Wrap your mind around it

I thought that this video that my mom sent me was very interesting. Take a look at it. It may be a little long (just under five minutes) but it is worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

Lean on Me

Tonight I would like to take some time out to put a little bit of a different perspective on the economic crisis that the media frenzy gorges itself on at our expense. With that in mind I would also like to say that I am going to try very hard to abstain from certain aspects of that topic.

In these hard time we are asked to take a look back in history and remember other periods of economic distress. I was told, since I do not watch the news, that recently the media has been displaying images from the "Great Depression" of the 1930's, showing people standing in soup lines and such. This got me to thinking about the 1930's, which made me think about my late grandmother (Jane). It made me wish, a so many things do, that she was still around to talk to and to put things into perspective. You see the kids of the last 3 generations really, which includes you "baby-boomers," generation X and Y, have really never had to face "hard times." Especially the newest of these, the gen x and y groups, whose idea of hard times is not getting the latest electronic portable whatever you call it, do0dad.

I feel privileged to be a gen x/gen y kid who was raised by a ....gen v? (if you want to do things alphabetically). I was raised by my grandmother, who knew the true meaning of what hard times were.

She was born in 1916 just after the end of the first world war. She was 6 when her father died and she, her little sister and her mother moved out from her fathers parents farm to the wide world. She was not 16 when "The Great Depression" took hold of this country. The three of them moved all over the U.S., like so many others of the time, as her mother followed work where ever she could find it, in order to keep a roof over their heads. Jane was about my age when she signed up to be among the few, proud ladies of the WASP's (Women Air force Service Pilots) in WWII (she even has memorabilia in their museums). WWII meant food stamps and rationing, just in case you didn't know. Resources needed to be saved for the war effort and for our allies over seas which meant that everyone had to be frugal, in fact very few if any "new" cars, outside of those made for the military were even being produced (check it out see if you can find a 1940's era car and most of them if they exist look verbatim 1930's). She and my grandfather (Sam) raised their two girls during the Cold War era (remember the red scare and "goodnight and good luck"?) when you didn't know who your friends were and who your enemies were.

The purpose of this is to say that I have/had 5 amazing grandparents (Jane (D. 2007), Sam (D.2006), Ruth (I love you Gram!!), Edna (D.2002), and Pat (D.2001)) who are the most generous, kind, and humble people that I have ever known. I believe that this is due in large part to what they had to come through and what they experienced in their lives.

So perhaps this economic crisis can serve another purpose other than just a morally crushing blow to our society. For me, at least, it puts back into perspective what is really important in my life. It's not my car or my iPod, it's not my cell phone, my computer, T.V., or stereo. Take all that away and I will still have what is most important to me. I have my family, the people who love me, I have my friends, I have my health, head and my belief that things will not always be this way and that after everything is said and done, at least some of us will be the better for it in one way or another.

The winds may howl, and the sky may part and bolts of lightening may fall setting this world ablaze in the night,

but the clouds will clear, the sun will peak its weary head over the horizon

and the world will awake anew,

clean, beautiful, mournful of what has past but calm, serene

like the ocean after a storm.

Take heart my friends and do not spend your time in despair,

"for this too shall pass" and you will find the strength, that which you thought you had lost.

An original poem by: Kathryn Malone

Indecision

So I know that it has been eons since I wrote last. Life has been very busy but that is flimsy excuse. I should have been writing more often. In any even, I have recently been thinking on choices that we all make in our lives.

It is interesting to me how making a choice one way or another can have such a great impact on later occurrences in our lives. I know that people say "live in the moment because that moment is now," but the execution of that statement, like so many other things in life, is much harder than the effort that it takes to say the words. How do we make choices? And how, more importantly do we make the "right" choices?

I think that I have been heard to say previously that there is no such thing, really, as a "right" choice, but recently I have come to think that perhaps I was a little presumptuous in making such a remark. The reason why I say this is because there are certainly "right" and "wrong" choices. However, this is not really important to what I wanted to discuss and now that I have gotten remarkable far on my little tangent I would like to gather myself back to the point. How do we know that what we are choosing is the correct thing to do when there are no stanch lines of black and white or guidelines for the territory in which we find ourselves. For example, when you are raising your children, for those of you who have or want to have children, how is it that you know that what you are doing, what you are teaching them is "right?" And who decides it. How can one child in a family grow up to be very responsible and another have no concept of it what so ever? Is it all really chance? Sort of lifes game of Russian roulet and we are just there for the food? And once you have made your choice is that to say that had you choosen differently you would not have ended up where you are? Or would you? I know that this is all just speculation but I believe that we all at some time ask these questions of ourselves. And have these same ponderances (lol).

What brought this up was my recent acceptance in to three graduate schools. I was forced to ask myself the hard questions in life, which you may think are easy or easy to answer until you are faced with asking them to yourself. "What is it that you really want?" Most of you, I am sure, would find yourselves in the same position as I have found myself of late, the answer to that question is"I do not know.... I wish that I did but I just don't know." So how do I choose just one school of three? I know that it isn't the most important decision that I will most likely ever make but at the present moment it is the more critical and most pressing question that I must answer.

I suppose that the great thing is that no matter which one I choose my experience there will definitely be phenomenal and in such a respect I am boiling over in anticipation.

If you have anything thoughts on this on just feel free to send them on my way. Ta.