Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Craigslist Groups from June 2008 in Which I Would Not Fit.
Black Professionals Coffee Break
Anti-Age Skin Care Meetup Group: Spa Event!
Strongman/woman training for fitness, fat loss, and sports performance (I don't have the arm muscles to start my lawn mower.)
Baby Sign Language
Mommies Time Out
Spirit Xtreme Dance and Cheer Academy
New Moms Group
Vegan Grub for Earth: AR Activists and Veg*ns
Biggest Loser Challenge-Columbus
NES Game club
Columbus Computer Society - For PC Users
CREATIVE SCRAPPERS CLUB (I have no idea what a scrapper is.)
Public School Teachers Let's talk about matters of Character!
Ohio Pets
Ohio Fishing Meetup
Mommy and Me Group for teens...
Central Ohio Parents Space
Sword fighting and Chivalry, War and Feast!!!!
Columbus Jewish Singles
scifi fan club
Marujuana addiction and recovery
Looking to start a Buddhist meditation group
Columbus Southwest Spanish Language Meetup
And my favorite...
Calling the British!
Black Professionals Coffee Break
Anti-Age Skin Care Meetup Group: Spa Event!
Strongman/woman training for fitness, fat loss, and sports performance (I don't have the arm muscles to start my lawn mower.)
Baby Sign Language
Mommies Time Out
Spirit Xtreme Dance and Cheer Academy
New Moms Group
Vegan Grub for Earth: AR Activists and Veg*ns
Biggest Loser Challenge-Columbus
NES Game club
Columbus Computer Society - For PC Users
CREATIVE SCRAPPERS CLUB (I have no idea what a scrapper is.)
Public School Teachers Let's talk about matters of Character!
Ohio Pets
Ohio Fishing Meetup
Mommy and Me Group for teens...
Central Ohio Parents Space
Sword fighting and Chivalry, War and Feast!!!!
Columbus Jewish Singles
scifi fan club
Marujuana addiction and recovery
Looking to start a Buddhist meditation group
Columbus Southwest Spanish Language Meetup
And my favorite...
Calling the British!
An Evolution.
Biology. It was probably my least favorite subject in high school, and my Visual Communication degree in college helped me steer clear of all sciences in general. There are so many things that I failed to learn, things that I don’t understand, that it’s been much easier to ignore the genre altogether than to grapple with even the basic knowledge that more learned people – or more well rounded people – have conquered.
But, as I’ve come to realize in the past several months, to have an understanding of culture, of our current world, of community as a whole and, more specifically, of people, requires at least a willingness to venture into the terrifying subject. To ignore it is to ignore an insight that helps make us who we are. And to consider oneself a thinker, a “creative,” even an active member of community, while eliminating such a large element of our being is naïve.
And so I confess. My worldview for the past 29 years has been skewed toward the comfortable, the familiar. My Bachelor of Science degree has been void of any science, whatsoever. As have my thoughts.
These are the things that I know about biology. None of them are founded in any scientific research (or even Wikipedia research); I’ve gleaned them from Leopold’s book, common sense, interacting with people and things that I’ve learned while trying to garden.
Things are here for a reason. In was on a bus in Edinburgh, Scotland that a girl who studied organic farming told me that the bugs that are attracted to basil are repelled by tomatoes, and vice versa. I’ve never looked this up to be true; I’ve just sort of trusted her on this. But it makes sense and is fascinating to me. Tomatoes need basil in the soil as much as they need one another in a summer salad. And while I cannot tell you the purpose of, say, the groundhogs that once lived in my backyard, I know that within our corner of the world, they serve a purpose. Perhaps to aerate my soil. Perhaps to consume the mulberries that fall from the tree, so that new mulberry trees won’t overpopulate the back alley. I don’t know. But I trust that no thing - living or not, microscopic or huge, with opposable thumbs or with fins – is without purpose.
Things grow exponentially. The mint in my front yard started out as one plant. Each year is grows en masse. Each year, no matter how diligent my efforts, it spreads even more. This works in human reproduction, my rotting window trims and in relational interactions. What starts as something small, if unchallenged, unchecked, becomes large. (Perhaps the purpose of the groundhogs was to “challenge” the mint.)
Things evolve. I know nothing about formal evolution, but I’ve seen enough change, even in my small place in this world, to know that it takes place naturally. I can only guess that this has to do with biology. While I have no real evidence of personally seeing fish walk out of bodies of water (or whatever the ridiculous image is that we see in comic strips about evolution), I have first person experience with simply the evolution of my thought processes.
Living things cannot be easily manipulated. There is absolutely nothing that I can do to stop the maple saplings from taking root in my flowerbeds. Neither can I erase the fact that as a human being, I need air and water and nutrients.
These hastily-written hypotheses have both aided and challenged my spiritual viewpoints. They’ve been the stimulant for change in how I view the world around me, the people around me. They’ve put me in my place of being something very small in a very big world, while also highlighting the importance of how it is I interact with the living world – opposable thumbs and not.
Some conclusions. Communities of people are natural. A healthy community requires all sorts of different thought processes, backgrounds, strengths, skills. We’re meant to complement one another to survive.
Relationships - natural relationships - grow. From fondness to familiarity to shared experiences. The longer the relationship is around, the “larger” it is.
People evolve. We change. Naturally. To expect otherwise is to be disappointed. To be prepared to adapt to change is, perhaps, wise. (I’m kind of remembering something about “Natural Selection” here.)
And while people change, we cannot change people. For this, I am thankful. This means that I have value in and of myself, without the influence of any outside sources, and that I can whole-heartedly enjoy the people around me, without carrying the responsibility of their decisions. This does not mean that I can't make a decision to change based on someone's input or thoughts. Nor does it mean that I should cease caring about injustice in the world. Simply put, our hearts, our minds are our own.
These thoughts are, perhaps, simple and long ago digested by my more science-oriented friends. To me, they’re revolutionary, life changing, freeing.
Biology. It was probably my least favorite subject in high school, and my Visual Communication degree in college helped me steer clear of all sciences in general. There are so many things that I failed to learn, things that I don’t understand, that it’s been much easier to ignore the genre altogether than to grapple with even the basic knowledge that more learned people – or more well rounded people – have conquered.
But, as I’ve come to realize in the past several months, to have an understanding of culture, of our current world, of community as a whole and, more specifically, of people, requires at least a willingness to venture into the terrifying subject. To ignore it is to ignore an insight that helps make us who we are. And to consider oneself a thinker, a “creative,” even an active member of community, while eliminating such a large element of our being is naïve.
And so I confess. My worldview for the past 29 years has been skewed toward the comfortable, the familiar. My Bachelor of Science degree has been void of any science, whatsoever. As have my thoughts.
These are the things that I know about biology. None of them are founded in any scientific research (or even Wikipedia research); I’ve gleaned them from Leopold’s book, common sense, interacting with people and things that I’ve learned while trying to garden.
Things are here for a reason. In was on a bus in Edinburgh, Scotland that a girl who studied organic farming told me that the bugs that are attracted to basil are repelled by tomatoes, and vice versa. I’ve never looked this up to be true; I’ve just sort of trusted her on this. But it makes sense and is fascinating to me. Tomatoes need basil in the soil as much as they need one another in a summer salad. And while I cannot tell you the purpose of, say, the groundhogs that once lived in my backyard, I know that within our corner of the world, they serve a purpose. Perhaps to aerate my soil. Perhaps to consume the mulberries that fall from the tree, so that new mulberry trees won’t overpopulate the back alley. I don’t know. But I trust that no thing - living or not, microscopic or huge, with opposable thumbs or with fins – is without purpose.
Things grow exponentially. The mint in my front yard started out as one plant. Each year is grows en masse. Each year, no matter how diligent my efforts, it spreads even more. This works in human reproduction, my rotting window trims and in relational interactions. What starts as something small, if unchallenged, unchecked, becomes large. (Perhaps the purpose of the groundhogs was to “challenge” the mint.)
Things evolve. I know nothing about formal evolution, but I’ve seen enough change, even in my small place in this world, to know that it takes place naturally. I can only guess that this has to do with biology. While I have no real evidence of personally seeing fish walk out of bodies of water (or whatever the ridiculous image is that we see in comic strips about evolution), I have first person experience with simply the evolution of my thought processes.
Living things cannot be easily manipulated. There is absolutely nothing that I can do to stop the maple saplings from taking root in my flowerbeds. Neither can I erase the fact that as a human being, I need air and water and nutrients.
These hastily-written hypotheses have both aided and challenged my spiritual viewpoints. They’ve been the stimulant for change in how I view the world around me, the people around me. They’ve put me in my place of being something very small in a very big world, while also highlighting the importance of how it is I interact with the living world – opposable thumbs and not.
Some conclusions. Communities of people are natural. A healthy community requires all sorts of different thought processes, backgrounds, strengths, skills. We’re meant to complement one another to survive.
Relationships - natural relationships - grow. From fondness to familiarity to shared experiences. The longer the relationship is around, the “larger” it is.
People evolve. We change. Naturally. To expect otherwise is to be disappointed. To be prepared to adapt to change is, perhaps, wise. (I’m kind of remembering something about “Natural Selection” here.)
And while people change, we cannot change people. For this, I am thankful. This means that I have value in and of myself, without the influence of any outside sources, and that I can whole-heartedly enjoy the people around me, without carrying the responsibility of their decisions. This does not mean that I can't make a decision to change based on someone's input or thoughts. Nor does it mean that I should cease caring about injustice in the world. Simply put, our hearts, our minds are our own.
These thoughts are, perhaps, simple and long ago digested by my more science-oriented friends. To me, they’re revolutionary, life changing, freeing.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Thursday Evening.
A summer thunderstorm, cutting through the day's humidity, flowing cool air through the house. Sans air conditioner, sans effort.
Hickory smoked bacon, cut, crispy. Soon to top a mound of pasta with generous portions of red onion. The first dish I ever ventured to make - in a kitchen on Pentonville Road in London - contained these fine ingredients.
A book, a beer, an evening.
Delightful.
A summer thunderstorm, cutting through the day's humidity, flowing cool air through the house. Sans air conditioner, sans effort.
Hickory smoked bacon, cut, crispy. Soon to top a mound of pasta with generous portions of red onion. The first dish I ever ventured to make - in a kitchen on Pentonville Road in London - contained these fine ingredients.
A book, a beer, an evening.
Delightful.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Blog Update.
I'm going to see Tom Waits in 18 days. Also, I have a sunburn from gardening.
I'm going to see Tom Waits in 18 days. Also, I have a sunburn from gardening.
