In Denmark, Mukhtar the bus driver had a birthday, and his regular riders had a great idea to make it a special one. I dare you not to mist up:
I haven’t ridden the bus in a month, because I need my extra minutes in the morning to keep our house clean enough for showings, but one thing I miss about it is the community riding the bus creates among the regulars and the drivers. We were never all close enough to plan and execute a birthday flashmob for a driver, but we knew each other, knew each others’ stops, and chatted with each other each morning and evening. I miss chatting with my bus friends and joking with my favorite drivers.
Even though I’m not a bus rider right now, this sweet video has inspired me. What a great way to show someone you appreciate that they do their job! I’m going to try to make a point to thank someone just for doing a great job at their job, no matter how “menial” it may be considered in society. Why don’t you do the same?
Through Twitter I’ve come in contact with Ryan Byrd, the pastor of a new church in Little Rock called Eikon. I’ve been reading Ryan’s blog and the posts on Eikon’s website, and getting pretty excited about the kind of community they are and the things they are up to, thinking they’re the kind of group I might like to be a part of after we move to Little Rock. Anyway, all these internet connections have led to me having a post up on their site as part of a new blog series called CityView. So, go check out my post, about how my faith makes me an environmentalist and a foodie!
I've found Twitter to be a very "uplifting" experience (groan).
Although I was born and raised in Arkansas, for the past three years, I’ve been living in Charleston, SC. Now that my husband is finishing his residency in pediatrics, we’re moving back to Little Rock, AR, for him to do a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and, thanks in large part to the fine folks on Twitter who participate in the #LRTweetup community, I’m excited about the move (even as leaving Charleston is breaking my heart).
I’m really not sure how I found these people, but I’m pretty sure I found most of them through my childhood friend, @SavannahB, who had already gotten pretty connected with the #LRTweetup folks by the time she and I reconnected via Twitter after I joined sometime last fall. I noticed that she had all sorts of fun exchanges with various Little Rock folks on Twitter, and started to follow some of her tweeps. I assumed Savannah had met these people before, and DM’d her asking how she knew them. That’s when I found out she had met most of them on Twitter first, and then met them at tweetups.
As I followed more and more of the funny, inspiring, engaged, and sweet people who make up the #LRTweetup community, I found more and more people to follow. These days, my Little Rockers friend list contains 69 tweeps! And as the date of my move (the end of next month) approaches, the #LRTweetup people couldn’t be more welcoming, especially considering they’ve never even “met” me! I’ve had tweeps recommend Realtors, scout out rental houses, pass along my resume to potential employers, and offer to meet up for drinks when I come to town to look for a rental house. Today, my mother in law had surgery, and so many tweeps offered to pray for her.
When I first moved to South Carolina, I had a really rough time. My husband was working a lot, and I didn’t know a soul. The move to Little Rock will probably also be rough, and my husband will be working a lot, but I have a feeling I won’t have such a rough time. Because I know there’s a great group of people ready and willing to hang out with me, as soon as the next #LRTweetup. I only wish I could be there tomorrow night for the group’s Tweetie awards– I still can’t get over the fact that a group of people I’ve never “met” nominated me for an award, though I guess it’s a testament to my tendency to insert my loudmouthed self into the center of things, but more than that, a testament to this group’s welcoming attitude. I can’t wait to meet each and every member of the #LRTweetup community.
Julia and me at the exhibit of her kitchen at the Smithsonian.
I’ve seen “Julie & Julia” three times now, having watched it yesterday for the third time. And I’ll probably see it again. It might be my new favorite movie, right up there with “Elf,” “Zoolander,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” and “Center Stage” in terms of films I watch over and over (my taste, as you can see, is nothing but the highest quality in films).
At first I thought I liked the film because of Julia. I mean, Meryl Streep is freakin’ fabulous as Julia Child, and really, Julia Child was just amazing. I said the first time I saw the film that I’d have rather just watched Julia, and had the Julie part left out altogether. Amy Adams is a lovely actress, but her Julie just didn’t stand a chance next to Meryl’s Julia. Julia is/was vibrant and vivacious and in love with her husband and with life. I’d happily watch a whole movie of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci grabbing each other’s butts and holding hands and making out and making jokes about cannolini being “hot as a stiff cock.”
Julie, on the other hand, drove me a little insane. She was whiny and petty and mopey. She was selfish, snippy with her husband, and given to throwing lying-in-the-floor tantrums when things weren’t going so well in the kitchen, even though she was cooking for fun, as a hobby, and no one was freaking making her do it. I found myself annoyed by her the entire time I was watching the movie for the first time, and for most of my second viewing as well.
But yesterday, while watching the film for the third time, I had a revelation. One thing I managed to pick up from all the Jungian psychology I learned as a lit major is that usually, the things we most hate in the Other are things we hate in ourselves.
Basically, I am Julie.
Like Julie, I’ve had to move and will move again because of my husband’s more prestigious job. Like Julie, I’m a writer, but I’m not really a writer, not in the sense of getting paid to write things, and instead, like Julie, I work in a bureaucratic job that I don’t really love most of the time. Like Julie, I feel that most of my friends are more successful than I am. Like Julie, I feel I could be a magazine cover girl for a piece on failing to live up to one’s college potential. Like Julie, I lack a best girl friend to confide in. Like Julie, my hobbies include blogging and cooking. Like Julie, my husband encourages my hobbies and reminds me that I am too a writer and a good one at that (seriously, he even reads my academic papers, even though I’m sure they’re about as comprehensible to him as his medical journals are to me).
And that’s just the superficial stuff. I even realized, while watching the scene where she drops a chicken on the floor and lays down and cries, a scene that annoyed me the first two times I saw it, I have done almost that exact same thing. I can’t remember what I was cooking except that I burned it badly, and as I flipped out and opened windows and banged things around and generally acted like a toddler, my charming doctor husband informed me: “YOU ARE JUST LIKE THE HOSPITAL!” This was shocking, as it made no sense to me. How was I just like a children’s hospital? He then explained that the hospital where he works has an ICU and a normal floor, but no “step down floor.” That is, there’s no level between “oh my God, things are serious and someone might die” and “things are probably going to be fine, everything’s routine, no need to worry.” He was trying to tell me that I lack a level between HYSTERICAL HISSY FIT and lalala nothing to see here. Like Julie.
Maybe like Julie I’ll end up a bestselling author. Maybe I won’t. But from now on, when I watch “Julie & Julia,” (and yes, I’ll probably be watching it again) I’ll be a little kinder and less judgmental of Julie. Because the things that bug me about her are things that bug me about me. And we’re both just doing the best we can.
And now, my fair governor is in the news once again. His wife having filed for divorce and written a tell-all book after their efforts to save their marriage failed, he is trying to reunite with the Argentinian woman he calls his “soulmate.” And the thing is, I’m fine with that. I can’t say why exactly, but somehow, I’m less bothered by a man who simply fell in love with the wrong woman at the wrong time, than I am with an Elliot Spitzer screwing prostitutes behind his wife’s back after making a career going after prostitution rings, or John Edwards cheating on his dying wife with a bimbo, and then failing to wrap it up, all the while thinking that he could still run for president and no one would know about his love child. Somehow, I’m sympathetic to love, even if it’s narrated by poorly-written email poetry about tan lines.
This is a slide from a presentation my husband gave on the subject of childhood smoking.
What I’m less sympathetic to are Sanford’s policies, particularly his veto this week of a proposed tobacco tax increase in a state with the lowest tobacco taxes in the nation. As someone concerned about childrens’ health in particular (and the wife of a pediatrician), I know that higher tobacco taxes are a proven way of keeping tobacco out of kids’ hands and a great way to fund tobacco use prevention programs. According to the SC Tobacco Collaborative, “Studies show that every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes reduces youth smoking by about 7 percent and overall cigarette consumption by about 4 percent.” Keeping kids from smoking is a key way to prevent adults from smoking and make our nation a healthier place, keeping health care costs down for all of us. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, most smokers have their first cigarette between the ages of 11 and 14! Thankfully the House overrode his veto, and there is hope the Senate will do the same.
It’s just a shame that yet again, the governor’s love life is detracting attention from his more serious missteps, like the ones that put SC children at risk.
There’s not going to be a new blog post today, and posting might be spotty for the next few days (there will be a CSA update tomorrow) because I’m hunting a rare beast: a house in Little Rock to rent, within 5 miles of Arkansas Children’s Hospital, that allows me to live there with my 2 large mutts and has a fenced-in yard. I’m starting to fear we’re going to end up living in a tent. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Since I don’t usually blog on weekends, I thought I’d re-post something I wrote last year for Mother’s Day:
Julia Ward Howe, the founder of Mother's Peace Day. Via Wikipedia.
I bet that you probably have no idea where Mother’s Day got its start. I always figured it was sort of like Valentine’s Day– cooked up in some secret meeting between card companies, florists, jewelers, and others looking for a holiday by which they could market and sell things.
Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong. Mother’s Day actually started as part of a peace movement, and at a time when our nation is fighting two wars, when so many other nations in the world are at war, when violence seems to have become a way of life, it’s important to remember the true origin of Mother’s Day. It was not intended as a day for children to celebrate their mothers, though this is a wonderful thing which should be done every day, but rather as a day for mothers around the world to come together for the cause of peace, to work together to ensure that their children would not need to fight and kill one another.
The creator of Mother’s Day was Julia Ward Howe, the same woman who wrote the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She issued the following Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870:
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
In many ways, reflecting on peace, and what it would mean for us to realize that every person truly is somebody’s baby, is a way for me to celebrate my mothers. Yes, I have two, a mother and a stepmom, both of whom I can now say (after a little counseling and some relationship building between my mother and me) love me dearly and have made me into the woman I am today. Both are huge advocates of caring for others, of making a difference, of fighting for what you believe in. I may be an opinionated, outspoken, passionate person, but I am this way because I was raised by people who loved me enough to give me a voice, to believe that I had something to say, to have the courage to stand by my convictions. So, on Mother’s Day, I am thankful for the opportunity to be raised by two strong, loving women. I’m sure I’ll never understand their sacrifices until I have children of my own. I hope to be the kind of woman they’ve always known and dreamed I would be, and on Mother’s Day and every day, I continue to pray for peace.
Image: BBC Cross, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from ihar's photostream
This week, my latest issue of Relevant Magazine came in the mail. I took it out to the beach on Saturday, and when I turned to the Deeper Walk column written by Jason Boyett, I felt I could have written his piece word for word. It was called “O Me of Little Faith” (that’s a link to the piece in the digital edition of the magazine, just zoom in and read!), and in the very first line, Boyett confesses:
I am a Christian. I have been a Christian for most of my life. But there are times when I’m not sure I believe in God.
Me too.
In many ways, the same things that drive me toward a life of faith often also pull me in the opposite direction, particularly my curiosity and my questioning nature. I’ve been known to practically give myself panic attacks thinking too hard about whether or not what I say I believe is really true. I’m prone to many dark nights of the soul. I’m prone to praying, “Lord, I believe, please help my unbelief.” And yet, something always pulls me back to God. You could probably say God always pulls me back to God. No matter how deep my doubts, it’s always to God that I pray, begging God to please just give me my faith back.
And yet, I’m often jealous of those for whom faith seems to come easily, even as I’m frustrated that what so often seems obvious and unshakable to them comes so hard to me. Continue reading “we of little faith”
Image: freedom, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from bexross's photostream.
When I was a teen, had you asked me my favorite Bible verse, I would have rattled it off for you immediately. Jeremiah 29:11-13. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will come to me and you will pray to me and you will find me. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.'” (That’s a paraphrase based on what I remember.)
As I’ve grown older, my understanding of that verse has seriously changed. For one thing, I’ve learned the danger of pulling a Bible verse out of its context and attempting to apply it to my life as if it was written to me as an individual in the modern world. In the case of this verse, I have to remember that this is from a piece of prophesy to the Israelites, and the “yous” in it are all plural. It’s about a plan for a nation, a people, who at the time were in exile and suffering, letting them know that even though they, themselves, might not live to see it, one day their people would be back in their land, back into the relationship with God that they craved. It’s not a promise about my individual prosperity, but a promise that even in the darkest times, we can trust that God wants good things for and a right relationship with God’s people, and is always at work to bring them, as a group, back where they were created to be. You can read more about understanding this verse in context in this piece, The Most Misused Verse in the Bible, over at Relevant. Continue reading “for i know the plans i have for you?”
One year ago today I decided to take the plunge and start blogging. It wasn’t technically my first blog, as I had a Xanga early in my college years but deleted it one day when I got bored with it and slightly weirded out about who was reading it every single day. But I am a writer at heart, and a bit of an attention whore, so eventually I caved to my desire to have a creative outlet and to perhaps spare my husband some of my more long-winded rants (who am I kidding, I often read my blog posts out loud to him because that’s just the kind of girl I am!), and so I started this blog. Somewhat ironically, my first post was about being “Unplugged” and giving up cable.
And then, last week, almost one year to the day I started this blog, I noticed a sudden spike in traffic and checked out the WordPress homepage to see this:
But now things have returned back to normal. Still, it was a huge thrill to see those comments and pageviews pouring in, and I found some cool new WordPress blogs thanks to people who left comments. All in all, a heckuva way to celebrate one year of blogging.
So, my only blog-birthday wish is to know who some of you people are who read this! I know some of you have never left a comment, and I’d love for you to just say “hi” and let me know who’s out there. While I’d probably still be writing this thing even if no one was reading, because I’m the type who’d argue with a brick wall, knowing that people read it is a lot of the fun, and I’d love to know who’s out there.
erniebufflo's south & west kitchen 