What I've Been Doing Lately...

the two months since coming back from Uganda have been full of many rich experiences: friends, family, and lots of miles on my car. here, a mostly chronological [except the last two photos should be a little earlier] smattering of photos...

24 hours in the u.s.

jet-lagged, but feeling oh-so-loved:

alicia brought a picnic to akron.

[PA]

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jonathan's flat, up the street from mcc,

was a great place to hang out

and make brownies.

"don't be sad, jonny,

they'll be out of the oven soon!"

[PA]

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my journal got a lot of ink during re-entry week.

it was a rough time for me.

[PA]

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again, at jonathan's:

here, christa shucks the sweet corn

while liz smiles in anticipation.

fresh garden produce was certainly

one delight of coming back to this part of the u.s.

mid-summer.

[PA]

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the returning salters at our re-entry retreat in akron,

the end of the beginning of our transition

"home."

[PA]

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august brought lots of opportunities to experiment with

the eggplants my parents grew.

this one's facial expression just demanded a photo op.

best eggplant dish:

eggplant parmigiana.

[VA]

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my sisters and i have a bit of a reputation among family friends

for our "lewis cookies."

shh, don't tell:

mom says they're actually a buel recipe.

[VA]

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carson michael lewis.

he's grown up a lot since the last time i saw him.

i watched him grow up during my college years.

[PA]

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and his younger sister,

cami jo,

who was definitely still a "baby" when i left.

[PA]

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driving around harrisburg,

it occurred to me once again to wonder

why they insist on "fixing"

perfectly good roads.

[PA]

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visiting my grandparents in rexville meant

lots of time with the younger lewis cousins,

who seem to be growing and multiplying

faster than i can keep track of.

[NY]

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riding four-wheelers through the woods at dusk

brings back so many memories

of childhood innocence and joy.

[NY]

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sunset over king hill.

[which was renamed "lewis road" a few years back.]

this is beauty.

[NY]

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john deere.

i can't remember quite how old i was

when i first learnt to drive tractor.

[thanks to rachel for this shot.]

[NY]

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the view from my grandparents' dining room window.

shop on the right, silo on the left,

new manure pit being dug in the background.

how many deer have we counted from here?

[again, thanks to rachel.]

[NY]

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aunt pam was pretty excited when

the last of 10 blueberry pies for lindsay's wedding reception

came out of the oven!

[was there mention of making this a family tradition?]

[NY]

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my beautiful cousin, lindsay,

was introduced alongside her new husband,

jeff brown.

[NY]

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welcome to the buel family,

mr. brown.

[NY]

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all but two of the buel cousins.

i'm on the far right, second oldest.

we're a good-looking family, methinks.

[NY]

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sisters may never be too old for dress up.

[VA]

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first day of school 2009:

nate's in 8th grade,

rachel's in 10th.

i remember both of their births,

and yes, i feel old.

[VA]

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jonathan and i helped melissa move back up to school,

then spent a few days "friend-hopping" across maryland and DC.

we were pretty peopled-out after that.

[VA--PA--MD--DC--VA]

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visiting messiah necessarily meant going back to

some of my favourite places:

jordan 3rd is the keeper of so many memories.

[PA]

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i took a couple boxes of fresh produce when

i visited melissa in her lovely house in grantham.

pennsylvania is a cold and rainy place:

i thought i might develop hypothermia.

so, we made delicious vegetable soup.

[PA]

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melissa's super crazy busy schedule meant that

i got to go stay with one of my old roommates

and dear friends, miss alicia.

[PA]

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we convinced christa to come out and cook with us too.

just like old times in the apartment we shared.

except, alicia has a warm house.

[PA]

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jonathan and i just happened to

visit the historic section of philly

on constitution day:

here, posing with mr. washington, himself.

[philadelphia is cold.]

[PA]

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i made the mistake of drinking coffee

a few hours before attending jimmy carter's lecture.

[note the crazed look in my eyes at

the mere thought of sitting still so long].

[VA]

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messiah college.

it felt strange to walk the grounds of this place

that has been so much a part of my growing up.

[PA]

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the breeches quite possibly seem even more peaceful and serene

now that i don't live right up the hill.

[PA]

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home... is where love is.

That We May Always Be Together.

As the calendar on my desktop changes from 27 to 28, it is now two months to the day when my plane will take off enroute for Uganda. Time moves in strange patterns these days: seeming to take long, halting pauses, hesitant to move forward, and then, suddenly, and usually when I least wish it, sprinting ahead as if eternity itself could be overcome. I flip through photos from the last year, plan road trips to visit college friends, and get up in the morning to go to work. I cook supper for people I love, shoot some basketball with my brother, and chat on skype with friends who live too far away. And over it all, beginning to make it's presence known like a storm cloud on the horizon, lies the fact of my impending departure.

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Whether we mean it to or not, perhaps often without our even realising it, this one fact--that in two months, I will pack my bags, check into security at the airport, and not be present in this place for the next three years--has already begun to colour so many relationships and interactions. This is natural, I know, and it affects the way I relate to people I care for as much as how they relate to me right now: but it is also difficult and at times, deeply frustrating. I want to live my life fully in the present, to be wholly present with those I am with at this moment in this place. But I find it difficult to do so: in part because there are so many people I love deeply scattered around this globe, and also, because it is once again almost time to start the process of saying "goodbye," "I'll keep in touch," and "until we meet again."

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I dislike goodbyes. I am not fond of transitions: of pulling up roots and starting anew. I know it will be difficult and painful, though many joys and much growth surely await me on the other side of it. I know that relationships will inevitably change, often in unexpected ways: there will be friends who surprise me by keeping in touch, and others who fade into the background of my life until we once again manage to meet face to face; there will be successes and failures, graduations, birthdays, weddings, births, and deaths--some of which I will attend and celebrate with friends, others which I will learn of from afar and often after they have passed. Just as there are now days when I wish more than anything to be with my friends and family in Bukoto, the coming years will certainly bring times when I wish I could teleport back to the US for a few hours or days. But through it all, so many of these relationships will endure, nurtured by the bonds of love and friendship and trust that have been built up over the course of so many experiences and moments, of tears and laughter shared, of stories lived together. That is the hope which sustains me as my mind begins to anticipate the changes of the next few months.

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These days, when I think of "goodbye," I recall a passage from a book I read part of during the summer after I graduated from Messiah. I copied many parts of it into a journal I was writing at the time, but this particular part comes to mind again and again whenever I think about transitioning from one place of love to another. It describes the parting of two men who share a deep friendship.

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"Grandfather stayed with the little tribe for a few more weeks and then finally one day he was gone before the camp awoke. Parrot understood, like Grandfather, that this was the right way to part. Nothing left to be said, no goodbyes, but just the deep sense of knowing they would always be together. Still, there was a tremendous sadness and sense of loss that they would both suffer." --from Grandfather, by Tom Brown

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I don't have any plans to slip away to Uganda in the silence of night without bidding farewell to my dear friends and family here. But, it is my hope that even when separated by great distance, we might continue to live in the connectedness that comes from our "deep sense of knowing" that we are always together.

Portable Pictures

My middle school yearbooks currently live on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf in the corner of the living room. I knew someone had been looking at them recently: I've been finding them on the couch and by the computer. Tonight, they sparked part of our dinner conversation.

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I was a millennial middle schooler: I was in 8th grade during the Y2K craze.* In addition to all the normal class and club photos, my middle school included a "Year in Review" section at the back of each book. Sections included: lifestyles, music, society, personal freedom, entertainment, sports, science, travel, world news, national news, and faces.

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It was my seventh grade (98-99) yearbook that seems to have created the most amusement (and amazement!) for my 8th grade brother and 10th grade sister. This passage in particular, accompanied by images of disposable cameras**, drew their attention:

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"George Eastman invents the hand-held camera in 1888. Kodak introduces the brownie box camera in 1900 and disposable all-weather and panoramic cameras in 1989. In 1998, Kodak and Intel introduce an all-in-one, auto-loading CD-ROM*** that stores, enhances, shares and prints photos on a personal camera."

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As my sister reflected, "People back then were excited about being able to store photos on a CD!"

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Yes, we were.

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I also recall getting excited about computer-based encyclopedias [like the CD-ROM version of Wikipedia], personal tape decks, and printers that didn't require the pages to be torn apart. Which apparently makes me "old." Ahem.

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Notes for younger readers:

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*Prior to the turn of the century, there was much speculation that all of the computer systems in the world would crash at 12:00am on January 1st, 2000. People feared that computer dating systems would get confused by the "00" and try to make it 1900... which would cause the world to fall apart. [This did not happen.]

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**These were cameras which could be used just like regular [film, not digital] cameras. Rather than take a roll of film for developing, you just took the whole camera to the store.

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***Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember computers with DVD-ROMs, i.e. those which would only play DVDs, but could not be used to create new DVDs. Before that, CD-RW was the new big thing, an upgrade from CD-R, which itself was a brand new concept for those of us used to CD-ROM drives [which could only read, but not write CDs]. Further back, when the world was newly forming, we had these things called floppy disks [there's actually one on my bookshelf right now, but I have no idea where I'll find a computer capable of reading it]. And yes, I'm old enough to remember 8" and 5 1/4" floppies.

Millennium Dreams

For your entertainment, some of the other happenings that made the review in '98-'99:

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• "Teens today rank pizza, french fries, pasta, hamburgers/cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets as their top five favorite foods."
• "Today, 68 percent of teens watch MTV 5.4 hours a week."
• "The average American now owns 7.03 pairs of jeans."
• "Today, the average age at marriage for women is 24.5 and 26.9 for men.""On January 1, 1999, the euro debuts as the new currency in 11 European Common Market countries."
• "Women take further strides in sports with the first WNBA game on June 21, 1997."
• "The Concorde airplane travels at 1,336 miles per hour and crosses the Atlantic Ocean in under three hours."
• "In 1998, NASA begins construction of the International Space Station, the most complex technological project in human history."
• "Today's 10th to 12th grader works an average of 19 hours a week."
• "India begins nuclear bomb testing in response to Pakistan's testing of the Ghauri missile."
• "President Clinton becomes the second president in history to be impeached. The House of Representatives charges him with two counts of obstruction of justice and perjury. The Senate acquits Clinton after a five-week trial."
• "Sixteen of the 24 glass beads that historians believe were used to buy Manhattan Island from Native Indians in 1626 are donated to the Indian Museum of North America located at the Crazy Horse Memorial."
• "St. Louis Cardinal Mark McGwire hits home run number 62 on September 8, breaking the record set by Roger Maris in 1961. McGwire ends the season with 70 home runs."
• "In response to family pressure, DNA testing confirms that remains buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns are those of Michael J. Blassie, an Air Force pilot shot down in Vietnam."
• "A computerized T-shirt, woven with fiber optics and electrically conducted thread, may soon monitor the health of soldiers, rescuers, the elderly and others who are medically vulnerable."
• "Researchers discover a gene that may cause the aggressive behavior of 'killer bees.' This knowledge may help tame African bees, whose sting has deterred beekeepers from tending hives."
• "By 1996, there are over 119 million credit card holders and about 1,390,000 ATM terminals in the U.S."
• "A total collapse of the Russian ruble sends world markets into chaos. Boris Yeltsin asks Viktor Chernomyrdin to head the government to help restore political and economic stability."
• "Furby, the year's must-have interactive toy, has a vocabulary of 200 words in both English and its own language, 'Furbish.'"
• "Cargo pants invade stores and become the must-have apparel for teens across the nation."
• "Heartthrob George Clooney announces 1998-99 will be his last season on NBC's award-winning television drama, 'ER.'"
• "Taco Bell's talking Chihuahua becomes a favorite teen advertising icon and sparks a surge of interest in the breed."
• "Sharp and Sony introduce portable MiniDisc recorders. This digital alternative to audiocassettes records customized music compilations and doesn't skip when bumped."
• "Thanks in part to their 42-city tour, The Backstreet Boys' self-titled album sells nine million copies making it the third best-selling album of the year."
• "In January 1999, Michael Jordan announces his retirement from the NBA after 13 seasons."
• "After dropping out of the third grade in 1902 to care for her 11 younger siblings, retired nanny and housekeeper Eugenie Garside finally receives her high school diploma at age 98."

(re)learning the rules.

N.B. I have been writing this blog over the course of the past two and a half weeks. It is long. I will not apologise for that: it is a topic, or more, a thought process, which has been weighing on my heart, and I believe that those for whom it is written will bear with my lack of brevity. It is not my best writing; it has been written in chunks and around a less-than-fully-developed analogy. But, I think it does express some of what I've found it difficult to express in other venues: namely, the nature and difficulty of the transition I've been going through. So, for those people who deserve to hear my attempts to explain myself, I will publish this post. For the rest of you who haven't been as intimately involved in this journey, you are also welcome to read...

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rule: "a principle or regulation governing conduct, action, procedure, arrangement, etc"
from dictionary.com

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Sometime not so long ago, I changed my facebook status to read: "Kristina sometimes feels like she's playing a game by somebody else's rules... which keep changing." That post was actually not at all related to the following train of thought. However, my friend Sarah's comment on it was.

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In a brief facebook comment, Sarah reminded me of a game we played last year at the SALT/IVEP/YAMEN orientation in Akron. We were divided into about fifteen groups of six to seven people. Each group was given a deck of cards and the rules for playing a game. We were given a few minutes to read over the rules before they were taken away. Then, without talking, we were supposed to play the game within our groups. Every few minutes or so, whoever was winning in that group had to move to the next higher numbered group; whoever was losing had to move down... still without talking. As soon as people moved, the silent games continued.

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The game was fairly simple. Cards got dealt to each person around the group. High cards won tricks; maybe a trump suit was declared. The winner was the person with the most tricks in a round.

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Simple enough. Until, that is, the second round began. Let's say I won (or lost) the first round in my group, so now I'm in a new group. Not a big concern: we're all playing the same game, right?

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Wrong.

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As this round begins, I play my high card, then reach to take the trick... only to meet with someone else's hand. Our eyes meet and we frown at one another, but we maintain our vow of silence. I point out my winning card: it's obviously my trick. But he also gestures, displaying his card--the lowest one played in the hand--as if it is the key to this debate. I shake my head, "no," but notice that others seem to be siding with my opponent. They push the cards toward him: low card wins the trick.

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The round continues, quickly adding to my confusion and frustration. Low cards continue to be treated as royalty. My trump card is brushed off as nonsensical. Did no one in this group actually read and understand the rules? Or have they just created some grand conspiracy designed to keep outsiders from succeeding in their group?

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Having lost the second round, I am sent back to my original group. Here, I am wary: perhaps the rules have changed in my absence and I won't know until I play the wrong card. But in this group, some wise soul has recognised the trick of the organisers and decides to lay out the ground rules. Still not talking, she uses gestures and card examples to make it clear that here, in this specific group, clubs are trump and high cards win tricks. All on the same page, we play the round. There is significantly less hostility and frustration in this group. Mistakes are still made--someone joined the group after playing two rounds with distinctly different rules--but the previously laid out rules are silently reviewed and no one comes out a sore loser.

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We continue playing the game: round four, round five. By this point, it seems to have become a norm throughout the room for each group's rules to be presented before any tricks are played. Generally, it falls to a member who has been part of the group for at least a round or two to demonstrate proper procedure.

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Eventually, time was called and orientation staff facilitated a debriefing process. We compared this game to cross-cultural communication and interactions. The rules about high/low, trump, etc. became cultural norms and mores: expectations about appropriate behaviour and attitudes. Different groups represented different cultures, each with their own subtle adjustments to the same game. And as we travelled to different groups or opened our groups to newcomers, we played the role of people encountering new and different cultures: that is, we played ourselves.

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From earliest childhood, we have all been immersed in culture, nurtured and taught to express (or reject) the behaviours, attitudes, morals, laws, and practices that our societal location expects. Generally speaking, the cultural "rules" of this, our native culture, are deeply engrained in us: we follow them without thinking too much. For example, I don't remember learning how to wave goodbye to people; it's a nonverbal communication skill I picked up as a young child. I don't remember learning how to eat with silverware or being taught to make eye contact when greeting people, yet these are important cultural traits of the society I grew up in. Like the rules I learnt in the first round of the game, these habits, which were formed in early childhood, have always been natural, unconscious, for me--and probably for most of my North American readers.

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Moving to a different continent and immersing myself into a new culture was a bit like moving to a different group in the card game scenario: although the game might have looked the same, many of the rules changed. Instead of just playing instinctively, I had to pay attention, notice the differences, ask questions: and ultimately change my behaviour to match that of the culture in which I was living. It was a difficult process: it was exhausting to be constantly aware of everything that anyone (and I) was saying or doing. Even though it helped me learn, I got tired of people asking, "Nakaweesi, why do you _____?" or "Why don't you ____?"

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In some ways, though, adjusting to a new culture was easier than switching groups in the game. For one thing, I knew I would have to adjust, to change and adapt my habits, behaviours, speech patterns, etc. to fit those of the community and family in which I would be living. I could anticipate some of the changes: I expected a more people-oriented (as opposed to time-oriented) culture; I knew I would be learning a new language; I was careful not to intentionally offend my hosts.

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And so, I worked at adapting. I lived my life a little more slowly... and eventually got used to things happening later and differently than "planned". I learnt to sit properly, to eat properly, to work hard and rest well. It took me a few weeks to learn to speak English in a way that people could understand--I distinctly remember how amused my sisters were when I spent an afternoon repeatedly saying "cow" because I wanted the sounds coming out of my mouth to match those coming out of theirs. Months and months later, my host mother started to make frequent remarks about how much of a Muganda I had become: I had learnt to speak, act, sit, work, and generally live like the people whose culture I was immersed in. Of course, there were still many things that I didn't do "quite right" and subtle perceptions I missed. But generally speaking, by the time I climbed on a plane to leave Uganda in July, I had adapted well to the culture in which I was living.

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And then my plane landed. I was back in America, almost "home" to the family and friends that I had missed so dearly for the previous eleven months.

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From that first week of re-entry in Akron, this homecoming was harder than I expected it to be, in large part because of how well I had adapted to my community and culture in Uganda. MCC warned us about "reverse culture shock" and the difficulties of transitioning back to our original cultures after such an immersion experience, but I was not at all prepared for how "foreign" it felt to be "home."

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Going back to the card game analogy, coming back to the US was a bit like going back to my original group in the game -- after I had mastered the rules in another group. The habits I had picked up, the accent I had developed, the cultural assumptions I had internalised... none of it was valid anymore.

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I had changed: more than just the usual "everyone changes over the course of a year," even some of my internal habits and unconscious instincts had become more "Ugandan." But generally speaking, the people I encountered -- and certainly the society I re-entered -- expected me to be the same as when I left a year previously. No one thought to explain the rules or considered that I might need a little (okay, a lot of) slack, not that I ever expected to need it. I had grown up playing this game: shouldn't I be able to jump right back in and continue where I left off?

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In a lot of ways, my transition back to American culture has been a lot more difficult than my transition a year ago into Buganda culture. I think this has been a result of my subconscious expectations as much as anyone else's: I guess after a year of being so aware and working so hard to adapt to a culture in which I would always, by virtue of my skin pigment, be an outsider on at least some level, I deeply wanted to come back here and just "fit in." I thought this game would be easier, these rules would feel more natural. But I didn't fit in and it hasn't been as easy as I hoped. It's been a difficult process -- for both me and my family -- as I have worked at re-assimilating to America. I've become even more deeply aware of so many of my own cultural habits and assumptions, and though it's been frustrating and overwhelming at times, I'm starting to once again understand who I am and where I belong. I'm relearning the rules to the game, and starting to appreciate this chance to make conscious decisions about which ones I'll choose to follow.

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My journal from re-entry week includes this quote torn out of an MCC hand-out: "Cultural marginality describes experience of people molded by 'transformational' exposure to two or more cultural traditions. Such people do not tend to fit perfectly into any one of the cultures in which they have lived or live, but may fit comfortably on the edge, in the margins of each." The italics are mine: that's the hope I'm living into right now.

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To all those who have walked with me on this part of my journey -- particularly my immediate family and closest friends -- thank you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for listening. Thank you for not pushing me away or running away yourselves, even when these would have been the easier options. Thank you for encouraging me to keep looking deeper and seeking to understand myself: thank you for holding my hand and trying to help me find words when it was harder than I wanted it to be. As we continue walking through life together, may our varied cultural experiences and learnings continue to nurture the best in us all.

Covalent Bonds

"family is like a covalent bond because you share with them. you don't just give and you don't just take."

...that, my friends, is the 15 year old budding chemistry genius. well, i hope so. she's not so thrilled at the concept, but my lessons are obviously starting to set in. SCORE!

For Everyone I Know Who's Growing Up These Days...

"Act III, Scene II"

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Someone has altered the script.

My lines have been changed.

The other actors are shifting roles.

They don't come on when they're expected to,

and they don't say the lines I've written

and I'm being upstaged.

I thought I was writing this play

with a rather nice role for myself,

small, but juicy

and some excellent lines.

But nobody gives me my cues

and the scenery has been replaced

and I don't recognize the new sets.

This isn't the script I was writing.

I don't understand this play at all.

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To grow up

is to find

the small part you are playing

in this extraordinary drama

written by

somebody else.

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--Madeleine L'Engle, from The Ordering of Love.

Regarding Punctuation.

"I love semicolons and colons. And punctuation serves to indicate rhythm. A semicolon is a longer pause than a comma, and a colon means really sitting back and taking note, but doesn't indicate a conclusion, like a period mark, or, as the English class it, a full stop."

--A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L'Engle

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I fell in love with this book when I was reading it some months ago. This passage was one of (many) favourites. I've long paid attention to my punctuation, using commas carefully (and at times, "wrongly") to facilitate rhythm and meaning. It was this reflection of L'Engle's, however, that first introduced the concept of using colons artfully, a new writing technique that I've been playing with recently. Today, working on another (as yet unpublished) blog entry, I thought of this quote again, and since I'm hanging out on the campus of my alma mater, I went to the library, found the book, and read the passage aloud to my sister... and then shared it with you as well.

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I realise fully that it will be a small percentage of my readership who recognise the artistry allowed by thoughtful manipulation of grammatical rules: this post is for me: and for you.

Another Mathematical Breakthrough!

My thirteen year old brother [I feel so old to say that!] is taking Algebra 1 this year. The following is taken from a conversation we had while he was doing his homework a couple weeks ago...

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Nate: "If I want to do 13 x 13, can I do 10 x 10 and 3 x 3 and add them together?"

Me: "No."

Nate: "Well, then, can I do 12 x 12 and add 13?"

Me: "No."

Nate: "I need a calculator."

Me: "Sit down and do the multiplication!"

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I'm a tough homework-helper... I do give him points for creative thinking though :)

For a friend...

"The Uses of Not"

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Thirty spokes

meet in the hub.

Where the wheel isn't

is where it's useful.

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Hollowed out,

clay makes a pot.

Where the pot's not

is where it's useful.

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Cut doors and windows

to make a room.

Where the room isn't,

there's room for you.

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So the profit in what is

is in the use of what isn't.

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-from Ursula K. Le Guin's translation

of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching

An Old Reflection on Love.

Reading back through some of my old journals tonight, I found this reflection in one from my senior year of college. It's pretty deep, but honest, I think...

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23 February 2008

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I have suddenly thought of Jesus' command that we love our enemies. Perhaps we are to love our enemies because they are no different than our selves. Perhaps in loving them, we learn also to love ourselves. Perhaps they are our "enemies" simply because they manifest the traits we work so hard to deny or ignore in ourselves. Perhaps the speck in my neighbor's eye is only a reflection of the plank in my own. Can I love my enemy? Or, perhaps the greater question, can I love my self? What if I am my own enemy? Will I accept my own faults, my own fears, my own pain? Or will I always flee my shadow side and what it tells me about myself?

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I am reminded of my own journey to trust and love again. Loss and betrayal ripped away my childhood innocence. Survival required strength--not grief, or fear, or anger. But I was angry; I was deeply afraid; and my pain tore at the very foundations of my being. For years, I built up my defenses, denied my pain, and forced myself to be perfect, to be strong, to be utterly independent. But the shadow never went away. As much as I tried to repress my own "negatives," they would pop up again--in loneliness, depression, anger.

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And then someone sneaked behind the walls. Ellen, my mentor for most of high school, began to love and care for me. She looked into my eyes and saw the depths of my soul; she saw everything imperfect that I hated about myself--and she loved me. In spite of my pain and anger, because of it, in the midst of it, she loved me. And it was her love that helped me learn to accept myself, to love myself. I embraced my shadow side--and all the pain it brought with it.

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But in finally letting myself feel that pain and accept it for what it was, I began to heal. I grieved the loss of my father, but also the loss of my mother's joy, my childhood trust, and my siblings' innocence. I was angry--at God, at Tony, at my father, at the church who wasn't there--and I learned not to be angry with myself for being angry. Healing came as I stopped blaming myself for all that had happened, as I was able to recognize how wrong our pain was. Not that it was wrong for us to feel it, but that the world is a wounded and unjust place.

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The shadows of my pain and fear became part of me, were integrated into who I am. Today, now, I am no longer ruled by the hurts of my past. They are part of my self, and they affect who I have become. Every so often, I cry for our loss, and for what should have been. But the shadows no longer overwhelm me.

Geometrical Formulations

"Tutor."

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It's a role I've played for years in numerous guises. As a junior and senior in high school, most of my income came from tutoring. Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Trig, Pre-Calculus, Biology, Chemistry, Latin, English: I not only helped with homework, but also re-taught material covered in class, helped prep for tests, and previewed upcoming concepts.

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In college, I worked for a private tutoring center, expanding my repertoire to include Physics, Religion, SAT prep, and ACT prep. All of this to say, I think I've got a fair bit of tutoring experience under my belt... and it also probably demonstrates well that I enjoy tutoring!

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Anyway, that's not what this blog is really about.
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Actually, I wanted to share about one of the more exciting parts of today [warning: some of you will think me entirely bizarre for enjoying this, but...]: helping my fifteen year old sister with her Geometry homework after supper tonight.
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As a high schooler, or actually, as a middle schooler, I hated Geometry. It was the first time I hadn't (intuitively or otherwise) understood a math class. I was still one of the more advanced students in the class, but, like Physics, it was too conceptual and spatial for me. I did obviously learn most of the concepts, enough that I could do well in the class and even tutor the subject a few years later, but I neither understood nor enjoyed Geometry. Math was always my favourite subject, but Geometry I certainly could have done without!
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In college, years removed from the last math class I took (AP Calculus, as a junior), I found myself once again tutoring Geometry (and Physics...). As I studied the high school books and retaught the same concepts multiple times over the course of every week, Geometry finally clicked for me. Seven years after I took the class myself, I finally felt like I understood its most basic concepts.
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And then, tonight, the moment that brought on all of this random reflection: I took a nap before dinner and came downstairs to find that my family had finished eating. As I warmed up some tomato soup and made myself a salad, I half-listened to Dad helping Rachel (my really-close-to-15-year-old sister) with her Geometry homework. A few seconds after I sat down across the table from them, Rachel read me the problem that was pestering them both [Dad would surely have figured it out quickly had he not been taking post-surgery pain medication...].
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"Each figure above shows noncollinear rays with a common endpoint. Write a formula for the number of angles formed by n noncollinear rays with a common endpoint."

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As Rachel quickly read the problem to me, all the words rushed over my head and my own high school feelings about Geometry quickly came back: ahhh! I pled the kind of confused tiredness that comes in the first few (or thirty, if you're me) minutes after waking up, and I started eating my supper.

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But of course, like any other time that I get a problem into my head, my brain started processing it. I stole a look at the problem in the Geometry book, then started to doodle on a napkin. "What are you doing?," Rachel asked me. "Just trying to figure out the pattern," I helpfully explained. My napkin soon had columns of numbers like this:

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1 = 0 = n - 1 = n - n

2 = 1 = n - 1 = n - (n - 1)

3 = 3 = n = n - 0

4 = 6 = n + 2 = n + 1/2n

5 = 10 = n + 5 = 2n

6 = 15 = n + 9 = n + 1.5n

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Slowly, slowly, and as Rachel gave me numerous "you're so weird" glances, I started to see the pattern... and the formula emerged:

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n - [(3-n)/2]n = no. of angles

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So then, the easy part: explaining it in terms that a fifteen year old beginning Geometry student could understand! I showed her the formula, mostly explained how I got to it, let her copy it into her notebook, then made her "check" it against all five of the figures shown above. I also told her she should probably tell her teacher she had help; otherwise, she'd probably end up pegged as the "Geometry whiz kid." She told me not to worry: she was sure nobody else would solve the problem either and that her teacher would surely go over it in-depth. But, could she please take my napkin in to show her teacher?

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It feels good to play with numbers again.

Obama Nation

"They showed the president's speech today during 3rd and 4th lunches, and they're showing it again tomorrow during 1st and 2nd lunches. They're showing it in the auditorium. And you're not allowed to eat food or talk to your friends there. So, it's like, if you want to be anti-social and anorexic, you can watch the president."

--A fifteen year old's take on her school's concession to showing the president's speech.

Altruism?

After running multiple errands--for myself and my parents--I decided to come to Panera for lunch. Nice place, decent food, good place to write, free wi-fi, and a bit of the college atmosphere I've been missing a lot lately. Hot tomato soup, caesar salad, and a caramel latte: a warm and tasty indulgence on a chilly and overcast day.

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Driving into Death Crossing (as one of my friends refers to this shopping center), I saw that guy again, the one who sometimes stands on this corner with a cardboard sign:

SPARE SOME CHANGE

Sometimes it's on the back of a pizza box; today it was just a piece of old poster board with letters that ran a bit in the morning drizzle. I've seen him a few times before: he's a little taller than me, has brown hair, is a little scruffy on the chin, wears a white t-shirt, and carries a backpack.

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I've usually seen him while driving through this part of town. He sometimes stands at this intersection, sometimes elsewhere. I've thought about stopping, giving him some food or money or whatever, but hadn't ever done so. I feel like it'd be a good, kind, "Christian" thing to do, and I usually feel more than a tad guilty when I drive on by. It's just that, as much as I want to be compassionate and generous--altruistic, if you will--I don't usually feel comfortable doing such things. I'm young and female and read a few too many detective stories as an impressionable child. By all of which I mean, I'm generally afraid to stop and offer help to other motorists or to talk to strange, apparently homeless, men on street corners.

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But today, I decided to give it a try. After all, what horrible thing could happen at the corner of a busy intersection, in a popular restaurant at lunch time? I'd buy him lunch and visit with him a bit, do a random act of kindness for another human being and all that.

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So, I parked my car and walked over toward him. We chatted for a few minutes: awkward small talk interrupted by his dash to get the coins a woman offered him out the window of her car. A nickel fell under the vehicle, and he knelt to pick it up. I learnt that he's homeless, unemployed ("it's hard to get a job without a phone number or permanent address."), and that he moves around Virginia. He has a slight accent and avoided eye contact with me.

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I finally made my offer: "Can I buy you lunch?" In my mind, this was an invitation to come in out of the dreary day, get something hot to eat, and talk a little. I was curious to hear his story and figured he'd appreciate the chance for conversation.

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"I prefer ham and swiss," he politely informed me.

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"Oh, do you want me to bring it out to you?" He nodded his head slightly.

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At that moment, as I walked back toward the restaurant entrance, my cover was blown, at least for myself. So much for any self-righteous notions I may have had of getting to know this guy a little, perhaps hearing his story about how he ended up holding this sign in this town on this day: he preferred ham and swiss.

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As I waited in line to buy lunch for a guy whose name I never did learn, I realised that I had expected him to want to talk to me, to tell me his story. I guess I felt like he should, since, after all, wasn't I doing him a great favour by buying him lunch?

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But, instead of indulging my desire to feel fulfilled by this grand altruistic gesture, he accepted my gift and offered nothing else in return. While I went inside to collect a ham and swiss sandwich, apple, and brownie, he continued to hold his sign and collect the meager offerings of drivers halted by the red light.

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I came back out and gave him his paper bag. He thanked me and walked away. The encounter ended.

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I came inside to buy coffee and soup and get my fix of the "college cafe hang-out" atmosphere. No stories exchanged; no excessive expressions of gratitude; no good feeling about my generosity; no greater sense of meaning and connection in the world.

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Instead, all I came away with was another reminder that all people have dignity--and that I, like most everyone else, generally do things that will make me feel better about myself and my place in this world.

100 Books

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy this into your NOTES. Put an 'X' next to those you have read.


[] 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[X] 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
[X] 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[X] 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[X] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[X] 6 The Bible
[X] 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[X] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[X] 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[] 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 8

[X] 11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
[] 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[X] 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[] 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
[] 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[X] 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[] 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
[] 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[X] 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[] 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 12

[] 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[X] 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[] 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[] 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[X] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[] 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[X] 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[X] 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[X] 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 17

[] 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[] 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[X] 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[X] 34 Emma - Jane Austen
[] 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
[X] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
[] 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[] 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[X] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[X] 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 22

[] 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
[X] 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[] 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[] 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
[] 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[X] 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[] 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[X] 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[] 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 25

[] 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[X] 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
[] 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[] 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[] 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[] 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[] 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[X] 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[X] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[] 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 28

[X] 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[] 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[] 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[] 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[X] 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[] 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[] 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[] 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[] 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 30

[X] 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[] 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
[X] 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[] 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[] 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
[] 76 The Inferno - Dante
[] 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[] 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
[] 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[] 80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 32

[X] 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[] 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[X] 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[] 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[] 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[] 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
[X] 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[X] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[] 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 36

[X] 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[] 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[] 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[X] 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
[] 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[] 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[] 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[X] 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[X] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[] 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


My total: 40

Copied over from Facebook... because Alicia tagged me.

Life

Life is like a puzzle,

....an odd-shaped puzzle that doesn't fit.

You can try to fit the pieces together,

....but that's an impossible goal.

You can sort them by their type,

....family, friends, basketball, school.

You can sort the pieces by jumbling them together,

....a long lost shoe,

....your great-aunt Bertha.

No matter how you try to fit them,

....the pieces of life won't form a perfect puzzle,

....it will always be mishapen.

-Written February 7, 1999, when I would have been in seventh grade; found today in an old notebook in my parents' attic.

BASKETBALL

B is for the bumping and banging you feel.

A is for your attitude; sportsmanship or not.

S is for the shots, the 3 pointers, rebounds, and free throws.

K is for the kind of game you play, not whether you win or lose, but how you play.

E is for the excited fans, whether you win or lose, they're yelling in the stands.

T is for the technical your coach gets when you have bad refs, and he gets excited.

B is for the basketball, a leather sphere that is the center of your attention.

A is for your agressiveness during the game, but after, you can joke with the friend you fouled.

L is for the last second when a long 3 point puts you up by 2.

L is for the losses, many at first, but then you begin to have few.

...That's what basketball is all about!

-Written February 7, 1999, also found today.

A Letter to My Father

Dear Daddy,

I love you so, so much! And I miss you almost as much. We live in Grottoes, now. The house is okay--kinda small, though. I miss the farm in Keezletown, though. If you were here, you would be proud of me. I'm taking Band at school this year. I can play 1 or 2 songs on my trombone. I'm taking a 7th grade acellerated math class this year. It's cool! We're learning all sorts of neat algebra things. Nathan's getting big--he runs instead of crawls. He gets into everything! Nothing is safe from him [or] Rachel. Music is his thing, now. He loves to dance and its funny to watch him shake his knees.

Love ya Daddy,

Kristina

-Written circa September 1997, shortly after I started middle school and a few months after my dad passed away; found in another notebook in the attic.

A Dentist Appointment

Today my sister Melissa is going to the datsit, it is her first time, it is my mom's doter, when I go it will be April, melissa has two big teeth, thay have little yellow bits on tham, and I think I know wey, she fell dowe the steps when she was yoge, she hit the teeth, and thay almost came out, my mom had to pash tham back in, she was two,

-Written February 24, 1993, when I was seven years old.

Chapter-Books

I can raed chapter-books, I have lots of chapter-books at home, I have rad 4 chapter-books, and I am on the first chapter, of Ramona and Her Father, chapter books, are fun, do you know how to,? it is fun, if you have not you shord tuy, you will have fun, you cord raed 10 or 11 or more chapter books, I am going rad a 12 chapter book, than a 13 chapter book, now I am on a 7, you ; have to tuy, you will have fun fun fun, I am having fun, so you will, too, the books are DELL YEARLING BOOKS.

-Written February 1, 1993.