen in emergency rooms
  • The creation of the Healthy Transitions Program, which provides immediate and on-going medication and therapy for people who have recently been released from jail or prison.

This year, the organization targeted two main concerns: homelessness and employment for youth.

  • To address the pressing need of more than 500 children and young people in our community who are currently homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless, IMPACT has proposed the establishment of a coordinated strategy to move people into permanent housing under the leadership of a “Roundtable to Reduce Homelessness.”
  • To address the serious problem of unemployment for young adults, IMPACT has asked the University of Virginia Health System and Martha Jefferson Hospital to sponsor a job-training program that would open the way for thousands of  young adults to enter the workforce, while also providing the hospitals with much-needed skilled workers.

It was inspiring to participate in this assembly of people of many faiths, races, and socio-economic backgrounds, who were all united and committed to social justice not only in words, but in deeds.

Learn more about IMPACT here: http://impactcville.com

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Instrument of Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

For a long time now, I’ve been trying to imagine what an instrument of peace would look like. In my fantasy world, they would be at the top of every child’s wish list. In the aisle where toy guns used to be, “instruments of peace” in clamshell packaging would fly off the store shelves.

In this world, we would not be afraid to send our children to school, go to a movie theater, or to participate in events like the Boston Marathon…In my fantasy world, kids could march to the beat of their own drummer and be celebrated for it. Women would feel safe walking alone. Here, it would be preposterous to think that marriage between people who love each other would have to be “legalized.” Food, shelter, and access to health care and education would be available to everyone. It would be taken for granted that we could assume the best of each other.

On those days when the world seems so very dark, what can we do but try to sow peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, light, and joy every day, in whatever way we can, wherever we may be?

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Animal Ethics

Here’s another true story that illustrates the complexities of animal ethics:

IMG_0660Last year the Helping Hands kids and I took a field trip to Waynesboro to visit the Wildlife Center of Virginia. This wildlife hospital provides “health care, often on an emergency basis, to native wildlife.” The good veterinarians and staff of the Wildlife Center treat any animal that’s brought to the center. You can take a tour of the facilities and see all sort of wild animals from opossums to bears in all different stages of recovery.

About two dozen permanent animal residents have been identified as “Education Animals.” Ironically, these are the animals that have flunked their survival test, otherwise known as “live prey training,” or more simply as: “Mouse School.” One of the wildlife educators explained it this way…Let’s say an owl is treated for a broken wing. Once it recovers from its injury, it is placed in an enclosure for a couple days with a live mouse. In the morning, if the mouse has been eaten, the owl is deemed ready for release back into the wild.

Clearly, I’m a perverse person, because I just had to ask, “But don’t you sometimes treat mice that are brought to the center?”

The educator acknowledged that mice were indeed sometimes treated as patients. He assured us though, that no rehabilitated mice would ever be used as bait in “Mouse School.” These mice are bought from a company that breeds mice specifically for research and food. He acknowledged that the vets and staff of the Wildlife Center do wrestle with the ethics of this.

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“It’s alive!”

Two people who are very close to me have asked if  “A Snake Tale” is a true story. The short answer is: NO!

On the other hand, a lot of the story details were drawn from life. Most significantly, all the gory information in the story about how snakes are fed is absolutely true…These details gave a framework to the story that struck me as a good way to explore some interesting ethical questions.

Here are some other things that are true:

  • Our landlord’s daughter in Carrboro, NC had an albino snake named Orangina that she asked us to take care of, but it was an albino corn snake rather than a Burmese python. I insisted that they find someone else to take care of her, because I couldn’t bear the thought of having to feed her. All that year I kept accidentally pulling out dead frozen mice in Ziploc bags that had been tucked away into the back recesses of the freezer.
  • I was a docent at a science museum when I was in college. There were two boa constrictors on display at the museum. In the basement of the museum was a tankful of mice who were fated to one day become dinner for these snakes. In my head I can still hear the squeak of their wheel as they endlessly ran by the harsh yellow light of a bare bulb. A coworker told me that she came to work one morning after the snakes had been fed the night before, and she saw that they hadn’t eaten one of the mice. The mouse was nestled comfortably, fast asleep in the coil of one of the snakes. I’m not sure what actually happened to that mouse, but I think we can all agree on what should have happened. If there is even a shred of justice in this world, that mouse would have been shipped off to live out the rest of its natural life vacationing on some breezy, warm isle with a frozen margarita in one paw and a trashy novel in the other, and being waited on by attentive cabana boys.
  • In Carrboro we had a kind, but slightly kooky neighbor (this could describe a large percentage of the population of that lovable town, by the way). One Sunday afternoon he knocked on our door. He told us that he had just killed a copperhead snake and that the kids should come over to see it so that they would know what to look out for. As we crossed the street to his house he explained to us that to make sure it was a copperhead and not an innocuous look alike, he had held out a leather gardening glove toward its head. It had struck at the glove and he saw venom dripping. At that point he whacked it with a shovel, almost but not quite decapitating it. He warned us in advance that it was not going to be a pretty sight. In his backyard we saw the bloody remains of the copperhead. I didn’t want to go anywhere near it, but our neighbor cheerfully said, “You can touch it, kids!” To my absolute horror, all three of my children rushed up to pet the bloody dead snake. Suddenly, my son Nicholas shouted, “It’s alive!” I shrieked as I saw that the snake had indeed started to wriggle. The neighbor assured me that it was in fact dead, and that it was a primitive nerve reflex that kept the snake’s body moving even after death. I was telling this story to a friend, who told me that he had once completely severed the head off a snake and its jaws continued to open and close for a few horrific minutes. I’ve since learned that you can get bitten by a dead snake!
  • Burmese pythons are often kept as pets. They have become an invasive species in the Florida Everglades, probably because pet snakes were released or escaped into the wild. They get so large they have been known to eat prey as large as alligator or deer.
  • My sister called to tell me that after reading my story she thinks I’m a creepy sicko. Hello?! FICTION?!
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A Snake Tale

If you’ve been reading “A Snake Tale” or would like to read it, the story in its entirety now resides on its own separate page. You can access it through the bar at the top.

That Nerdy, Unpopular Kid at School

Imagine a scrawny kid with large ears that stick out from his head like jug handles. He’s self-conscious about his looks and is exceedingly shy. He’s scared of everything: the dark, ghosts, robbers, bugs, snakes…He’s lousy at sports. He’s a mediocre student. Afraid that his classmates will make fun of him, he runs to school and back home to avoid having contact with them. When he becomes a teenager, he steals money to buy cigarettes. His teachers are exasperated by him. His parents are disappointed in him.

When he grows up, he somehow manages to get through law school, but fails miserably as a lawyer. In his very first case, he feels too shy to cross-examine the witnesses. He is so rattled, he returns his fees to his client and can’t continue with the trial. He experiences humiliation throughout his adulthood. He is physically thrown off a train, kicked, punched, and has stones and rotten eggs thrown at him.

This was Mahatma Gandhi. Today he is revered and honored as a hero who fought injustice wherever he saw it, who led India to independence from British rule, and who inspired and taught people all over the world to fight for their rights through nonviolent means. He was a “Great Soul” indeed.

The Helping Hands kids have been drawing pictures to submit to James Madison University’s Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence “Peace builds community” art contest. Last Friday I told them Gandhi’s life story while they drew. When we think of heroes, we usually think of human beings who are extraordinary. We think of heroes as possessing exceptional strength, looks, charisma, intelligence, courage, and virtue. To me, the most compelling part of Gandhi’s story is how very human and imperfect he was. I told the kids about how Gandhi struggled, was bullied, and had self-esteem issues. I told them about all the incredible things this unlikely hero was able to accomplish before an assassin’s bullet tragically ended his life. I hope that hearing Gandhi’s story will inspire them to see that anyone, even that nerdy, unpopular kid at school just might turn out to be a hero.

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