Ten Songs that drive me crazy... In a good way.

1. Saves the Day- "Tomorrow Too Late"

2. As Tall As Lions- "Milk and Honey"

3. The Story So Far- "Quicksand"

4. Tigers Jaw- "Spirit Desire"

5. Balance and Composure- "Stonehands"

6. The Pixies- "Here Comes Your Man"

7. David Bazan- "In Stitches"

8. The Arcade Fire- "In the Backseat"

9. The Zombies- "Tell Her No"

10. As Cities Burn- "Wrong Body"

"Long Term Relationships Were Only Cool When Divorce Wasn't" by Merchant Ships

'What's the point in listening when your words are filled with lies?

A spoken sense of burning down your bridges and your ties,

Phone calls laced with memories of what will never be,

The judges voice is cold and clear, "No more family."

We'll be buried in a graveyard, next to my childhood,

Just a place I'll visit, 'cause it'll "do me good,"

When I grow up, I'll forgive you and Dad for this,

But I won't pretend I forgive you when you say "sorry kids."

What's the point in listening when your words are filled with lies?

A spoken sense of burning down your bridges and your ties,

Phone calls laced with memories of what will never be,

The voice of Death is cold and clear, "No more family."

We'll be buried in a graveyard, next to my childhood,

The eulogy suggests that we once said we could,

Life is not about us, for you and Dad, at least,

So don't expect forgiveness when you say "we're sorry."

We stand on our own, looking for a place to call our home.'

Listen

Ouch.

In the process of packing up a year of my life and moving most of it into storage, I've found a few interesting items that I had forgotten were in my possession. The most interesting thus far was an old journal that I haven't written in for over a year. I believe I kept it because it has entries from a number of memorable events, including my last summer at church camp, notes from a speech by Rob Bell, and a disciple now I attended February of '09. Great stuff. Memories that both make me hurt and smile to read about.

One entry in particular surprised me. It was of a dream I had summer '09, a few weeks after the aforementioned church camp. I was on vacation on an island in the Bahamas with my loving parents and my best friend. It should have been an idyllic week of my life, but my mind was in turmoil over a lost friendship.

This person and her family hurt me more than I care to mention. That summer has since scarred the way I connect to people and make friendships. I was never given an explanation for the behavior I was shown; I was never given an apology. It still feels like a knife in my gut, and I hate myself for it.

"I had an absolutely terrible dream last night, possibly one of the worst I've had in a while. It wasn't scary; I didn't wake up with a start or in a cold sweat or anything like that. But once I fully realized what it was about, it made me feel hopeless and sad. I dreamed X explicitly forgave me and told me she missed our friendship as much as I did. She was so open and warm and sorry for what had happened, it was so real within my heart, I felt so glad."

I hope one day these people realize just how much they hurt me and everyone else they left behind, not because I want them to feel bad, but because I want them to know how important they were to us. She helped me through one of the most difficult times of my life, and it meant so much. They made me a part of their family. It really tore me up when they kicked me out of it for a reason I didn't understand.

Melville

"Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged into his deepest reveries -- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.... Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever."

One.

Tell me, Mom and Dad, what second love looks like,

'Cause this first-time-one-and-only love is getting so trite.

If divorce is the new black and second marriage the new white,

I think I'll skip the initial bullshit and head right to the end of my life.

Tell me what you find worth living for

When the first love you find starts to go sour.

If that promise can be broken,

We'll find a thousand other forevers, we'll be like waves in the ocean.

The swell begins and the good feelings rise.

We'll hardly notice our friends with concern in their eyes.

We'll ride the top of the wave, we'll make love in the sky,

And when we crash and drown we'll still tell everyone that we tried.

Tell me how you make it alone and sore

When the first love you find drops your heart on the floor.

If that promise can be broken,

I'll keep my heart a shelved book, empty pages, words unspoken.

God forbid I have children when the love finally dies;

I'd be up all night listening to their fatherless cries.

By the time I find my second it's too late to try

To convince them that love can be more than just feelings that lie.

"Down Under" by Men At Work

"Travelling in a fried-out combie,

On a hippie trail, head full of zombie,

I met a strange lady, she made me nervous,

She took me in and gave me breakfast,

And she said...

'Do you come from a land down-under?

Where women glow and men plunder,

Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder,

You better fun, you better take cover.'

Buying bread from a man in Brussels,

He was six-foot-four and full of muscles,

I said 'Do you speak my language?'

He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich,

And he said...

'I come from a land down-under,

Where beer does flow and men chunder,

Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder,

You better run, you better take cover.'

Lying in a den in Bombay,

With a slack jaw and not much to say,

Said to the man 'Are you trying to tempt me?'

Because I come from the land of plenty?

And he said...

'Oh!!!!!!!! Do you come from a land down-under?

Where women glow and men plunder,

Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder,

You better run, you better take cover.'"

Official Video

Love is for the lionhearted

First off, I want to talk about how much I love cooking. I'm not that great at it, I'll admit... but I'm pretty damn good. Anytime I've got the time, motivation, and resources to cook up a great meal, I do pretty well. Tonight's dinner consisted of chicken fajitas with spinach, mushrooms, a green bell pepper, tomatillos, refried pinto beans, avocado, and mozzarella cheese. And, of course, Strawberry Serenity kombucha sparkling fermented tea to drink. Simple, I know, but so, so good.

Yes, I did just spend a paragraph to brag about my amateur cooking skills. What was more important about tonight's dinner, though, was that I got to share it with someone I consider a good friend, and a great person. I've been thinking a bit lately about what kinds of experiences really bond us together as people; why some relationships succeed and others miserably fail without any very good reason.

At this point in my life, I don't care much about what my career is going to be in the next five to ten years. I've given up trying to control that, because college is scary and confusing and it makes me nervous to think I've got to figure it all out right now. What I do know is this: I want to make deep, meaningful connections to the people around me. I want to give them all of the love and compassion and support I possibly can. I want to spend all of myself on making other people better, in the most general sense.

I'm not doing a very good job of that just yet. I get angry at people for the wrong reasons, I let my passions blind me to the sensitivities of others, and I hold back important parts of myself to keep relationships surface-deep. Concerning the latter, sometimes protecting your heart from people who can't take care of it is necessary. I realize that. My goal is to be so well enough on my own that I am able to share those pieces of myself more often.

My biggest goal, however, is to consistently improve the way I look at people. I want to see every person as worth my effort, time, and love. I want to care about the people in rural India so much that it makes me cry to see them in pain. I want to show my friends just how damn fond I am of them. I want to finally be able to love the woman who deemed me unworthy of her love. If I end up working in some dull office building the rest of my life, I want to find a way to meet the needs of all of the people around me the best way that I can.

And the best way I know to do all of this is to find out what bonds people together and welcome it into my life. People who love each other and meet each other's needs suffer together, eat together, laugh together. I want to suffer with the people who still live in storm-battered tents in Haiti. I want to eat with the homeless man who stands on the corner of my street. I want to laugh with the kid who doesn't speak any languages I know.

I've been concentrating so hard on making myself a better person. Now I want to use all of my energy to help other people be better.

I'm an idealist, I know. But isn't now the best time for that? I have few responsibilities, lots of options, and an excess in resources. I've got the world ahead of me.

Love is for the lionhearted

"Y

Writing this after the OHS game. I caught the second half, did you get playing time in the first half? It was 3-1 when I got there. Your team looked good in the second half -- crisp. Keep playing like that & you ladies can win out good luck good win.

I don't have my glasses on so please excuse the mistakes -- jams. Pardon the snail mail it's the only way now for me to get my thoughts out. I thought maybe we had it worked where you might spend more time over here. I concluded that it was my bad cooking -- too many dogs -- have to go out to the garage or to smoke and drink -- bad haircut -- TV too small -- no piano or karokee machine -- I'm a nerd (please don't choose this one) no parking ok ok enough already I'll shut up. I miss you guys tremendously just at least some talk and walk is great the dogs are tired of hearing my nagging voice. Wish I had pushed a lot harder earlier in childhood to get my days with you two but have not been a pushy or demanding personality if you didn't want to come over who was I to push the issue. Please feel always welcome... stay watch TV do homework chat -- talk poker cards play dominoes chess or as a La Quinta Inn -- stay a day week month or year. Seriously I know you have lots of items on your plate but please don't forget about me I admire all you are doing & love to hear you sing & watch you in sports a true joy in my life!

Keep after the books if your kind of drifting in mid term. They will be so important the further in education and life you advance.

I'll keep writing if that's ok please take a few minutes before you file them in Chapter XXX. Did you get the book from Mother? the other day she had given it to me but I didn't hear what it was about or content. If you like history books by David McCullogh are very good, he's won two Pulitzer Prizes for Lit and they are interesting reads. I have gotten back to reading a lot been under the weather some and TV is just not relevant to me any more. Well I'll shut up going to try & make Wal Mart early this morning & avoid the crush.

Love always and have you in my prayers X"

.

I realize no one really blogs anymore now that tumblr is all the rage, but seeing as I don't have one and am not yet persuaded to make one, I'll hang on to this obsolete form of social networking a little longer.

I decided to share my thoughts here partly as a step to overcome the crippling writer's block that's been weighing on me for the the past few months, and partly to contribute my little unintelligible ramblings to the conversation surrounding tonight's events in New York.

Firstly, I have never and maybe will never understand why any human being must petition for "rights" that others have been practicing for centuries. Such has been the history among us for many years, though, and I don't wish to think about it any more than I have to. The step taken tonight is rightly celebrated, and anyone who stands against it stands against the happiness and well-being of millions of people, period. Homosexuality is not a problem in need of fixing, an injustice in need of righting, or some enemy territory to be reclaimed-- just like dark skin and female chromosomes were also none of those things. When we "fight" against someone else's lifestyle, passions, and happiness, we are spilling our own blood, and though such violence has sometimes proved necessary, it is an action which should be taken with utmost care and consideration.

My intention here, however, is not to be a part of some political rally. I know little about politics, and I don't care to make a fool of myself by arguing something beyond my knowledge.

Instead, I want to explore the attitudes and beliefs about homosexuality itself.

I was told years ago by an admired and trusted friend that people are not born gay, because "God would not create someone in sin." And until quite recently, I repeated and used those words to justify my own ideas about what being gay meant. I see clearly now that if the aforementioned argument were to be held true, it would imply that people aren't born in sin, and that we all begin the first days of life here perfect, pure, untouched by imperfection. To that, I raise a question: What of those who suffer from mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or depression? People certainly do not choose such fates, and (correct me if I'm wrong) are victims of genetic irregularities, which can be affected by but is not singularly the result of traumatizing experiences. Some people are born with brains that will not function "normally" without the help of medication. They are born irregular. Abnormal. Wrong.

Now I come to the central question, the issue that's been bothering me. Why, if God indeed creates us all, does he make some of us wrong? Why does he make some of us abnormal? Why does he give us problems from the very beginning, problems beyond our control, problems which are not external or environmental, but are ingrained into our very minds?... When I present this question to her, someone dear to my heart always answers, "We are all given burdens, and for some people, that's theirs." Her confidence in this always soothes my anger for a while. But the question still burns in me.

My conclusions remain unalterable: homosexuality is not some problem to be fixed or some damned sin to be rebuked. I do not expect to "change" anyone who is gay, just as a schizophrenic does not "change" with medication the fact that his brain naturally causes him to see a deluded view of the world. It is an integral part of character, of being, to be adapted to, cared for, and loved-- loved because it is a part of someone, not some black spot on the soul to be scrubbed away.

Don't ask me

someone show me how to exist here

in limbo:

without time there is no marker

by which I

can pass the days of the absence

of reason

I feel drained I feel wrong I feel small

I feel that

I'll never be okay again

in my life.

Hope loves you, and I am stuck asking

is this right

I am blind among a vivid field

of wild flow'rs

I cannot hear the pleading crunch

of soft snow

a sight for sore eyes, these leaves fall

on deaf ears

show me how to exist here with no

plasma or

marrow or receptors or life-blood

no real heart

the structure is there but devoid of

its insides

the stuff that makes it tick tock tick

off the days

on a made-up calendar that screams

when challenged

Don't ask questions it yells Just fight

the good fight

Just love everyone and keep well

to yourself

well I'm damn tired of loving from

the outside

give me purpose give me sense give me

a quota

anything to make me feel that this

life I lead

is more than a biological

mystery

be informed

I'm reading a book for my Journalism class by an independent journalist named John Pilger, and the information he collected about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is absolutely appalling. I knew next to nothing about this conflict before reading this book, and I assume that most people my age have the same problem- and yes, it is a problem. Here's an excerpt from the book that shows the brutality of the situation which was covered up by the international community and never known about. The book is called Freedom Next Time and was published in 2006.

"On the day I visited Fatima, I arranged to meet Salim Shawamareh in a cafe near his home in Anata, an outer suburb on Jerusalem. I had been told: 'His story alone speaks for what others cannot imagine.' Salim has an Israeli ID card. This shows that he was born in Jerusalem and theoretically means that he has some protection from the brutalities of the occupation. In 1994, he applied for planning permission to have his land classified for agriculture. For this, he was told, he would have to pay $25,000, a fee that applied only to Palestinians. Over four years, he was refused permission three times, and twice he was told that two signatures were missing on a form where neither was specified.

'On July 9,1998,' he said, 'my family and I were eating lunch when suddenly there was shouting, and the house was surrounded by soldiers. One of them said, "It's not your home now; it's our home. You have fifteen minutes to get out." When I challenged this, they arrested me, and started smashing the windows and throwing tear gas inside, where my wife and kids were. My wife passed out; my kids were in a terrible state. Jeff Halper, the wonderful Israeli anthropologist who leads the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, arrived and threw himself in front of the bulldozers. The soldiers beat up everybody; one boy lost a kidney; and my house was flattened. Seven years of working in Saudi Arabia, where I'd gone to save for a home, were wasted.

'I moved the family into a tent in the backyard, then I watched a miracle: Palestinians and Jeff Halper's people, Arabs and Jews together, rebuilt my home in twenty-three days. Hundreds came to help from all over Israel. It was finished on August 3. The very next day, my wife and I were woken at four in the morning with machine guns pointing at our faces. We were ordered out into the street where we watched our home destroyed for the second time. They destroyed the trees we planted. They even took the tent we'd been living in.

'Once more, I went to the Civil Administration where they said the house would not have been demolished if I had had the two missing signatures. But whose signatures? For two months, a lawyer tried to find out for me, with no luck. So, yes, we rebuilt my home again. It was finished on April 3, 2001. And at eight o'clock the following morning, the soldiers came again and destroyed my home again!

'Back at the Civil Administration, they kept moving the "zone" line. Was I in the zone meant only for Jews? I was never sure, because I was never told. Yes, we rebuilt it again, and the soldiers came again, this time with a tank. I couldn't stop my ten-year-old daughter running out in front of it, and the doctors say the shock to her nervous system was such that she's now going blind, a bit more every day. All my children don't sleep without wetting their beds and crying out with nightmares. That happens every night. What does this mean for me? It means that, as a father, I can't protect them, I am powerless. Now I must give up.'"

This is actually the least graphic account of an injustice against a Palestinian resident by Israeli soldiers. One story included the officers pissing and defecating on, as well as completely destroying, a children's school and art museum, all in the name of "preventing terrorism."

I'm not telling anyone to go out and become a social activist, and I'm not trying to make anyone feel guilty. What I am condoning is for everyone to be informed about what's going on outside of the damn United States. There are a lot of things that go on that the American media don't report on, or skew in a pseudo-patriotic way. There are plenty of news sites available on the Internet for free nowadays that provide a different perspective than the typical government and corporation-based American news- keep yourself informed on what's really going on.

whatever I say goes... you're not here with me.

It's time for you to realize that any hopes you have concerning our future are dead. I will never forget what happened, and I will never come back to you on hands and knees, asking for a second chance. You will never know me like you did then, and you will never convince me to stay again.

Your name once claimed a spot in my heart that made me yield to your every word, cry for every tear you shed, smile for every joy you knew, but it's burned straight through my skin and now there's only a scar of letters that used to have meaning.

I once cared for you, for your person- your face, your mind, your compassion. Now I care only for the memory of myself when I was around you.

You say you still care for me, but you don't know me anymore. All you know is the memory of yourself when you were around me. You can't even remember how I look, aside from the pictures; all you have are pictures, pictures and words.



This is an assertion of my existence without your further influence. It's time for you to realize that you no longer have any hand in determining what I will or will not do.

titles

In truth, I would have to describe the defining the character of the past year of my life as sadness. Or bitterness. Frankly, I was just negative in nearly every aspect. I was always sorry for what I'd done or what had happened; or, I was angry at people or situations which I could not bend to my convenience and satisfaction.

The events that I blamed for my poor disposition did, in fact, dissipate long before I stopped using them as a crutch. The beef was squashed, but I couldn't throw it away. I dug through it to find any foul particle I could, and I swallowed it all, bit by bit, to keep the ill feeling in my stomach from going away.

Wow, what a gross metaphor.

Point being that I induced my own misery every chance that I got. I constantly stirred up old quarrels and unpleasant feelings so I could cling to them for dear life, because every other part of me was dead. My faith lied helpless and buried beneath the carcasses of passion, sympathy, desire, even complacency. So many interests I once held ceased in action, and in their places rose a sharp need for anything that made me feel like I had a purpose, no matter how insignificant or petty. So, I claimed I was seeking resolution for the conflicts in my life.

Sometimes, though, conflicts must, for a time, go unresolved. And sometimes we create conflicts in our minds that don't actually exist.

I see now the void that I was desperately trying to fill, and I also see now the proper way to fill it. I invited sadness to reside in my heart and mind, and I'm having a hard time kicking it out; but it's going. In its place I've invited joy.

I take joy in simple things, like my two working legs that carry me wherever I'd like to go; but I'm also beginning to see the joy in the big picture: my life, which my Creator has so intricately and deliberately placed in the world, and every small and large event of my 18 years and 10 months of living that has given me the opportunity and the motivation to act upon what I love for the higher purpose of Love itself.

I'm not calling this optimism- I know that bad things are ahead. Bad things are always ahead. I'm calling it the slow accumulation of wisdom and appreciation and contentment of and in the events of my life and the purpose to which I've been set.

Never again will I call on sadness to sustain me, I no longer have need of it.

Listen here, you

Homeless people are not scary, damnit. They're not.

Probably you read that first line and laughed to yourself. Or, maybe, you didn't.
In any case, I'm typing this in total earnestness that someone will sympathize my point, and in total earnestness that I will not forget my own words (even though I will).

I'm so tired of homeless people being stigmatized like outcasts of society, like untouchables. Society has told us many a-time, "They're homeless because they messed up and lost everything" or "They'll only use your money to feed their addictions" or "They're always high on drugs or drunk off of booze-- probably both" or, my favorite, "They're dangerous." Dangerous, huh? So, if I stop to offer a homeless man something to eat, he's going to pull a knife on me? In front of all the people on the busy sidewalk where he stopped me? I find that highly unlikely. Yet society ducks its head and avoids eye contact anytime it passes one of "them."

Sometimes, homeless people don't even try to ask for spare change. Sometimes, they just want to talk. Sometimes they just want a cup of coffee to keep their hands warm. Sometimes they just want a soda to calm their acid-reflux.

They graciously accept five-dollar cheeseburgers that you grab for lunch when you're in a hurry.

But, most importantly, homeless people are people, damnit. Like people who have a permanent residence, sometimes they have drug and alcohol abuse issues. Like people struggling to pay for college or support their families or pay their bills, sometimes they go hungry for reasons we have no right to judge.

It's our privilege, our right, our responsibility, to, as we are able, provide for people when they are without, whether they are without food, shelter, or just someone to listen. Sometimes they only want to tell their story, to justify why they are where they are, to make it known to someone that they are trying to improve.

Sometimes we don't remember how alike we all are.

career vs. the real world

Most people would think of the "real world" (not the stupid MTV show) as the job world, the place where adults put on their business clothes and put in their 9-5 and then go home. I've been thinking lately about how misconstrued this conception really is. Only a small percentage of the world's population actually gets up and goes to work in an office every morning, so why is that considered the real world?

It's been drilled into me since day 1: go to school, learn what you need to get a good job, save up lots of money, and then you get to do whatever you want when you're old. This was presented to me as the perfect life plan. Occasionally, phrases like "find your passion" and "do what makes you happy" were thrown in, but, for the most part, the focus is the career. Well, what if I don't want to have a career? What if I really hate dealing with business and money and business-people? All the adults in my family would likely consider that to be immature talk and, trust them, I'll want all those things when I get older. Plus, you're going to have to deal with all of those things for the rest of your life. That's just the way life is.

I'm finally discovering that the business world really isn't "life" for most people in the world, and I'm tired of being deluded into thinking it is. I don't want to concern my entire life with only the people of a small percentage of the population-- the people at the very top. I want to informed and involved with the real "real world."

All this to say that I've really been contemplating my college education and what I'm called to do with my life. I've come recently to the conclusion that I want help people be better in the best way that I can. I want to find what I'm good at and use everything I have to love people with all that is in me. And maybe that sounds broad and naive and idealistic, but it's the first time in my life that I've ever felt so much passion for anything, and I'm going to follow it as far and as enthusiastically as I can.

"technical" equality

Today in class, my Journalism professor, Dr. Jensen, had our class of about 130 students sit in only the front and middle sections of the lecture hall.

Jensen began the lecture by insisting that the politics and economics of today are undeniably interrelated, and how important it is to understand economics when dealing with the government of our country and those around the world. As the topic of our class has been Democracy and the people's participation in government, he began discussing the differences in the economic statuses of people in the U.S. One statistic he showed us claimed that the top 10% of the nation (in terms of wealth) contains over 70% of the nation's wealth. The remaining nine-tenths of the population shares the rest.

He drove the point home by randomly choosing 13 students sitting in the front section of the lecture hall and ordering the rest of the front section to get up and move to the middle section. So, these 13 people had an area of probably 80 seats all to themselves, and the rest of the class crammed into the middle. Many people were without seats and stood in the back of the big auditorium. Some sat in the aisles (and were laughingly yelled at by Jensen to "stop being stupid and get in their places"). But he then spoke about how all of our educational experiences were "technically" equal-- we could all listen to the same lecture, take the same test, write the same paper. However, no one in the back of the room could agree that they had the same learning opportunity as the 13 sitting in the front.

As Jensen released everyone back to their original seats, he connected the dots: each of us in the U.S. gets one vote in elections, each of us has freedom of expression, each of us is free to form our own political alliances as we choose. The questions he posed to us were: Do you have the same potential for political influence as does Bill Gates? Do you have the money to fund a multi-million dollar campaign? Can you pay hundreds of lobbyists to flood Congress and persuade politicians to pass the bills you want to be passed? Of course not. Few people in this country have such abilities, and several of our policies reflect that fact. Wealth inequality equals political inequality.

He concluded that the only way to overcome the effects of concentrated wealth is with concentrated people.

i'm not good with titles...

I want to write a blog about an experience I had tonight, mostly because I think it's funny and I hope whoever reads this (Tess) will think it's funny, too.

This semester I'm intent on finding a church in which to belong here in Austin, so I looked up the information about the University Baptist Church which is a couple of blocks down the street from my dorm. I slept in Sunday instead of attending the service, but I saw that there is a 7:00 college bible study on Wednesday. Not knowing anything about this church, I walk into a room full of adults talking, interrupting them in the process, and ask about the bible study. The minister calls this guy Brent, who apparently leads the bible study, and makes me talk to him. How awkward, thanks. So, after concluding the awkward phone conversation with the guy I've never met, I make my leave promising to be back next Tuesday.

But as I step through the door, this cute little old man (I forget his name) stops me and invites me to stay for choir practice. I can't tell him no because he's just so darn nice, so I walk back in and get introduced to all the adults as a new choir member- crap. They were all very welcoming and inquired about my school and hometown until we headed upstairs for practice. There are about twenty members in this little church choir, and here I am sitting in their midst, someone who wondered in off the streets, sight-reading these old-school church choir songs. It's a funny situation; but, admittedly, I did enjoy the chance to just sing with a group again.

-Just a funny little story about my day. In other news, I'm really enjoying my classes. I'm learning a lot about the theory of Democracy, which, to my surprise, I'm finding incredibly interesting. I'm also thinking about asking (or demanding) someone to be my Valentine's date and take me somewhere nice to dinner... Just a thought.

Environmental Science

This is my first blog, and as I'm certain not many people will be reading it (I don't know if I want anyone reading it.. yet), I'm going to skip over all the preliminaries and just get to what I want to blog about. So sorry if you enjoy that stuff.

Last summer at orientation I registered myself for a class called "Sustaining a Planet," of which I had no idea at the time was a class centered upon the causes, effects, and possible solutions for global warming. Having been raised in the good ol' West Texas, where everything is oil and nothing is "environmental," I was heavily under the influence that global warming is a bunch of garbage that hippies and liberals are throwing out there for, well, who knows what.

After taking this class (and being exposed to perspectives much more open-minded), I've sort of opened my eyes to issues going on around the world. The topic that most caught my interest is the dwindling and lack of water resources, not only in the far-off third-world countries, but here in Texas, even. And the scary part is that scientists are projecting droughts to become more severe and frequent in the very near future-- within decades we could be seeing a serious shortage of water.

This, and the recent disaster in Haiti, have incited my interest in the millions of people around the world everyday who go without basic needs. I read an article in the New York Times today that talked about how aid for food was growing scarce, and many Haitians are living on a few beans or pieces of bread a day. And, again, it is expected that natural disasters such as earthquakes, and especially severe floods and tsunamis, are expected only to grow in intensity and frequency. We have yet to make serious preparations for such predictions in the U.S.; foreign countries with even less knowledge and forewarning are even further behind.

I feel like these things are constantly at the back of my mind, but I've yet to do anything but read news stories and blog about them. I figured maybe I'd feel better if I got it down in writing.

Again, sorry for the depressing and unconventional first blog. Others will be happier, I promise.