Imperishable Beauty

leap day!

2008-02-29T16:30:00.002-05:00

Blogging on leap day, just because I can.

I'm leaving for spring break in Florida in about half an hour! It's weird packing shorts and t-shirts...I can't quite believe it will be that warm. :)

It's also insane that when I return, I'll only have two months left at Notre Dame. I'm ready to fly, but not leave forever, if that makes sense. I guess if what I've heard about the "Notre Dame family" is true, I never really will.

2007-04-29T19:32:00.000-04:00

I lost my Polish scarf on the Scottish train, and the sheer internationalist twist to it is the only thing that's reconciling me to the loss.

Actually, it's kind of summing up the semester...amazing beyond my wildest dreams and yet taking every mistake I make and magnifying it. I'm kind of excited to go home and just do nothing for awhile.

London update

2007-01-29T08:11:00.000-05:00

I could just write an e-mail to my parents, who are probably the only ones actually reading this anyway, but I figured I'd do it more publically just in case somebody else wants to know.
Um so since the last post I've obviously done a lot more acclimating to London and getting used to things here. It still doesn't feel like I'm going to be here for an entire school semester...partly because classes are definitely fitting around my exploration of London rather than the other way around.
Last weekend I went to Stonehenge and Bath, which were pretty sweet. Stonehenge is still powerful and impressive...once you get past all the tourists taking photos. (Not that I didn't join in.)
This Saturday Sara and I went to Canterbury and Dover. It was so much fun! It started with the tube line closing down for maintainance, so we had to transfer twice and RUN through the stops in order to make it to the bus stop on time. We were both freaking out and laughing really hard at the situation. The bus took about 2 hours to Canterbury, and we poked around there for a little while before taking the train to Dover. Dover was awesome, don't believe the guidebooks. We were so nerdily excited to see the English channel, the white cliffs of Dover, and Dover Castle. The castle was on top of this huge hill...like seriously a 45 degree angle in parts. (That also led to fits of laughing at our hunched-over climbing technique.) The castle was really cool -- a Roman watchtower from the 100s AD, a really old church, and a very castle-y keep, with underground tunnels that we temporarily got lost in. Afterwards we climbed back down the hill and had a very late lunch of fish and chips while sitting on Dover beach, looking at the cliffs, the channel, and the castle. So cool!
Canterbury was less exciting, just cause we were tired, but still cool. We saw the ruins of St. Augustine of Kent's Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral, and the spot in the Cathedral where St. Thomas' shrine used to be. I knelt and prayed there a few minutes...how cool to pray where so many others had! I also saw St. Anselm's tomb there -- I had no idea it was in England!
Anyway, those are the highlights thus far, I'm heading out to get some supplies for dinner tonight and do some reading before class. Miss you all!

London!

2007-01-15T16:34:00.000-05:00

Hey,
I just wrote a massive e-mail so I'm a little communicated-out right now. But here's the e-mail I wrote just in case anyone missed it:
Where to begin...yes, I did get here safely (on Thursday morning) and yes I loveit so far. Things aren't too much different here, but I did discover thatLondoners count their floors starting at Ground (so the 1st floor is up aflight of stairs). Also, crossing streets is dangerous work. Everyone elseseems to have an instinctive knowledge of when it's safe...but unfortunatelyfor me there are signs that tell you to look left or look right at a particularstreet, and those of you who know me well know that the right/leftidentification is not my strong point! "Digestives" are my new favoritedessert...they're kind of like chocolate-covered graham crackers, and only cost39p for a roll.
So far I've seen Trafalgar Square (where our classroom building is), Big Ben,Parliament, the London eye...and random other stuff.
My flatmates are really nice, I've had a lot of fun with them. We're cooking forourselves and not doing too badly, and scrimping where we can in our newly "poor" state. The flat is pretty tiny...and there's very little storage space. (Girls, there's two bathrooms, no sink counters, and two mirrors smaller than sheets of paper...try getting ready at the same time as 6 other girls!) The hot/cold water mix is a little sketchy, and we're scared of the combination washer/dryer, but oh well. It's 2.5 miles from the flat, and we've been walking it so far...I think I've averaged about 7 miles a day walking!
I haven't done anything too crazy this weekend, but I did technically have my first pub experience. We managed to find places that were pretty un-American, in fact people were kind of staring at us in one of them...probably because we couldn't figure out whether to seat ourselves or not! :) I've only had cider so far, it's pretty yummy.
Classes are good, only had a day of those so far. I still can't believe I'm actually here for four months...it feels like camp (or maybe like Erasmus lol). Miss you all!

It's Christmas Eve!

2006-12-24T02:09:00.000-05:00

And despite needing to be at morning Mass in 7.5 hours, I can't sleep.
This is why sleeping in on Saturday mornings is bad.

Hey

2006-12-22T14:03:00.000-05:00

So I've just discovered at least two comments buried deep in my archieves that I've never seen before, from complete strangers. Oops. I keep forgetting how public this actually is.
If either of them are reading:
Amy, I changed the spelling of the Summer in the City kids' names so they won't be so easily googled but I'll still be able to remember them.
Tim, I have no idea who sings the "Faith without Works" song! :)

Hmm so I'm home now. A week ago I was just finishing up my last final. This week I've pretty much baked cookies. I've also worked on putting together an application for a job, and finding a bank/credit card with better ATM rates for going abroad. It finally snowed last night, which made me really happy!

I'm watching Anne of Green Gables with my sisters right now. I love being home.

finals week procrastination

2006-12-10T15:42:00.000-05:00

So I have a final tomorrow...two essay questions worth 50% of my grade in that class. blah.
And writing on blogger is so much more fun than studying!

My computer died this week. Evidentally the hard drive was toast. I still haven't opened it up again actually -- I'd have to reinstall windows and I just don't want to bother with it right now. Lucky my roommate is an art major and hasn't really been using her computer much this week.

I have to pack up my entire room in a week. dang.

London is looming, in an alliterative way.

I'm not as disconnected as this entry is making me look, but if I were going to say all that I wanted to say, it would take more time than I should really give. This half-hour break is at 45 minutes now anyway.

yay!!

2006-11-16T16:54:00.000-05:00

So the past few weeks have been figuring out stuff weeks, between London classes and the History Honors program and what have you. For awhile, London was kind of like trying to fit round pegs into square holes...I kept pushing but it just wasn't working. I wanted to do two internships/experiential learning classes, and then one of the normal classes I wanted was during one of the internships, and it was just looking like it wasn't all going to fit in. But today I got 4 e-mails from the London program (yes, 4) with my acceptance into the second internship, permission to do both internships, and two updated versions of the schedule...the second of which allows me to take the course I wanted! yaaay!
So London is looking pretty good now:
M/W: 10:45 British History 1900-1990
3:45 Sociology, "Self and Interaction" (this is the one I didn't think I could take, but it's perfect b/c i haven't take a soc before, and it could be really helpful for my history major if i focus on ideologies in my thesis)

T: 9:30-12 British culture (for the first 1/3 of the semester)
12:30-5 Work w/ disabled kids at Rectory Paddock school

H: NO CLASS EVER! but probably working my other internship?

F: hopefully nothing the first 1/3 of the semester, maybe a Shakespeare acting class at the Globe theater for the second 2/3, or two other british culture classes.

so basically: yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

i could be writing a paper...

2006-11-10T20:56:00.000-05:00

"you do realize that this isn't normal." -- Jesse after Basilica Mass.

So last weekend Jesse was in town, which was a lot of fun. It was really nice to have both Nathaniel and Jesse here, mostly because it was great to see them again, but also to keep up the whole erasmus experience again. I remember flying into south bend last summer and seeing the dome again and thinking, "gosh, I'm not sure I really want to be back yet." Spring semester last year was kind of tough...not for any particular reason, just busy and stressful when I had expected that I would feel like I finally had this college thing down. Which won't ever happen anyway. But I digress. Once I the erasmus program started, and i talked with all these kids who go to other places, i started remembering how special ND is. Not perfect, and not the only special place, for sure, but still...it's pretty darn cool. And it was neat to have visitors again and be able to show them life here, and ask Nathaniel "so, how did you come to faith" and talk to Jesse about campus ministry at Columbia...and realize that those conversations don't come easily other places.
It was also convenient that Charlie Weiss talked at the pep rally to which we took Jesse about how great ND, and how sad the seniors will be next game, and let me just say that I will probably bawl at graduation. And maybe at the last football game. And possibly during Brady Quinn's last game. :)

Other than that, the next two weeks are crazy busy. nearly 30 pages of papers due, if i calculated correctly. Lots of decisions about next semester/summer as well. Eh...It'll get done eventually. Tonight I'm staying in, fighting off a cold, and hopefully finishing off the night with a movie and hot chocolate. yay.

be careful what you pray for...

2006-10-31T22:35:00.000-05:00

This past Thursday, I went to ISI (which I attend twice a month maybe?), and the talk was about vocations.
On Friday, I went to 5:15 Mass (which I usually don't go to this semester) and the homily was about vocations (with pretty much the same opening line as the talk from ISI, which is originally why I noticed).
On Saturday, I went to 9 am Mass (which I hardly ever go to) and I thought I was safe...until I realized that the gospel was about the calling of the disciples.
Sunday morning they handed out saint cards at the catechism class I teach, and I took a random saint I had never heard of before (Teresa of the Andes I think), and flipped it over to see that she was a discalced Carmelite. And then the little kids asked if I was going to be a nun.
Yesterday I saw a movie for my American Religious History class which was all about this preacher man discovering and living out his plan to be an apostle.
Today, I really didn't hear much vocation related, except maybe one line in the homily about "we do not yet know what we shall be." I came back to my room after orchestra, not planning on leaving again, not going to have any more theological discussions, no opportunity for me to hear about vocations, right? Until I click on the rarely-update blog of a ND friend I barely know...who had just published an entire post about the call to religious life.
Sigh.
God, when I said I wanted you to write me a letter and tell me what to do with my life? I don't think I really meant it.

But please pray for me if this is turning out to be a special time of discernment!

i don't know what i want

2006-10-24T23:31:00.000-04:00

isn't that a funny problem? life is so good in general, and my life in particular is full of so many good things. i want them all, but not to the exclusion of any. but seeing as i only have one life, having it all isn't going to happen. but why does choosing hurt? silly me...i'll have something good no matter what.
like Aquinas says, we're all pursuing the same ultimate good, we just all have different ideas on how to achieve it.

for some reason, the more introspective i become, the less i use capital letters.

yessss

2006-10-05T15:49:00.000-04:00

defeated in the last two weeks: three papers, three tests, one football game (hey it takes time too), two catechism classes, and one 8-am basilica EM-ing stint.
And I'm pretty much done until fall break. yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
Of course, I'm kind of saving a LOT of reading/research for fall break, those bus rides better be productive this time.
Also, google "San Patricios" and tell me it you don't think it would make a perfect history honors thesis, cause I kind of think it would. I could find funding to research in Dublin and Mexico City this summer...and yeah, it just sounds sweet.
I'm really ready for fall break this year, this semester has been really busy. None of my classes are slack-off classes, which means I'm getting full use of my tuition I guess, but also means I have to think about all five classes all the time.
I've spent like 2.5 hours writing blue-book essays this afternoon, so that's about all the creativity i have right now.
GO IRISH! GO TWINS!

Zahm Mass

2006-08-22T00:24:00.000-04:00

I went to Mass at Zahm tonight, it felt good to be back. And good to go to Mass again; the last two Sundays i've actually gone to Saturday night Mass, and I haven't gone to daily Mass at all really, so it's nice to get back into that routine. Mass in a dorm is always interesting, however, and Zahm in particular offers many distractions. There's some tradition of running and yelling on Wednesday nights at 11, and Mass is at 10:30 so 11 is usually right during consecration or communion.
Tonight was especially interesting...there were tons of drilling and hammering going on, and then soon after the homily someone started playing music really loud. Luckily it started with something that was actually applicable in a weird way: the song "you can run, you can hide, but you can't escape my love" played right during the consecration. I tried to think about it in a God-way and not be distracted and it kind of worked.
Then...the priest said that this Mass was being offered for our intentions and paused for a moment of silence -- as the Beatles came on: "Ah, look at all the lonely people..." I'm hoping that was less applicable and that everyone's intentions weren't for future mates or something like that.
Finally, we said the "Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed" prayer, followed immediately by the strains of "Daydreamer." Now, God coming into our lives is pretty amazing, but I really hope it's more than a daydream!

In other news...add this to the list of things I forgot: coffee mugs, shower shoes.
It's Kaitlin's 21st birthday today (it's technically Tuesday now). I have three classes tomorrow, all history. It's the opening school Mass. And the picnic to follow. Yay!

"Are your comments concise and to the point? Are your thoughts ordered and logically connected to the current topic of conversation? Are you punctual? If so, you may need to leave. You are in opposition to everything this room stands for." -- Kaitlin.

Back

2006-08-20T23:37:00.000-04:00

When I typed in the title, three options came up in the little drop down menu: "Back at ND," "Back Home," "Back to life, back to reality..." I guess I'm not all that creative.
being back here has been nice. It's helpful that I'm also going home in a few days so there was less pressure when leaving home. Meaning I left a ton of stuff at home. Well, not a ton: my pillow, the carpet, my glasses, a notebook...
Dinner tonight was fun. We were silly and stole Chris' cake when he wasn't looking, smeared frosting on our lips, and pretended that we had eaten it all. He believed us too.
Kaitlin and John are clearly made for eachother. John was on retreat all day so he didn't get to see Kaitlin when she came in this afternoon. Then when we were eating he came in with his retreat group and sat right behind us and didn't see us. Then we saw him and pointed him out to Kaitlin and she didn't see him either.
So...pranks, giggles, acting like we're five, feminine intuition used against the boys (and very nice boys putting up with us), unpacking, books, cursing the bookstore, football ticket lottery...yup, I'm back.
Now I'm off to the grotto to meet up with some people from Erasmus :) and then who knows after that, except i'll be parietals boo. Oh well -- it just proves I'm back I guess. :)

so 10 weeks later

2006-08-09T00:16:00.000-04:00

obviously i haven't posted at all this summer, meaning probably nobody will read this. i'm kind of just writing now for my own peace of mind...one of the things i've learned in college is that you have to give yourself time to reflect and process things before you actually learn anything from life experience. like freshman year really needs the summer to be complete.
funny, thinking of last summer as teh summer after my freshman year makes me feel really young. i sort of thought i was farther removed from freshman year than that.
this summer has been good, and yet hard. good because i did some amazing things, like the erasmus institute, and i hung out with my friends a lot (more than last summer), and i generally liked my job. i was home more than last summer and slipped back fairly easily into the family routine. at the same time, its been tough because i've been worried about making enough money and working enough. i tend to relax best only if i feel i "deserve" it and so a lot of my slower days at home were spent feeling frusterated that i wasn't accomplishing anything. the being home more and the frustration often made me snippier too, especially with my mom...but its been better lately. it's also been a little bit of a tough finish too, what with my grandparents moving and vacation bible school this week and the scares about my mom's health and the guitar store manager quitting. Man i'm glad that my parents are going to be able to drive me to school...because the last three days i've been pretty much completely responsible for life at home because my parents are helping my grandparents and if they were to give me the added responsibility of getting myself to school i might just flip.
i don't really have much more to say. i'm not ready to go back to school, as usual, but i'm more excited about it than i was last year (or, clearly, the year before!) i wish my school life and my home life didn't have to be so separate. No actually what i wish, i think, is that the whole concept of the Notre Dame family were more true. I miss that overarching guiding principle when i'm at school; i don't like having every decision involve me and me only. which is ironic, seeing as i spent the first half of this post complaining about having too many responsibilties at home.
and i've spent pretty much the entire post complaining. psh. life is beautiful and God is good. enough said.

Happy Easter!

2006-04-23T19:38:00.002-04:00

Christ is Risen! Truely He is Risen!
yeah so it's a little late, but hey, it's still within the octave.

This will be just a short update and mainly for the benefit of my parents, because I can't call them because our phone lines are being worked on so we can have wireless internet next year. anyway.

So Easter was a nice break, then I hit the ground running in preparation for this upcoming week: 3 papers, a presentation, orchestra concert, and Spanish play. blah. (and it was supposed to be 4 papers but one of them got moved to next week.) This weekend was low-key but fun. Friday morning I taught my second music class to the 5th/6th graders. I don't think this time went as well but it was still ok. My penpal gave me a "book" she wrote, it made me really happy! She wants me to critique it and give it back to her. :)
Friday afternoon was soooooo nice so we went outside at about 4 and stayed out until 8, we even brought dinner outside. Then I went to an organ recital at 8 for my music history requirement, and then we hung out in the room till midnight when there was reggaetone at Legends. We didn't stay there too long tho, being outside makes you tired.
Saturday I did some hw and then went to the Blue and Gold game, and since the weather was so nice it really felt like a football game. Made me glad I'm not going abroad in the fall. :) Then we went for a quick shopping trip cause Melissa needed paper for an architecture project and I needed clothes for the spanish play. Then...oh yes, then we went to Martha's chorale concert. Martha's mom was there and afterwards she asked us to escort Martha back to the dorm because she was leaving right away. This led to us acting like Secret Service all flanking Martha the entire way back from the DPAC...and then we put on leather coats and went over to Carroll and did the same for the guys. Chris and John were going to come over for a movie at about 10:30 anyway so we just surprised them at their door, started called them the targets, clearing the perimeter, etc. It was really funny and we got some straaaange looks. This is why I need to join the facebook group "I act like I'm drunk even when I'm sober."
We watched Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, which i've (gasp!) never seen before.
Then today (Sunday), lots of hw, a little Eucharistic procession (only when it went by my dorm), spanish play practice (oh gosh, we have a lot of work to do before next Saturday), orchestra rehearsal, and now.
you are now officially caught up with my life.
the end.

Mid-Lent update

2006-03-26T18:45:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone,
well I think this is the first Sunday of Lent I've spent "frittering away in front of a computer screen" so I guess that's good. My internet bookmarks are starting to not work anymore, it's kind of funny.

Random things:
Well...I did officially get into London, spring 2007, so that will be cool. I'm still a little sad about missing Rome, but I'm getting used to the idea of London. Rome might have been too much for me anyway, what with the language difference.
I'm waiting to find out if I got a job at the Kelly farm as a "historic site guide." Crossing my fingers...
If anyone knows how a bunch of 19 year old students could rent a car, or get from Notre Dame to Minnesota for Easter, that'd be great. :)

Spring break:
was amazing.
Saturday I flew into Philly w/ Chris and had dinner with his parents that night before meeting up with some of his friends. Slightly intimidating way to start the week! But it was fun. Sunday we went first to a little itty bitty Catholic church in town, but I really liked the homily. Evidentally the East Coast has a lot more Catholic churches which are much smaller than midwestern ones, which makes sense historically speaking. It was strange tho. We also went to Chris' family's church (Assemblies of God) which was cool too.
Monday we went to the beach, which was amazing. It was randomly about 75 degrees and sunny, and i definitely wore my swimsuit and a skirt most of the day. We decided to go swimming in the ocean...unfortunately we didn't time it very well and we hadn't gone in the water yet when a really cold breeze started up. So we just held hands, ran straight in, and ran straight back to our towels where we wrapped up as tightly as possible. :) It was still a sufficiently beach-y day for this minnesota girl! Also Chris made french toast for breakfast that morning. i just felt like that deserved a mention.
Tuesday we got off to a little bit of a slow start, but we went to midday Mass at the cathedral in Wilmington and then drove into amish country in Pennsylvania. I definitely saw the buggies in the yard and everything. We took a tour of a "typical amish house" but the best parts were 1) the drive through the winding hills dotted with farmhouses (so beautiful!) and 2) stopping at this little amish bakeshop. We saw the sign pointing off the road, and followed it to this house where the front porch was a bakery. It was staffed by this older lady who seemed to live there and she was really cute, telling us about the deals and stuff.
Wednesday we hung around, did some homework, and visited Chris' old high school, and Thursday we went shopping for a shirt for me for Carnegie before heading up to New York City.
We met up with my dad that night which was really great to see him. Friday morning we headed into the city on the orchestra bus. We got there about 10, had breakfast, and watched some of the St. Patrick's day parade. I don't think I've ever seen so many police officers in my entire life! We poked around some stores and stuff too, and then we had to meet up with some of my extended family around 2. From 3-6 we were supposed to have rehearsal at Carnegie, but they ended up not wanting us onstage just yet so we just had to wait backstage for the Cheiftains to be ready for us. And by backstage, I mean in this little room that looked like a gym (but as one of my friends pointed out, there must have been somebody famous that had waited in that room at some point too!). We ended up only having an hour to rehearse, and it wasn't even with the Cheiftains. Then some more waiting until finally we were on. It was so surreal walking out onto that stage. But then everything went so fast and suddenly we were done and walking out. It wasn't the greatest concert the orchestra has ever played, but that's ok.
Saturday morning Chris went back to Deleware, and my dad and I went into the city with Aunt Jan. We did a pretty good tour of NYC in 10 hours:
Madison Square Garden
Times Square (and the ticket place)
the subway
Ground Zero
a little bit of Wall Street
Little Italy/Chinatown (and Sal's pizza place, with 10 tables and an owner with an italian-ny accent who threatened to make me wash windows if I didn't finish the pizza)
St. Patrick's Cathedral
The American Girl Doll store
Carnegie (so i could get something from the gift shop)
Central Park
Grand Central Station
hot dogs and pretzals from a street vendor.
phew!
I liked NYC better than I had...I was noticing that there weren't any kids walking around anywhere, so that's probably part of why I didn't like it before. Still, two days was about enough for me. too much stimulation!
Then I took the bus back with the orchestra, all 12 hours, through the poconos and boring parts of ohio and indiana.

The end. :)

Lenten fasts

2006-02-28T23:38:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone,
I've decided to give up internet for Lent, at least the purely entertainment form. This could mean less posting...or it could mean that I spend Sundays staring at the screen and doing as many unproductive things online as possible. Yah, I don't think that's quite how sacrifices are supposed to work, but it's 20 minutes until Ash Wednesday and I'm already feeling the withdrawal kicking in! :)

The biggest news lately has been study abroad stuff. I applied to Rome, Dublin, and London (in that order; we have to rank our choices). There was the big "study abroad letters" day, and my mail contained three "waitlists." :( I guess Rome and Dublin were two of the top three sites as far as number of applicants, so it was pretty tough. Plus, how you rank your sites does affect your application so listing Dublin second probably hurt my chances. Then, I got a call last Thursday saying that I got into London, but in the fall. I didn't really want to go in the fall, plus I had to take a class that might only be in the fall next year. After talking with them, I decided to decline my fall spot and hold out for the spring again. Since I have academic reasons for switching (and not just wanting to see the football season), they thought I had a pretty good chance...but now I'm scared again, lol. I should find out in a few days tho.

I'm going to visit Chris in Deleware for spring break before heading up to NYC for the concert, which should be fun (at least that's what i'm hoping, i'm a little nervous i won't lie). I'll miss my family and good ol' Minnesota tho, just holding out for Easter.

See you in 40 days if not before! Have a penetential Lent everyone!
blessings,
jessica

NY Times on ND

2006-02-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has an interesting article about ND/academic freedom/Catholic identity. I thought it was pretty fair, although it's sad how unusual it is for a Catholic University to be addressing these issues.
You might have to be an online subscriber to read it, but the link is here, and it's under national news for Saturday, February 18.

interesting

2006-02-11T12:41:00.000-05:00

You Are a Frappacino

At your best, you are: fun loving, sweet, and modern

At your worst, you are: childish and over indulgent

You drink coffee when: you're craving something sweet

Your caffeine addiction level: low

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

overindulgent? I hope not. Childish? well...

Life update

2006-02-06T15:51:00.000-05:00

So once upon a time I intended this blog to be more like a diary/journal type thing, but that requires actual, y'know, writing in it. So yes, here are some random things that have been happening lately:
-The first few weeks of school were marked by high levels of intrigue as two of my roommates broke up with their boyfriends. Some intense periods of analyzing followed, but things seem to have cooled down somewhat.
-This weekend I went to the hockey game on Friday night (which i have to admit, I found rather boring, also we lost to MSU, 3-1) and went salsa dancing for a little bit. Saturday night I more or less hung out in the room and watched episodes on DVD of the first season of Gilmore Girls, and went ice skating for about an hour at the JACC. Oh also on Saturday I bought a violin bow! Emily and I went to Brasswinds and Woodwinds in South Bend. I almost didn't even look at bows, because the place was so huge and the service was really pretty bad. Nobody knew anything. Luckily there was a violin teacher who was just leaving who had been looking at bows, and had made them bring some in from their warehouse, so he gave the ones he had been trying to me. The one I got is an Arcolla carbon fiber bow and it was $179. I'm happy cause my old bow was in desperate need of rehairing and I am playing in Carnegie Hall in a few weeks...Anyway, back to the weekend. Sunday I went to Basilica Mass and EM'd and then watched the Super Bowl in the evening . Now it's Monday and I have a nasty nose/throat/cold thingy. Ew.
-It snowed! That makes me happy.
-I've been going to the Knights of the Immaculata/Children of Mary meetings this semester, which has been nice. It's good to be the one questioning instead of always explaining/defending, and participating in theological discussions which really don't have a pratical impact even on my very-Catholic life. I mean, "How do faith and reason relate?" is a question that's pretty important for me to be able to answer, the various types of graces don't matter quite so much. Not that the latter types aren't important to discuss, but it's nice to talk about things where I can honestly throw up my hands and acknowledge that I don't get it without it mattering too much.
-I auditioned to be in a Spanish play, which I think is going to be really cool. At the end of the semester we'll perform it, all in Spanish (although the playbill will be in English so everyone can understand the basic plot). This means it's going to be a pretty packed semester for me, but I think this will be worth it. I mean, I doubt I'll ever have the opportunity again. I am going to drop out of the PILLARS committee that's planning the safe spring break week campaign, so that should help a little bit, and I don't think they'll mind since we just started. Oh the play is called Fuente Ovejuna I believem, and we don't know parts yet.
-Also, if anyone happens to have a history-related summer job opportunity in the Twin Cities, let me know...that'll be my next project to work on.
-We find out about study abroad sometime in the next 10 days!

Well, that should be good enough for now, lol.
blessings!

You heard it here first, folks!

2006-01-24T13:50:00.000-05:00

First, apologies that the format is a little difficult to read. I can't make blogger put in blank lines for some reason.
Also, my sidebar is kind of messed up from a post bleeding over, sorry. The rest of the sidebar is further down the page if you're desperate.

My notes from Fr. Jenkins' address:

Jan 24, 2006

12:30-1:30 PM

Washington Hall (full)

Fr. John I. Jenkins

Academic Freedom and Catholic Character

Introduction

In the coming weeks, we will seek the deeper questions.

Queer Film Festival (QFF) and Vagina Monolgues (VM) "at issue."

Not a "majority rules" decision, but will seek advice and opinions.

*Fr. Jenkins will make a decision and announce guiding principles.*

Historical context: many discussions this year about QFF, VM

name change for QFF

VM performed in classrooms, no ticket sales (ie fundraising)

"Certain events in certain situations may not be appropriate."

Academic Freedom - A Sacred Value

but have certain limits of expression

Example: Old, anti-Semitic script of Obergammau passion play.

Not problematic when studied, unofficially performed away from campus, praised individually by students or faculty

Problem: sponsorship, not scholarship

Catholic intellectual tradition is enriched by contact with opposing views, but cannot endorse those views.

QFF, VM appear to endorse a viewpoint in conflict with Catholic teachings.

VM has many laudable goals, BUT ignores viewpoint of Catholic sexual morality. Finds its performance problematic.

Guiding Principles

Let's focus on expressions protected by ND, not just the limits.

Core: faculty has freedom of expression.

Students enjoy freedom of inquiry and expression (within the bounds of decorum and relativeness to topic)

Students free to express their opinions.

The Observer (newspaper) has the freedom to serve the entire campus.

Student do not have the same academic freedom as faculty.

Explicit goal of ND: forming students' characters, instilling virtues beyond those of autonomy and independence.

Events sponsored by Departments

Differ from individual expressions of opinion

Influence our collective identity

"An event which has implicit or explicit sponsorship by a ND entity and content which is or appears to be egregiously contrary to Catholic teachings should not be allowed at Notre Dame."

Will not make a final decision until the community has time to speak, guided by reasonable arguments. He will listen to everyone's arguements (e-mail him at: studrsvp@nd.edu)

Student Questions

Alliance ND (GBLT) representative: will there be a formal way for students to participate in the decision-making process? E-mail. Final decision, since it concerns the character of the University, rests with Fr. Jenkins.

VM heals women...1/4 college women will be raped, how will we deal with this -- give me two specific ideas? Unwise to offer specific suggestions off the top of my head. Everyone feels passionately about this play - for and against. Can we find a means of campaigning against rape that everyone can agree on?

Several students offered prepared statements in support of the VM. Fr. Jenkins generally did not respond.

I think we have a choice: to become more academic or less academic. Does eliminating the performance of the VM make us less academic?

Is there a practical distinction between censorship and lack of sponsorship? I'm aware this will close some avenues, but not all of them.

Why is hiring a faculty member who espouses/teaches a different viewpoint different then promoting the VM for example? If we hired a majority of non-Catholics perhaps it would be different. I'm not concerned with the representation of different perspectives, just the overwhelming portrayal of support.

Please consider the alienating effect this will have on diverse members of the student body.

We (the leaders of the VM, etc) are the ones coming forward for intellectual conversation. Why can't we find more Catholics to engage in discussion with us?

Notre Dame will become stigmatized in the academic world.

Holding an event in the context of a Catholic University ensures that there will be discussion of it from a Catholic perspective. Yes, absolutely. So then [speaker paused, as if to say, "What's the point of your entire talk?" audience laughter]...why only have events that include the Catholic perspective if it will happen anyway. But why would you have a presentation, or a hypothetical conference, etc. that didn't have at least one person expressing the Catholic viewpoint? Why would you do that?

Will the public readings of creative writers in the English department still be allowed, even if the content is contrary to Catholic teaching? Their publication by an author identified as from ND? Yes, absolutely.

Is your main concern the availability for counterspeech? is that your guiding principle? Yes. Then why be concerned with events and not the general culture of campus? Are you afraid students will not be able to find Catholic perspectives on these issues on this campus? Or are you just concerned with outside appearance? [Audience laughter] To some extent - but it's because I'm concerned with inaccurate representation. If someone tells you that Fr. Jenkins believes X, when I believe exactly the opposite, I'd be concerned with that.

I don't see how academic freedom is limited if the VM can still be studied in class, just not performed.

Thank you, those are all the questions we have time for today.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I would have said if I could:

Nobody can argue that ND as a private institution does not have the right to limit what it sponsors, which puts the burden of proof, I think, on the departments or people who are sponsoring events to demonstrate how this event will not conflict with the mission of the university.

I may need to write a letter to the Observer, we'll see how vehement the response is.

Your perfect major

2006-01-20T00:10:00.000-05:00

Somehow I knew it would come up philo:

You scored as Philosophy. You should be a Philosophy major! Like the Philosopher, you are contemplative and you enjoy thinking about the purpose for humanity's existence.

Philosophy

100%

Journalism

100%

Mathematics

92%

Linguistics

83%

English

83%

Anthropology

75%

Sociology

75%

Theater

67%

Engineering

67%

Dance

50%

Psychology

50%

Art

42%

Biology

33%

Chemistry

25%

What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3)
created with QuizFarm.com

The funny thing is, the first time I took this the webpage froze up, but I came up tied with math and philosophy. Math?!? Maybe I could see it personality-wise, but certainly not in real life. There isn't a history option, which makes me mad, but I am consoled with the relatively high scores in English and Anthropology, seeing as those are both pretty close to history.

Spring semester

2006-01-19T21:44:00.000-05:00

Ok everyone, big huge update on Jessica's life as a second-semester sophomore at Notre Dame:
Classes:
1) Introduction to History Workshop. Cool prof (first words on first day of class: "please excuse my manpurse"), interesting stuff, seminar style. We have basically three units, one on the first crusade, one on history as a discipline, and one on the revolution in Haiti in the early 1800s. Evidentially the middle section is meant to disillusion us and strip of of our naivete before we plunge into that Haitian case study, but that actually sounds interesting because its kind of a philosophical look at history (how do we know what's true?).
2) Music History. Once again, a music class that makes me say yikes. Sigh. This is pretty much the same as history one, so it shouldn't be that hard, only she doesn't print up her lecture notes for us so it's a lot to absorb, and there's a 10-concert attendance requirement. 10 is a lot. (and expensive too, grr) But hey it's Baroque so that's cool.
3) Education Pysch. This class is pretty intriguing, and it doesn't really feel like class yet. It'll be pretty hands-on, and a lot of discussion in small groups, etc. It's taught by a lady who used to be a homeschool mom at one point in her life, and she reminds me a lot of Deb Bode if that makes any sense to anyone. Well, Deb Bode w/ some of my Aunt Sharon thrown in, which makes sense seeing that Aunt Sharon is the only psychologist I really know.
4) History, American Occupation in Japan. Another intriguing class...not my favorite topic ever, but it's going to be a lot of thinking about democracy and how it's established, etc, so it's the applicable kind of history which I like. Our first assignment is to write a page explaining democracy as if we were young American soldiers talking to Japanese citizens, so that's pretty cool.
5) Introduction to Philosophy. I like philo, and the prof (although a grad student) seems pretty cool. We're reading the Euthyphro to begin tho -- that will make the fourth time i've read it. I actually have an opinion about the particular translation we're reading (I don't like it as much as the others I've read), which is a new experience for me. I've never know a text well enough to care about how it was translated. Anyway, I think that will be a good class, for an introductory one.

Other stuff:
Orchestra is twice a week now, but I think we're sounding good and we're going to Carnegie Hall, so it's all good.
I have two jobs, but that's ok. One is super-flexible, I can work online from my dorm room, and it pays well; the other isn't quite as flexible but I can often do homework while I'm there waiting to be needed. I think between the two I'll be working about 10 hours a week, give or take.
I'm going to try to go to more Knights of Immaculata meetings and such to keep my spiritual life up. I have been pretty good about praying so far.
Roomates, etc., are all good and the same, and I'll find out about going abroad to Rome in about a month.

Now...off to homework!

Not very evil

2006-01-18T18:51:00.000-05:00

How evil are you?

I wasn't heretical either.

Sooner or later I'll update on my classes and such, but at the moment I'm still trying to figure out if I should switch into another class. Two awesome classes at the same time makes my life complicated. oh the indecisiveness...

The worst of it is, I'm putting off my homework for the class I might drop until I decide.

JP2's would-be assassin...

2006-01-08T14:38:00.000-05:00

Mehmet Ali Agca could be released from Turkish jail as soon as Monday.
It makes me realize what an awesome act of forgiveness JP2 extended to Agca when he went to visit him in jail. I never really thought about what happened to Agca after that, I just kind of assumed that trying to kill the pope would lock you up for life, y'know? I'm still not entirely sure that I'd like to shake his hand if I were to meet him on the street -- and I'm not the one he tried to kill!

You know you live in the boonies when...

2006-01-03T15:34:00.000-05:00

So my brother, dad, and I went to go see Chronicles of Narnia last week. (Good movie!)
We drove up to the East Bethel movie theater, which is about 7 miles and 3 signal lights north of my house, where two years ago a full-price ticket was $5, and where half-empty theaters are the norm.
After we bought the tickets (now $7, sigh), we looked out the window and saw...four goats walking past. They had on collars, but I don't think anyone was watching them.
Maybe I should've called a police officer to handle the "deranged goats"! :)

best story of the semester

2005-12-21T01:10:00.000-05:00

So finals are over and I'm back home, meaning I finally have time to tell my best story from this semester. File this under the category, "It's a good thing Mom didn't know exactly what was going on until I was back safe!"
My CSem class, which you've been hearing bits about all semester, decided to take my professor's offer to pay for our tickets for a play if we would pay for transportation. The play was "Nathan the Wise," which we had read this semester, and it was running in Chicago.
So we made plans to go on Thursday of study days, made dinner reservations before the play, and met on Thursday at library circle -- in the midst of a swirling snowstorm. But we already had the tickets, right? We were going no matter what. That would be reason #1 for the above categorization of this story, followed closely by #2: I ended up in the car with the 19-year-old Texan driver who fishtailed a little on his very first left turn. The drive into Chicago ended up being not that bad actually...messy and hard to see at times, but not too terribly slow. We told Grant (the driver) not to worry about silly details like lanes, just follow the tracks you can see. Once we got onto the Skyway (the big Chicago freeway), I checked my watch and the mapquest directions, and realized we had about 10 miles to go and about 10 minutes until our dinner reservation. I thought, hey, we could actually still make this.
And then we entered Chicago traffic.
Just so you know, this was the first big (6"-8") snowfall to hit Chicago this year. Our reservations were for 5:45, at a place pretty much downtown as far as I know -- north of Navy Pier and Michigan Ave. anyway. So we're stuck in stop-and-go traffic on Lake Shore Drive. Half an hour passes...an hour...an hour and a half....two hours later, we still haven't gone the full 10 miles. On the plus side, we did get to drive past Lake Michigan, which was really creepy looking because somehow the snow was floating on top of the lake, and the effect was like a rolling snow field. creeeeepy. but cool.
Anyway, the various cars had been keeping in touch with each other via cell phone, and the two other cars decided to try some back routes (my TA was one of the drivers, and his fiance lives in Chicago, so he sort of knew what he was doing). I tried calling Chris and had him look up where we were, since of course we didn't have any maps, and there was much rejoicing when he said we were just a block or two away. (And by rejoicing, I mean hysterical screaming/giggling. But in a manly way by the guys, of course.) Just to emphasize again how slow this was, it took us about 10-15 minutes to drive past Soldier Field. One football stadium. 15 minutes. Sheesh.
We finally got to the theater about 5 minutes before the play started, dinnerless of course, and pretty much parked in a snow bank. At this point, five hours into the trip, the other passenger and I were just like, "park the car and freakin let us out, nobody will check the meter anyway." We were the first group to get there, and the first theater-type poster we saw advertised "naked men singing." We were really hoping that wasn't what we had just driven 5 hours to see, but luckily our theater was two doors down. We got in, bought some candy bars in the lobby, got into the theater itself, and then realized that our group of 12 would compose about 2/3 of the audience that night.
Then the play itself started....and we realized it was really, really bad. It wasn't direct from the original play but a modern "interpretation," and as someone from our group pointed out, not only had they added random relationships and a much more tolerant theme (woot Islam!), it sounded like George Lucas had written most of the dialogue. ("I don't love your beauty...I love what's deeper in you." "Although you are a raisin [as compared to a green or ripe grape], I still want to eat you.") Imagine the consequences yourself: a bunch of college students, having spent the past 5 hours driving through a snowstorm and eating candy bars for dinner, watching a classic play get butchered. I was biting my tongue to keep from laughing out loud, and my surrounding classmates weren't exactly helping!
(In all fairness, the play wasn't all that bad. If you hadn't read the original you probably would've thought it was decent.)
After the play we all wandered the surrounding blocks, breaking our own paths in the snow where the sidewalks were supposed to be, looking for a place to eat. We tried one place, but ended up crashing an office party's karaoke night. Finally we decided to eat after getting on the road for awhile.
After we pushed ourselves out of the now-giant snowbank (and by "we" i mean "Mike"), we headed for home. We ended up getting too far apart to make any attempt to eat together worthwhile, so we stopped at MickeyD's, where I discovered that 3 am is the magic moment when McDonald's switches over to its breakfast menu. (The play had ended around 11:30 ND time, we left Chicago probably around 12:30 ND time, and it was about 2:45 when we stopped, half an hour away from campus.) On the way back we saw someone trying to push another car out of a snowbank by using their own car, and managed to get hit by a pile of snow coming from a snowplow clearing off the overpass above us.
I managed to get back to my room a little before four am, which was shortly after the TA called to make sure we got back to campus ok (how many people get phone calls from their TA at 4 am?).
But at least now I have stories to reminisce about at college reunions forever. Good times, y'all, good times.

Overheard

2005-12-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

I'm at work now, at the Security building, mainly studying for finals and doing a few odd jobs when they need me. From my "office" I can hear the intercom, basically the police scanner, and although it's usually pretty boring this exchange amused me:

"We have reports of a deranged duck outside of north dining hall...could you go check that out please?"
(Later)
"The duck appears to be (deep breath) fairly normal - it can (deep breath) walk, talk, and fly. We attempted to chase it (deep breath) but to no avail."
"Thank you, that should be enough information to rely to anyone else who's concerned."
"Like I said, we tried (deep breath) to corner it, but to no avail."
"Alright, thank you officer."

This story gets even better when three points are considered: 1) I did indeed see two ducks wandering outside in the snow near my dorm, although I don't think sleeping/waddling counts as being deranged. 2) The police officer reporting had that classic Irish cop type voice, leading me to mental images of your typical cop chasing a duck all around the quad. 3) What kind of "normal" duck can walk, fly -- and talk??

For the sake of his sorrowful passion

2005-12-04T19:15:00.000-05:00

Have mercy on us, and on the whole world.

The Netherlands has recently legalized infact euthanasia, in specific cases. The infant must be terminally ill; their pain level must be great (how would you determine that?); two doctors must agree; and the parents must give their permission.
This article is even scarier. The hospital proposing it wanted to legalize euthanasia in cases of "incurable disease" which would cause the child to life on life support for the rest of his/her life. They also said that advocates viewed this step as a "natural evolution" -- no, I'm pretty sure I see it as a natural evolution also. If humans give themselves power over life in some cases, it will eventually be expanded to cover all cases. If you're too young or too old or too powerless, I'm sorry, you'll just have to go.
I don't even want to know what kind of world will exist two generations from now. Assuming, of course, that those generations are allowed to live.

Visit with Fr. Hesburgh

2005-11-29T21:49:00.000-05:00

This evening I had the pleasure of a visit with the president emeritus of Notre Dame, Fr. Hesburgh. It was part of my seminar class (which has been amazing). The stories he told were unbelievable!! He talked about singing old songs around the piano with VP Harry Truman, six days before FDR died. He was on the first board for the National Science Foundation, and asked to head NASA. (Despite his lack of science knowledge, he was asked because of his philosophical background, and only turned down NASA because he didn't want to be accused of a Catholic bias in handing out contract and he didn't want his actions to reflect on the priesthood.) He did a favor for President Eisenhower and as a result got to break the record for fastest speed in a special government plane. He went 80,000 feet in the air and Mach 3.5. He said at that point, if you had to bail out you would fall for half an hour before you reached 20,000 feet, when you could pull out your parachute. Attached to the astronaut's uniform you had to wear were enough supplies to last you for two weeks in case you came crashing down in the middle of nowhere (including $10,000 in gold coins if you needed to buy your way out of a bad situation). There was also a rubber boat that could be inflated if you landed in water.
He was on the committee that helped craft the bill that formed the cornerstone of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. I think the story of how LBJ got that bill passed was my favorite:
LBJ would call up the southern senators at three in the morning.
Sleepy Southern Senator: hello?
LBJ: Hello, this is the president, I need to speak to the Senator from Alabama.
SSS: President of what?
LBJ: Of the United States. I heard you're not going to vote for ma bill (I only wish I could reproduce Fr. Hesburgh's imitation of LBJ's accent).
SSS: Well of course I'm not, I'm a southern senator, it'd be political suicide. The people would kill me!
LBJ (matter of factly): If you don't vote for it, I'll kill you.
Suddenly not-sleepy senator: What are you talking about? I'm a senator, you're the president, you can't talk like that!
LBJ: How would you like to see a front page article in the Washington Post one day questioning why the senator from Alabama rents room 305 in the hotel downtown for an hour every Friday afternoon? Maybe you go there to pray an Our Father?
SnSS (spluttering): What? you can't...i mean...how do you...my reputation would be ruined!!
LBJ: Told ya I'd kill ya.

He also told the story of how Lincoln decided to read the Emancipation Proclamation. He gave it to his eight cabinet members and let them vote on it: No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Lincoln looked around the room and said "Aye. Well, it looks like the Ayes have it."

He ended with what turned into an exhortation as to what Notre Dame students should be like when we graduate: We should have expanded our minds, but be grounded in what we know to be true, and able to communicate that to the world. We must maintain our intellectual integrity and be able to see other peoples' points of view, but at the same time we must be able to defend what we believe, and act upon it for the good of the world. If we are women, we must be good, strong (not mousy!) women; and men must be good, strong men ready to take the initiative and become leaders. Both must be willing to stand up and take an unpopular position if need be. We will be good parents or good servants of the Church, ready to be modern Catholics in the best sense of the term.
It made me want to clap. :) I got to shake his hand but we didn't take a picture.

Also from CSem: Random cool JP2 observation of the day:
Truth=Beauty=Being=Love
in essence, they are all interchangeable

Harry Potter thoughts

2005-11-18T16:02:00.000-05:00

I went to go see Harry Potter at midnight last night with 19 other people from the dorm/people who are friends with Andrea. It was kind of funny because I'm pretty sure 90% of the audience was ND students (90% of the three sold-out theaters, that is), as evidenced by the cheering that occured when the leprachaun firework was shown. I thought it was an excellent movie. They blended the darker sections with some light-hearted intervals that were quite funny.
I've been pretty on-the-fence for several years now about Harry Potter. I don't think JK Rowling is the devil incarnate, but I don't think she's the greatest thing since sliced bread either. The movie only solidified my wishy-washiness, if that makes sense. :)
I've now seen all the movies (except for the last 20 minutes of the third one which I couldn't quite fit in this week). I liked the "Goblet of Fire" very much but it definitely deserved its PG-13 rating. It was pretty intense and scary; not quite to Lord of the Rings level but pretty close, especially considered the action was centered around 14-year-olds. Voldemart's transformation and the scene in the graveyard was pretty scary. Also, there were some hints at some off-color jokes -- nothing too bad of course, probably nothing as bad as is usually on sitcoms, but still, not something for the littlest kids.
The one thing that I still don't like about the whole series is how they *use* magic. In comparable fantesy series (LOTR & Narnia), the main characters can't really control magic or use it for their personal good. JK Rowling has avoided purely personal uses of magic (for example, Harry doesn't try to use magic to impress the girls) but their control over the world of magic still rubs me the wrong way. Plus, I just don't like it as a plot device - it's a very convenient way to get out of things. For example, in the Prisoner of Azkaban everything was going wrong until - shazaam! - up pops a time turner so they can go back in time and fix it all. But now in the Goblet of Fire, somehow they can't use that time turner to go back and set a guard so Harry's name isn't put in the goblet.
Finally, Rowling's authority figures aren't very trustworthy. Every single time, some adult figure starts off good and ends up being revealed as bad. Maybe she's doing this to emphasize that Harry can't trust anyone and that he's basically alone against the world -- which works, I guess, but isn't exactly a virtuous attitude to promote.
To sum up, I loved the movie and I intend to read the books ASAP (I've only read the first, so maybe my judgement is off). I think that there are some Christian elements in HP which make them beneficial for older kids to read. I just think that Rowling sets up a world which makes it hard to convey those Christian messages - a setup where kids can control the world through magic but can't trust authority seems to me to have some resemblances to the fall in the Garden of Eden.
Thoughts?

Another Catholic quiz

2005-10-28T17:49:00.000-05:00

"Cultural Catholic"

You are related to longshoremen or teamsters. When
people make jokes about nuns and rulers, you
don't laugh; you get that "thousand yard
stare" instead.

See you at the next Knights of Columbus social.

Provided by

Are You A Cultural Catholic?
brought to you by Quizilla

What type of Catholic are you?

2005-10-23T13:56:00.000-05:00

You scored as New Catholic. The years following the Second Vatican Council was a time of collapse of the Catholic faith and its traditions. But you are a young person who has rediscovered this lost faith, probably due to the evangelization of Pope John Paul II. You are enthusiastic, refreshing, and somewhat traditional, and you may be considering a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. You reject relativism and the decline in society that you see among your peers. You are seen as being good for the Church.
A possible problem is that you may have a too narrow a view of orthodoxy, and anyway, you are still a youth and not yet mature in your faith.

New Catholic

90%

Radical Catholic

62%

Traditional Catholic

55%

Neo-Conservative Catholic

40%

Evangelical Catholic

33%

Liberal Catholic

26%

Lukewarm Catholic

What is your style of American Catholicism?
created with QuizFarm.com

EEEEEEE!!!

2005-10-13T16:11:00.000-05:00

Yay, my midterms are done! I'm so excited! I had three this week, which wasn't too bad but certainly enough to keep me busy.
Now onto Friday, then the USC game, then home to Minnesota -- the week just keeps getting better. :)
Also, some slightly old news that I haven't gotten around to posting. The Cheiftains are coming to ND to play a concert on March 2, and the orchestra gets to play with them! Even better...we're going with them a week and a half later to play with them in NYC in Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick's Day!!! And oh yeah, they're paying.
I'm off to go enjoy the beautiful afternoon...after this week any free time is enjoyable.

PS Thanks to all of you who encouraged me during midterms, I really appreciated it!

I heart my job

2005-10-03T13:13:00.000-05:00

So I'm currently at work, but as usual the amount of work needing to be done is significantly less than the amount of time I'm scheduled to work. I'm supposed to be listening for the phone (which hasn't rung in the past 45 minutes) and otherwise not much is happening. I did spend the first hour here counting by hand the number of ushers in various categories. Trust me, ND football games have a lot of ushers. A lot. Like over 1ooo I believe.
Oh, right, technically I'm an "administrative assistant" at the Security building, in case you didn't know.
Weekend observations:
*rivers are nice :)
*Rocco's pizza and Bruno's pizza may be equally as good. Bruno's has the mismatched religious icons as decorations, but half of Rocco's dining room used to be the living room of the first owners (who happened to be Italian immigrants whose grandchildren now run the resturaunt). *ND football rocks and I am now officially required to stay for the USC game.
*Having the power go out when you're practicing in a windowless room in Crowley is really really scary...especially when you think you're alone in the building and then the creepy clarinetist starts playing.
*Ice cream makes me silly. As does eating dinner with my friends, seeing people get exciting phone calls, or pretty much anything really. Basically, life makes me silly. :)

10 more minutes on the job...I really hope that I didn't miss the phone ringing (I'm in the student office, it's in Cappy's office across the hall).

Yikes

2005-09-27T18:04:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone,
sorry I haven't posted much lately. At least it's still the same month. I don't even have any great insights - I'm saving that for Kierkegaard (who I must admit I started to like in "Fear and Trembling" until he completely lost me in the final third of the book), and Nietzche (whom I've read about 10 pages of and dislike already). Also, if anyone has any thoughts on whether progressivism is more communitarianist or liberal in its idealogy, let me know!
I went to Fr. Jenkins' inauguration this weekend, which was interesting. I liked his address a lot. He seemed very courageous in stressing that Catholicism is an essential nature of ND, and in that's why ND is great. He pretty pointedly mentioned that a lot of top 20 schools have lost their religious nature, impressive given that most of them had representatives in the audience. He also went through JPII's ideals for Catholic universities. At the same time, he talked about diversity, especially religious, and said that if we were to be exclusively Catholic, we would be less Catholic, which I thought was a nice way to phrase things. And he had a great Benedict joke - he pointed out that our former President once removed, Fr. Hesburgh, had invited Ratzinger to be a theology professor here. "Just imagine what he could have made of himself had he come here!" Jenkins joked. :)
One more ND thing...the funniest flash animation I've seen for a long time can be found here.

My weekend :)

2005-09-12T15:37:00.000-05:00

It started on Thursday
Thursday was my birthday
I got presents
I got flowers
I had really really yummy Italian food
I watched an entire movie on a school night
I was told in class that my logic was similar to Pope Benedict's
I was busy in the afternoon but I still made it to Mass on Friday
I danced to salsa music outside out the quad for about three hours straight on Friday night
The entire group of us dancing went to go bother two of our friends studying in the Library, and silently salsa danced in a clump around them while they turned bright red. OK, so I have the feeling they didn't appreciate it too much, but how often do you get to dance in the library?
On Friday night I got to see a whole bunch of people who I kind of know and always intend to hang out with more often
We beat Michigan
We beat Michigan
We beat Michigan
After the game students poured out onto the quad and we randomly broke into both the fight song and the alma mater
We had a Saturday night study party which was both semi-productive and hilarious
I went dancing at Legend's with the gang again, "reggaetone" music this time (also with the two who were in the library, I think they were afraid of what we'd do if they didn't come)
I got to sit up late and talk a little bit each night (twice by the lake!)
It was my birthday and we beat Michigan and we're ranked #10
I got to do homework all day Sunday in between approximately 5 hours of liturgy training for various things...ok I added that one just to get to twenty. :) By the way, in case anyone is wondering, the map for Eucharistic Ministers in the Basilica on football weekends is probably more complicated then the football patterns themselves! I mean, football is just X's and O's, the Basilica has numbers and letters...and timing, and signals, and coordinators... ;)

Free write!

2005-09-06T17:58:00.000-05:00

I love vanilla ice cream cones, so simple and good bringing back visions of childhood summers and licking the drips off your chin. Afternoon sun poking in through my window peeking through the trees intruding on my own little digital world, keeping me connected to bigger and better things...i have a very strange relationship with homework, i can never decide if i have lots to do or nothing at all. maybe that's what happens when you like to work ahead, sometimes you realize you're ahead, but then you're stressed out when you realize how much more getting ahead you have to do. by getting ahead i mean finishing stuff more than say twelve hours before its due. now i'm just kind of typing because i could be thinking about the constitutionality of the court case muller v. oregon, or contemplating the parable of the ring in lessing's Nathan the Wise or reading wuthering heights or practicing violin in prep for orchestra...but instead i'm doing none of those, just typing. which isn't such a bad thing, i don't think. i mean, what's all this education for except for teaching me how to think and communicate? isn't that what i'm doing right now? Andrea said that the point of a liberal arts education is so that you can learn that you don't know anything, and can't ever know anything for sure. I think that's kind of true. but this is veering towards an actuall train of thought and not a free write. So, back to the randomness, clickity clack my keys are saying as i hit them, ironic that the only reason that they made that noise was that i was typing "clickity clack" ooh that girl out the window has a pretty skirt, i think i saw her earlier today in music history. oh yes it's my birthday soon, i'm excited to be 19. that to me is the last romantic age (no offense to anyone) but anyway its the last age to be tall and slender with stars in your eyes dancing with many boys and maybe just one in particular and full of ideals and virtue before the real world starts to rub the tarnish off, which is why i think of Rilla of Ingleside as perpetually 19. Although i don't know why i think of the real world hitting at twenty, in fact i'm pretty sure it doesn't. still, just being that much closer to having to be (horror of horrors) actually grown up kind of makes you grown up in and of itself. but see 18 also isn't tall and slender and idealistic, its officially grown up and processed and stodgy and scared. you can't have stars in your eyes the day that you're officially old enough to buy lottery tickets. 19 knows what happened at 18 so it's allowing itself a breath before plunging in to another decade. like a slip of paper that one puts in a book to mark the place. Speaking of which, i left a very important paper somewhere, i'm going to go make sure i can find it. toodles

Computer's been down

2005-08-31T15:34:00.000-05:00

Hey everybody,
the motherboard on my computer died probably the day i got on campus at ND. It should be coming back any day now, so I've pretty much just been living in the computer clusters (well, i'm not quite that pathetic, i do spend some time elsewhere :). Anyway, that's kind of inhibited my posting obviously, sorry about that. But today i feel like slacking off and if other people have homework to do on the computers...well I'll just be fast I guess.
Classes this year are looking good. My seminar class is amazing. The theme is Faith, Doubt, and Reason, and so far (in three classes) we've discussed the dark night of the soul, why God allows suffering, if doubt is a crucial element of faith, the definition of piety (Plato), and heard personal testimonies coming out through the course of the discussion. I also heard possibly the best getting-to-know you line ever: "You Catholic?" "Yup, and you" "Well, I'm Methodist now...but, eh, I'll probably be converting pretty soon." The noncholance of the statement was really amusing (and he was serious too). That class is followed by my Music History class, which is the most Catholic class I've ever had at ND. The prof starts the class by having us chant the Pater Noster in Latin, soon to be followed by the Salve Regina and Ave Maria (oh, and he doesn't give translations). Our homework for last class was to become familiar with the format of the Mass, after a lecture during which we discussed the awesomeness of monestaries in the middle ages. Literature after that is ok, the prof isn't very interesting but we get to read books, yay.
So that's Tuesday/Thursday, MWF I have theology in the morning, which i'm still very undecided about. He makes us think from all these weird angles and uncomfortable questions...but he usually ends up at a place somewhat reconcilable with orthodoxy, even if it's not quite in outright defense of it. Then I finish up with History, political history of the US since the civil war, which is quite intruiging.
Yay for being a sophmore and choosing your own classes. More later, when i have my laptop and late night procrastination begins to works its magic.

SSP papers, weeks seven and eight

2005-08-14T14:33:00.000-05:00

Week Seven
White privilege and racism
After camp, I ride the bus back to Sibley Manor with many of the campers, and then walk through the neighborhood to the Family Center where my car has parked. Doing this has evidently led to a lot of confusion for the children, because they’re forever asking me where I live and where my car is. Some think that I live in Sibley Manor and a few even thought that I slept at the Family Center. So one day, when nine year old Yordanos asked me where I was from, I wasn’t too surprised. But then she went on to clarify, “Where did you come from?”
My first thought, I’m ashamed to say, was, ”Oh, she thinks I’m one of them.” Who did I mean by them? Immigrants, refugees, people living in the lower classes of our society. I quickly curbed my thought, but deep down I knew that however much I liked these children, I didn’t really want to be them.
Racism and white privilege are not fun things to think about, no matter what your color. I personally would much rather pretend that they don’t exist at all. The situation has certainly improved in the past 50 years, through the era of civil rights and affirmative action. Now, I think, it has become a very hidden, and rarely expressed sentiment: that a given person has had or will have a more difficult life simply because of the color of their skin.
The difficult part, of course, is that is often true. As Margaret Pfeil writes, “Those citizens on the socioeconomic periphery of society, disproportionately people of color, are unlikely to have access to…significant financial, political, educational, and organizational forms of capital” (130-131). Currently, racism in America manifests itself, I believe, by overemphasizing this fact. Race, poverty, and a disadvantaged condition have become closely linked in the minds of many white Americans. As Patricia Williams explains, “the new rhetoric of race never mentions race. It wasn’t race but risk with which the bank was so concerned” (113).
I’m not going to come up with a solution to this problem in a page of writing -- books upon books haven’t solved it. Theologically, however, the answer is clear. As St. Paul wrote, “In Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, free nor slave.” The dignity of every person is the same, no matter what their perceived station in life.

Racism at Summer in the City
When I was looking over the syllabus for this class, I thought these two papers would be fairly easy to write. After all, I was going to be dealing with children of multiple skin tones and ethnicities. Some of them probably come from warring racial groups; others from countries where everyone looks the same and racial prejudice is a non-issue.
However, when I tried to think of an incident to focus my paper on, I realized I could not think of a single one. For the entirety of camp, spread over five weeks (or twenty-five days, or one hundred hours, however you want to count it), there was not a single conflict between the children about race. This, of course, doesn’t mean that they didn’t fight. Use of the swing, attention from the counselor, budging in line, not sharing a toy, athletic ability – all these were reasons for arguments among the kids. But in all these debates, race was never an issue.
I believe that this a good sign not only for these children and their neighborhood, but also for the general population, because it shows that racial prejudice must be a learned trait. Peggy McIntosh touches on this when she writes about white privilege: “My schooling followed the pattern which Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught that…when we work to benefit others…[it is] work which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us’” (120, emphasis mine). In discussions with workers at the Family Center, someone brought up the point that people from Northern Ireland, where religious divisions run deep, are as incredulous of our racial discrimination as we are at their religious discrimination. We must be taught, perhaps in very subtle ways, to see another category of people as “different.” The hope for the future, then, is the conclusion that prejudice is not a universal human flaw, but something that was taught, and therefore can be unlearned

Week Eight
It ain’t over till it’s over
This last week of my SSPI hasn’t been as interesting as the weeks at camp were. We’ve just been finishing up administrative tasks, looking over our budget, cleaning up and packing away for next year. But suddenly a few incidents have reminded me that I’m not quite done yet.
For example, on Wednesday night we took a group on one of our “Family Fun Days” trips to a Minnesota Twins baseball game. On the bus ride home, I sat with a girl named Kenean, who opened up to me about her life in Ethiopia without any prompting on my part. She told me about the starving people in the countryside, the torture threatened by various groups, and how her father had to flee the country and they didn’t see him for nine years. This morning, on a Family Fun Days trip to the pool, Nardos told me that her family went to a “white people’s church” on Summit Avenue, one of the richest residential streets in St. Paul. While swimming in the shallowest pool later that day, Obssa scraped his nose on the bottom. His tears, I think, were more because his was afraid of what his father would say then because of any pain. He told me that his father would be very mad at him and would probably hit him with a belt, maybe hard enough to leave marks.
These were all issues that I was prepared to deal with eight weeks ago. Then, I knew that I’d have two months dedicated to helping solve these problems. But the summer is over and I have to reenter the real world – only now I know more. I can’t pretend that I left everything neatly resolved just in time for school to start.
David Hollenbach writes in his book, Justice, Peace, and Human Rights, that “There is a gap between every human effort and the final achievement of true justice” (158). As finite creatures in the pursuit of infinite qualities such as justice, equality, and joy, we will always fall short. However, Hollenbach continues, “It is precisely because there is such a gap that courage remains a constant necessity” (158). The problem doesn’t begin when we leave difficulties unresolved and fail to eradicate poverty, racism, and injustice; the problem is when we are content with our failures and stop striving for the common good. Pope John Paul II described this universal call in very simple terms: “We are all called, indeed obliged, to face the tremendous challenge of the last decade of the second millennium, also because the present dangers threaten everyone” (71).

What I learned
This program is called the Summer Service Learning Project, and for good reason. I obviously fulfilled the “summer” component, and did my fair share of service. I’ve also learned a lot about myself and the world around me:
I’ve learned that diversity is a fancy word whose meaning is as simple as a bunch of children playing together. I’ve learned that living just twenty-five miles from my house are a group of really cool kids who have already had life experiences far exceeding my own. I know a little bit more about when jokes and ethnic slurs are no longer funny, and can see more clearly when people are making unfounded generalizations about unknown “others” who are “different.” I’ve learned that it’s safe for a white girl to walk alone through a housing project in the daytime.
Through the SSPI, I’ve learned more about the call to service, or what Himes describes as the need to “give oneself away as completely, fully and richly” (52). I’ve also come to recognize some parts of me that resist the demand to “take away suffering [by] entering it “ (Nouwen 153) and instead wants to maintain my aloofness. I’ve experienced times where it felt like I wasn’t accomplishing anything, and moments where I knew I was demonstrating agape love to the children.
While playing with the kids, I rediscovered the joys of eating ice cream cones, finger-painting, and having a cold cup of water poured down your back on a hot day. I heard stories about “wusps” (wasps), Spiderman, and memorable childhood injuries. I learned that I can control a group of eight young children while crossing the street or touring the zoo, and be patient with them long enough to deserve hugs on the last day of camp. I created a budget for the first time, and honed my Spanish language skills.
I’ve learned that with greater responsibilities, the consequences of your mistakes grow, like when a child’s father punished him for going in the deep end of the pool when I had been the one not watching him or telling him where to stay. I’ve also experienced the fulfillment that comes when careful planning pays off.
Finally, I’ve learned that because of who I am, the faith that I profess, and the society I live in, my work should not and cannot end here.

You know you haven't posted for awhile...

2005-08-14T14:25:00.000-05:00

...when you have to try like six combinations of your favorite screen names and passwords to finally be able to log in! :)
Anyway, both Emily and Holly have already commented on my brilliant masterpiece, "500 Times," a parody of "500 Miles" during which the listener discovers that St. Monica prayed for her son, St. Augustine, 500 times. (And then she prayed 500 more.) Maybe it's a calling...I can write Catholic parodies of those annoying songs that get stuck in your head! For example, you all remember the Barney song about cleaning up, right? "Clean up, clean up/sins committed everywhere!/Clean up, clean up/confess, repent, and say your prayers"
My apologies to anyone who now goes around with that song stuck in your head.

(Emily has the lyrics to 500 Times posted if you're interested; one of the advantages of not posting often is other people do your legwork!)

Free write

2005-08-07T00:17:00.000-05:00

Well I'm really tired but not sleepy so I'm just writing off the top of my head till i fill the screen...did you know that buying a new battery for a laptop is freaking expensive? Geez maybe I can live with the short battery life for awhile after school starts. Ahh school is starting in like two weeks and it kind of scares me, I don' t think I changed a whole lot at school but that somehow I was a squisher version of me, like a sponge that's farther away from the water source. I've just been trying to soak up as much as i can while i'm still home. I mean at college, i didn't change that much, i was still a sponge but smaller i thinkn...yeah this analogy isn't going much further. By squishier, i meant more squished, not more squishy, i'm moving on now. Ow my legs are sore, i've gone running, swimming, and biking today, i feel like a triathlete. but my room is still messy and i didn't practice violin today, how could i have done nothing before noon today? you could play twister on the circles on my rug, if you were really skinny. I need to buy a blanket before school starts. Oh I love this song "Faith without works, is like a song that you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine." Kind of a random song, theologically speaking, to be on KTIS. HA! The commentator just explained, "It's by faith through grace that we're actually saved, but the faith has to be useful too." Talk about good timing. Well I've filled up the window and stopped making sense a looooong time ago so i'd better stop. Goodnight!

Week six summer service papers

2005-07-24T23:27:00.000-05:00

Week Six
Restorative Justice – small scale
The small scale of my summer service project has been both a blessing and a drawback. Since I’m so focused on helping the children right at that moment, I don’t get to learn much about their backgrounds or about the larger picture. However, at the same time I can see some of the principles contained in our readings acted out on a smaller scale. I found this to be the case with the topic of restorative justice.
Howard Zehr writes, “If we pursue justice as respect, we will do justice restoratively” (The Little Book of Restorative Justice 36). The main rule for Summer in the City is respect: for people, places, and equipment. Oftentimes, when the children in my group are doing something “wrong,” I’ll simply ask them if their actions are showing respect. Usually, when they’re forced to think about what they’re doing in these terms, they will stop.
Of course, not all discipline problems are settled this easily. Wednesday of camp this week was a difficult day overall. The children had been coming to camp for over three weeks and were starting to get bored with the general format of the day. Everyone seemed restless and a little temperamental. The climax came when two of my boys, Dima and Obssa, got in a fight over a swing. By the time I arrived at the swing set, there had been yelling, pushing, biting, and finally crying. I marched both boys over to Anita, the assistant director.
The first step for any major disciplinary action at Summer in the City is a talk with the assistant director or the director. Anita and Julia try to explain to the offenders why their actions were wrong. Our goal in doing this is the same as several aims of restorative justice: “mak[ing] justice more healing and ideally, more transformative…reduce the likelihood of future offenses…[help] offenders understand how their actions have affected other people” (Zehr 37). For Dima and Obssa, this meant a talk about how friendship and respect means that you must play fairly and take turns. For their actual punishment, they were banned from the swings for the rest of the day. Because they were both “victims” in a sense, the punishment they both received was the same one they would have chosen for each other. As a final step toward healing, we encouraged them to find an activity they could enjoy together.
It seems almost strange to me that Howard Zehr would need to write an explanation of restorative justice when it’s acted out in schoolyards all the time. Maybe it’s just simpler for children, because most of their wrongdoing can be easily undone. Or perhaps it will take many more years of enacting restorative justice on a small scale before it becomes accepted in the adult world.

The End in Sight
We finished our fourth week of camp on Friday, meaning we only have one week left. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been going to camp forever, and the days of pre-SSPI relaxing are just a faint memory. Other times, I can’t believe that we’re this close to the end of camp, and that I’ve only known these children for four weeks.
Each counselor had to complete a written evaluation of each child in their group at the beginning of camp, and now next week we’ll have to complete another one. To be honest, the time together has been so short that I’m not sure I’ve seen any improvement in the children. I guess I’ve seen a few gradual changes – in their relationship with me and with each other – but nothing really life changing.
That’s why reading Henri Nouwen’s story about John and Mr. Harrison was strangely comforting to me. John was trying to do things “by the book,” by being intellectually present to Mr. Harrison in conversation, in order to lead Mr. Harrison to a deeper faith. However, this approach failed. I am pretty certain it wouldn’t work at Summer in the City also – just the thought of trying to have a deep conversation while surrounded by the madness of the playground is amusing. But thankfully, Nouwen doesn’t dwell on John’s failure. Instead, he presents a better solution: “Let us not diminish the power of waiting by saying that a lifesaving relationship cannot develop in an hour,” he writes. “One eye movement or one handshake can replace years of friendship when a person is in agony. Not only does love last forever but it needs only a second to come about” (85).
The kids are already excited about the end of summer school and camp, but I’m wondering how much more I can do in just a week. In looking back over the previous month, however, the most memorable times to me were also very short. For example, Estefany slept in my lap for only about 10 minutes. I had a 5-minute conversation with a tearful Vlada thinking of things we both liked about her. A few minutes on the playground alone with my autistic boy, Dima, has led to him being more open and trusting with me. There are only 20 hours left in camp, but using Nouwen’s logic, that means there are thousands of seconds left to love.

Christian Comedy

2005-07-24T23:14:00.000-05:00

My cousin showed me a video last night of a Christian youth conference she went to, which featured a very funny comedian/musician, who I will link to as soon as I remember his name (or I get it from her). Anyway, he had some great parodies of Christian worship music. His monologue was about the commercialization of Christianity, and wondering how long it would be until our church services were "sponsored" by one corperation or another. For example:

Krispy Kremes, Krispy Kremes, are what I long for/ Krispy Kremes are what I need/ Krispy Kremes, Krispy Kremes, are what I want to eat/ (Ref:) So take some dough/ and form it/ Take some glaze/ and warm it/ Take a bite/ transform it/ Eat more, eat more, eat more.
My Dodge is an awesome Dodge/ it's great, it's a really great truck
Ford I lift your name on high
Better is Hundai then your Ford/ Better is Hundai then your Dodge/ Better is Hundai then your Porshe/ and a thousand others
(To the tune of "I can only imagine") I can only eat margerine

He had a couple of non-Christian ones too. Unfortunately, I can't remember all of those, but a few lines stood out.

To Green Day's "I hope you had the time of your life," the song went something like this:

'The ring I just bought you I guess it was a fake'/ 'I'm goin' fishin' with the boys down at the lake/ 'You cannot come but it's during your birthday'/ 'I didn't ask cause I knew it'd be ok'/ If you're a man who wants to live/ a long and happy life/ these are the things you don't say to your wife.

And finally, to John Lennon's "Imagine all the people" it was:

Imagine all the parents/burning down Chuck E. Cheese...(woo ooh) You may think I'm pycho/ But I'm not the only one...

I'm just dreading the next time we sing "Take my life" at church, because my brother and I have been singing these songs all weekend, and I'm not sure I could keep a straight face. Wouldn't that be an awesome practical joke at like youth group tho? I can just see the confused faces...

SSP papers Week Five

2005-07-16T23:56:00.000-05:00

Catholic Social Justice

One of the reasons why I enjoy being Catholic is that the principles of Catholicism dovetail so well with “natural law,” the code of morality that is ingrained in each person. Therefore, although Summer in the City wasn’t designed to incorporate Catholic social teachings, several parts of our program fit under the categories described by the Center for Social Concerns in their “Introduction to the Principles of Catholic Social Thought.” Two values that I see especially highlighted in Summer in the City are the preferential option for the poor, and subsitiarity.
As a program focused on serving recent immigrants living in a housing project, Summer in the City by definition gives a preferential option for the poor. We “make a choice to lift up the poor and disadvantaged in very real and concrete ways” (Center for Social Concerns, 61) by allowing the most recent immigrants to attend the camp for free, and giving full or partial scholarships to families who feel they can’t afford the $55 fee. However, we’ve also had to defend this principle to maintain the purpose of the camp. Last year, a volunteer at the Family Center wanted to register her children for the program. Although they were a middle-class family, the mother felt the multi-cultural experience would be good for her children – and she was also attracted by the low cost for what is essentially child care. Last year, she was allowed to participate, but this year she called telling us several of her friends wanted to register their children also. Julia, the coordinator of Summer in the City, was put into a difficult position because technically, nothing in our grants or program description says that only recent immigrants can participate in camp. However, to let suburban families take over the program would be contrary to what we hope to achieve with the camp. We finally decided that we could put those families on a waiting list and they could attend if there were spaces available after all the Sibley Manor residents signed up. They ended up never calling us back.
Camp also fits nicely with the principle of subsitiarity. One of the best parts, I think, of the Summer in the City program are the roles we give to the “counselors-in-training,” or CITs for short. The CITs are all teenagers from the community who help out with camp everyday for all five weeks in exchange for a $100 gift certificate for Target. The CITs are sometimes older siblings of the participants in the camp, or their neighbors, babysitters, and friends. They also are a real help at camp – making snack, taking kids to the bathroom, and helping maintain order. It’s also beneficial to them because they get experience in a job-like situation. I know my own CIT, Getinet, has responded really well to the responsibility we’ve given him. Involving the CITs creates a circle of reciprocity, where the local community benefits from the CITs, and the CITs benefit from the local community.

Juxtaposition
It was about 8:56 in the morning, but the day already promised to be sweltering, and I had the windows of my car rolled all the way down as I took the exit off the freeway to the Family Center. I glanced over my shoulder checking for cars, then scanned the intersection ahead of me – and accidentally made eye contact with a homeless person standing on the corner. She had dusty brown hair tucked back under a baseball cap, and her cardboard sign said “Homeless – single mother – anything will help.” I glanced away quickly and drove off, feeling uncomfortable. The farther I drove, the more I felt like a hypocrite. Here I was, driving to my service project where I was going to help the disadvantaged, and yet I don’t help the needy person standing 20 feet away from me. Maybe she was the mother of one of the kids at camp, or more likely, maybe one of the campers had experienced a similar type of homelessness. Maybe the reasons she needed help were as complicated as those of the Summer in the City children. I pulled into the parking lot feeling very ashamed of myself.
A few days later, the entirety of Summer in the City took a trip out to Camp Butwin, a traditional style camp for children from the St. Paul Jewish Community Center. Our kids were all exhausted by the end of the day, and as the bus bounced and jounced along the dusty road away from Camp Butwin, not a few heads were nodding also. On the crowded bus, I sat with a little girl named Estafany, and she ended up sitting on my lap. Estefany is a shy but trusting, and she felt feather-light on my lap. As the trip wore on, she leaned farther back, until she was snuggled in my arms, asleep. We don’t know much about the lives of any of the campers, but we can guess that Estefany doesn’t have it easy. She’s too skinny for her age, and just a little bit of attention makes her grin from ear-to-ear. As I held her, my thoughts drifted back to the woman standing on the street corner. There, I had failed to act; but I felt like here and now, on this hot bus ride through the suburbs of St. Paul, I was doing something. Perhaps I could even give it an academic term and say that at that point I was “doing theology.”
In “Doing Local Theology,” Clemens Sedmak writes, “This is what making an option [for the poor] is about: seeing the faces and voices behind the facts and figures” (101). Sometimes this is a painful process, such as when I saw the homeless woman; but it can also be a very rewarding experience, like I had with Estefany. I think the difference is being able to respond. Seeing the humanity behind statistics doesn’t do anyone any good unless your behavior changes when you recognize their humanity. Sedmak describes this change as moving from mere “theological eyes” to using “social glasses” (101).
The next time I saw a homeless person on that street corner, I gave him some money and an apple. A small gift, I know, but it represented something larger. My vision had changed.

Summer Service Week Four

2005-07-16T23:54:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so they're a...week...late...
Oh well.

Social Analysis

Inspired by this week’s reading by Peter Henriot and Joe Holland, “Social Analysis: Linking Faith and Justice,” I thought I should try a little social analysis myself. My exploration began while running errands this week for camp. Anita and I had to go get food for a speaker who was coming in to teach the kids about healthy snacks. We went to the nearest store, a place called SuperValu, which turned out to be a smallish grocery store. We had a limited amount of petty cash with us, so we tried to find the cheapest food available. But since the SuperValu was so small, we had a hard time finding good deals. I already knew that most of the children attending camp were eligible for free lunches, and that residents of Sibley Manor can get bread from the Family Center or non-perishable goods from a local food shelf. But shopping for myself at SuperValu made me wonder just how hard it was to buy food on a limited budget.
Henriot and Holland recommend we begin by looking at the history of a problem. It appears that the area around Sibley Manor hasn’t changed much in the past decade. All of the stores seem a little old and run down. Apparently, Sibley Manor has been a typical place of residence for refugees and immigrants; ethnic groups tend to arrive in waves before moving upward to better things, just in time for the next wave. These factors imply that there hasn’t been much initiative for new businesses to build in the area and compete for customers.
The next stage of social analysis is examining the structures that impact the problem. This phase involves “identify[ing] key operative structures in a given situation” (24) according to Henriot and Holland. America’s capitalistic system of economy discourages more businesses from locating in the area. The SuperValu was obviously aware of its demographic of shoppers, as demonstrated by the signs posted in several languages, so I’m sure other grocery stores would quickly recognize this also. The immigrants, on a limited budget, would not be a target market for most stores. Therefore, the SuperValu remains as the only local option, and so they can charge higher prices. Other grocery stores, to the best of my knowledge, are about a 15 minute bus ride away – just long enough and expensive enough to be a hassle. Cultural structures may come into play also in discouraging other stores to locate in the neighborhood, because their workforce would be primarily composed of recent immigrants who may or may not completely understand the responsibilities that are assumed to be essential for any job in America.
The third stage of analysis looks at societal divisions – the “intricate dimensions of reality” (27). This question seems to have a clear-cut answer. The owners of SuperValu benefit from charging higher prices, while the residents of Sibley Manor (mainly poor minorities) suffer from poorer selection and greater expenses. However, the employees of SuperValu may benefit from working at a successful grocery store, and the owners appear willing to tolerate the instability of the neighborhood, meaning that the “intricate dimensions of reality” are just that – intricate and complex.
Finally, we must consider the locality of the question. While this is a local problem, it is probably repeated around the country. Neighborhoods populated with poorer minorities tend to have less economic development and thus end up paying more for their goods. The solution is probably local also – perhaps city governments could encourage development through tax breaks or zoning requirements, or offer more transportation services.

Family
While Anita, Julia, and I have been working in a back room of the Family Center, we’re able to overhear some of the conversations between Family Center employees and their clients. One man came in a few weeks ago to try to get a visa for his wife to come to the US from Ethiopia. He was going to have some difficulty, because in his enthusiasm to be able to see her again, he had turned in the paperwork one day before he was allowed to, and now he had to start all over again. He was anxious to see her, he said, because it had been almost a year – and she was the mother of his 18 children! Another family came in recently, a mother and a few children. Their father, they explained, was just plain lost, somewhere amidst the fighting in Ethiopia. They had no idea how to find him, and I’m not sure he even knew they were in the United States.
Yet for all these difficulties, the children in the camp seem to have a very strong concept of family. Many of them do have their entire family intact, and the connections with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents are very strong. One little girl told me that her family purposefully didn’t inform her mom about an operation that her cousin needed, because they knew that it would make her very upset. “She would cry a lot,” Elizabeth explained, a response that I think would seem unusual to a typical American soccer mom, especially because the cousin in question lived far away in California. Paul Ballard and Pam Couture, in their book Globalization and the Family: A Practical Theological Analysis, list multiple statistics outlining the disruption of the traditional American family, including “50 percent of all new marriages ending in legal separation…(and) nearly 50 percent of all children will spend some time under age 18 in a single parent home” (50). Americans, with such economic wealth and stability, have a one in two chance of keeping their family together. At the same time, these recent immigrants are able to value their family members in spite of difficult circumstances and lengthy separation. It makes me wonder – who is really poorer?

I took another dumb quiz

2005-07-16T23:50:00.001-05:00

but this one gave me a nice answer :)

You Are Incredibly Logical

(You got 88% of the questions right)

Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic
You think rationally, clearly, and quickly.
A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

How'>http://www.blogthings.com/howlogicalareyouquiz/">How Logical Are You?

randomness

2005-07-12T23:09:00.000-05:00

Dairy Queen has just made a commercial connecting their new cream pie blizzards with bees, talking bees who are evidentally interested in blizzards, ensuring that I personally will never, ever, be able to eat said blizzards again.
Notre Dame's alumni magazine has published a little blurb about the Eucharistic Procession I attended during April. Just a caption and a picture, but nice to see anyway!

Week three summer service papers

2005-07-05T23:41:00.000-05:00

Oops, I never actually posted these either. Anyone who read all six papers in a row gets a prize!

Week Three

Camp started!

The Summer in the City camp started on Monday, and I’ve now gone through a whole week. It’s gone pretty well, although it’s also been quite chaotic at times. The afternoons pass in a dizzying blur of children running and playing, lining up, moving on to the next activity, moving, moving, moving – and suddenly it’s time for snack and the bus ride home. Although it’s been exciting, it hasn’t allowed much time for reflection, and I’m just starting to realize how much I’ve learned in this week alone.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a little girl named Nardos who knew everyone’s name within a few months. Now I feel like I know over half the camp in just a few days! My group of kindergarteners is really cute. Sarikha is the smallest kid in the camp, and she really looks up to me. She’s best friends with an African girl named Bemnett. Between Saryka, Bemnett, and another girl named Hunter, I will always know if 1) someone is breaking the rules, or 2) someone needs a push on the swings. Estefany is my last girl. She’s really quiet, and I think she really needs the camp. I feel bad because I think she’s gotten missed in the lunch in all the chaos of kids arriving, and she really should be eating with them. Two of my favorite little boys are Dimitry and Ernesto. Dimitry (Dima for short) always arrives at camp with his overprotective Russian grandmother. He spends the afternoon almost entirely in his own little world – being Spiderman, killing monsters, or working intently on a Lego building. Ernesto will be a heartbreaker when he grows up, because right now he has big chocolate brown eyes and a gap-toothed smile that would melt any female’s heart. Anthony, Obssa, and Esteban are my active boys – difficult to keep track of, but really enthusiastic about what the group is doing.
Besides “my kids,” there’s lots of others I have a special bond with. Meron and Raie have claimed me as the only one who can help them onto the bar for doing flips. Vlada always greets me so excitedly at the beginning of the day, and Oliver is responsible for giving me hugs at the end of the day. Leslie, Giselle, and Jessica are shy Hispanic girls who will give you beautiful smiles once they warm up to you. Then there’s Kidoos, Leah, Edith, Denis, Shoekri, Julie, Tsegreyda…the list goes on. My assistant, Getinet, has been wonderful. He’s about 12 years old we think, although he had to forge a different date on his birth certificate in order to get out of Ethiopia as his sister’s “son.” I’m told that as a participant in camp, he was kind of a sparkplug; but I can really see how being in a position with more responsibility has helped him mature.
Clemens Sedmak writes in Doing Local Theology that “we do theology because of wounded people who have touched us.” I know that most of the children I’m working with are wounded in some sense or another. Vlada’s shoes broke yesterday, and she didn’t have another pair. Some of the kids are so skinny I’m pretty sure I could count their ribs, and others are obviously starved for affection. There have been times where they have touched me; but to be honest, I’ve been told so many times that service projects help the one supposedly “giving” as much as the receivers that that part wasn’t really unexpected. However, I am surprised by how much fun I’ve been having. Today we had water day, and everyone just ran around throwing water at each other. It was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time, and I’m looking forward to seeing them all again next week.

Love
One of the challenging things about doing service, I think, is that you’re constantly busy. This is especially true if your method of doing service involves 50 elementary age children! During the first week of camp, I wanted to try especially hard to establish discipline. I knew that if the children lost respect for me, I wouldn’t be able to control them, and in the long run, camp wouldn’t be as much fun for everyone. But sometimes I feel like my role is more like a sheep-herder’s than a counselor’s.
For example, on Friday a few of my boys were acting up a little on our field trip. They weren’t being bad, but they kept wandering away from the group. I pulled them aside and explained to them that they needed to stay with the group, but on our way back into the main building, one of the same boys ran ahead. This time, I told him quite firmly he had to stay with the group, and sent him to the back of the line to wait until everyone else had entered.
These seem like little corrections barely worth noting when I write them down, but the problem is that when I think over the day, I can’t remember saying anything nice in particular to that little boy. I never yelled at him or spoke out of anger, but I can’t remember an instance where I acted towards him out of love either.
This then, will be my resolution for next week of camp. I’m going to try to concentrate on doing just one act of love, in word or deed, for each child everyday. I can’t do anything huge, and I’ll have to keep my control of the group and not just be nice. Maybe the children won’t even realize that I responded faster to their requests for “underdogs,” or complimented an art project that looks just like everyone else’s, or listened intently to a story that doesn’t seem to have a point. They might not see a change, but I think it will matter to me. As Michael Himes writes, “We cannot experience God unless we love our brothers and sisters, and we cannot love our brothers and sisters without experiencing God” (55). He also writes that it will not be easy to do this – we as humans must serve God in “the tangle of our minds” (60). My personal “tangle” at camp is learning how to balance being “mean” and being loving (although I realize they’re not necessarily exclusive). However, I think this week my call is to more actively and decisively love the children I’m working with.

Edited to change the spellings of some of the names so they're not so easily googled.

Book Meme

2005-07-04T15:05:00.000-05:00

Emily has just tagged me, so I guess I "have" to do this now:

1.Total Number of Books I Own
Oh, gosh. Two bookshelves and a bunch on my headboard = 150?
2. The Last Book I bought
I've generally been more of a library person, so I don't buy books all that much. My mom bought Mark Shea's book "This is My Body: An Evengelical Discovers the Real Presence." Great read, by the way. Clear, concise, and interesting.
3.The Last Book I Read
Sunday Clothes by Thom Lemmons. I've never heard of him before, but this was an interesting piece of Christian fiction that wasn't overly preachy or simple.
4. Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me
The Anne of Green Gables series. To fully understand me, you have to read them. (Falling in the same category are the Little House books and the Betsy-Tacy-Tib books. At some point in my life, I wanted to be any one of those girls.)
The Four Feathers. The book is waaay better then the movie, and it prominantly features a violin.
Anything by Catherine DuHueck Doherty.
Anything by Jane Austen.
I'll Love You Forever, I'll Like You For Always. A really touching little kid's book. Mrs. Dunphy's Dog comes to mind here too, cause it was my dad's favorite and he always did the voices. :)
5. Tag five people, and have them do this on their blog.
Um, since Emily, Holly, and Katie have all does this, that leaves Mr. Meuer and...Mike?

Week two summer service papers

2005-06-27T23:22:00.000-05:00

Giving away cookies
One thing we’re never lacking at the Family Center is food. Although there’s no food shelf connected to the shelter (the nearest one is about a block away), local grocery stores often give us day-old bread, pastries, and cakes. The baked goods are usually just set out on the table and then anyone who comes by can take some.
Today, however, the donated food worked out especially well for us. We had the counselor-in-training orientation session this afternoon, and two boxes of chocolate cookies were among the assortment of breads. We put them away in our back room, saving them to offer to the teenagers.
About an hour before the orientation, Anita and I were alone in the family center, except for a receptionist. An elderly Russian gentleman came wandering back into our area, not an unusual occurrence. His eyes gleamed when he saw the cookies, and he asked if he could have a box. “I just want something sweet,” he told us in broken English. I looked through the rest of the donations, but to no avail. Anita and I looked at each other, unsure of what to do; but the man looked like he really wanted them, and we figured we would have enough of them anyway, so we gave him a box.
This whole exchange lasted about five minutes, and we didn’t really have time to ponder what we were doing, but in retrospect I wonder how much true compassion we were showing the man. In one sense, we definitely failed. In their book “Compassion,” Nouwen, McNeill, and Morrison write about some characteristics of false, selfish, compassion. The authors describe the attitude many people have of “helping the less fortunate,” where it is assumed that “we have made it and have gotten it together while they simply have not been able to keep up with us and need to be helped…since we are Christians we have to lift them up and give them a share in our good fortune” (30-31). We were giving to this man out of our excess, and while we were trying to be elitist, the definition of the “haves” and the “have-nots” was pretty clear. I know personally part of my motivation was that I would feel guilty keeping the cookies.
At the same time, I don’t quite agree with what Nouwen, McNeill, and Morrison about the unnaturalness of compassion. They write that “compassion is neither our central concern nor our primary stance in life” (6). To me, however, sharing our cookies seemed like the proper human response. We had more then we needed; he had less; the solution appeared to be clear to both of us. To just hoard what we had would have felt wrong.
I think the authors of “Compassion” set a very high standard for true compassion, and therefore they become overly pessimistic about its practice. Granted, divine compassion would require the complete sacrifice of self that they demand. However, to grow in any virtue, we must strive for the divine through mundane daily choices. We can’t expect to leap from never practicing compassion to doing so perfectly. In this particular instance, I’m sure I could have done better; but I think to have done nothing at all would have been worse.

No Proselytizing Allowed
One of my favorite experiences so far was meeting a little girl named Diana. She came in with her mother, but quickly made friends with the rest of us while her mother talked with the social worker. I showed her our toys while she jabbered away in Spanish. She told us that she was two (“no, three, no, four”), about her grandmother in heaven, and that of course she spoke English – the English word for “gato” (cat) is “bee-dee” according to Diana! She asked Anita and I why we weren’t in school and where we worked. Then she became intrigued by the medals I always wear around my neck: one of St. Therese, and one from Notre Dame. I told her what each one represented, and then paused. I wanted to talk to her more about church, but I was worried. I didn’t want to cross the line into “evangelization.”
When I began my Summer Service Project, I knew that the camp I was working at was purely secular. Neighborhood House, the sponsor of the camp, is a non-profit charitable organization which was originally founded by Jewish benefactors and now receives government funding. Their volunteer booklet clearly states that any attempt at evangelization is inappropriate.
This creates an interesting set of boundaries for me to work within, and it does present somewhat of a challenge. After two weeks of working at the site, I think I can identify two reasons why this aspect of the project is a struggle for me. One is that my faith and my religion is intricately connected to who I am and why I’m doing this project. It’s hard for me to keep quiet about my faith, especially around young children when talking about God seems so easy, and so important. Yet this part of me I think can learn to co-exist with the rules of my workplace. I can still wear my medals and talk about church if the kids bring it up. I’ll still pray before meals, and probably silently to myself whenever something goes wrong!
However, I’m coming to recognize that part of why working in a secular environment is hard for me is because evangelization is a very satisfying thing. It’s kind of a trump card for personal achievement; days may come where I feel I didn’t accomplish much but at least I told someone about God – making my day worthwhile! But this approach doesn’t really fit into the definition of true agape love. Michael Himes writes in “Doing Truth in Love” that agape means “love which is purely other-directed…love which does not want anything back” (10). Seeking a sense of religious satisfaction is just as much of a selfish thing as any other type of reward, and if I can learn to serve without it, I will be that much closer to loving with agape love.
These “boundaries” will, I think, be helpful to me for another reason also. They will, I hope, help me realize the value of God’s physical creation. As Michael Himes wrote, “If God does not love you, you’re not damned. You simply aren’t” (15). All of the kids I’ll be working with are. I know, of course, that God loves everyone, but Himes’ chapter covers more than that. Existence itself is a sign of God’s love, and anything that adds to that existence can be a religious experience in and of itself. I’d like to close with another quote that also inspires me to view any kind of work, from cutting out name tags to calling donors, as a participation in the life of God:
In practice I [had] regarded prayer as somehow more spiritual then sitting on a committee, preaching as more anointed then plumbing. Only the revelation of Christ’s Humanity infused vigor into my bloodless theoretical doctrine. Through Him, my eyes were opened to the teaching that the Incarnation and our participation in it restores Creation. (Mark Shea, This Is My Body, 30)

SSP papers

2005-06-19T17:10:00.000-05:00

I was noticing that the good folks over at the Shrine of the Holy Whapping occasionally post their papers from school that might be of general interest (or not so general, lol). So, I figured that as long as my Summer Service Project (SSP) requires two short papers a week, I might as well post them. For those not in the know: ND has a program called the SSP where you do 8 weeks of service projects, some reading, and papers, in exchange for some scholarship money and theo credits. I'm working at a day camp for immigrant children.

Week One

First Impressions

It was 3:30 pm on Monday, my first day at the Summer Service project site. I had just gotten off the phone with a Karen, an Hispanic 14-year-old, had already left a message for Valentin, the Russian teenager, and was waiting for a call back from Edwin, who had come to the US from Kenya a year ago. Behind me, a social worker was carrying on a conversation in a language I couldn’t even begin to guess. Others in the family center were translating complicated government forms, answering medical questions, or assisting the families in other ways. That’s when I realized: helping others takes brains!
Herbert Anderson writes, “Understanding cultural diversity and honoring differences among religious or ethnic traditions is an intellectual exercise” (Anderson 17). While he goes on to explain that coming to such an understanding must be more then merely an intellectual or pastoral pursuit, my first day at the Summer Service site helped me realize just how important these intellectual strengths can be.
For one thing, a knowledge of languages is nearly indispensable for the social workers in the family center. I believe almost the entire staff is at least bilingual, speaking fluent Spanish, Russian, or a number of Eastern African languages in addition to English. They also must be aware of the various backgrounds of the people they work with, and how their cultural identity impacts how they will deal with problems and government requests. Many of the social workers were immigrants themselves, and have successfully transitioned into life in the United States. Even the counselors that were hired for the summer camp that I’ll be working with have impressive backgrounds. One was a member of the Peace Corps, another had done several years of social work, others had coached sports teams or had degrees in psychology or sociology.
Looking at the life experience and knowledge of the people I’ll be working with suddenly makes me feel a lot less prepared. Although I’m sure it will all work out fine, I think I’ll be doing a lot more observing and listening then I had planned on, and rely a lot less on the skills and knowledge I had coming into the summer. I’m surrounded by so much wisdom that I’m quite sure I’ll end up learning more through this experience then I ever could in a classroom!

Local Theology

11-year-old Nardos is from Ethiopia. She is a tiny little girl with huge brown eyes and dark hair braided into cornrows. She came into the Family Center having heard about our summer camp, and although she’s too old to participate in the camp, she can be one of the counselors-in-training. She listened very carefully to me as I explained what her responsibilities would be, and another family center worker who also immigrated from Ethiopia several years ago made sure she understood.
Nardos and her family only came to the US a few months ago. She’s picked up enough of the language to be able to communicate, and she has been going to school. What impressed me the most, however, was how much she already felt connected to her new world of Minnesota in general, and the people and places around the Sibley Manor housing complex in particular. When we showed her the pictures from last year’s Summer in the City, hoping that the pictorial explanations would help her understand better, her face lit up. “I know her!” she pointed. “And her! And him!”
I’m amazed that this little girl, who has gone through so much upheaval in the past few months (and probably even longer than that) is so deeply rooted in the community already. In fact, in the story above, I was the one who inserted pronouns; she knew all the children by name. It took me until our second meeting to even remember her name, and I’m still not sure I’m pronouncing her sister’s name correctly.
In this aspect of my SSP, then, I’ll be following the example of an 11-year-old and trying to become as immersed in the local community as possible. John McAllister writes in Doing Local Theology that theology requires “learning how to listen, learning how to see, learning how to discover, learning how to speak. Waking up means seeing differences between times and places, cultures and peoples.” He goes on to explain, “Doing theology in this sense means doing theology where you are – in other words, doing local theology.”
I think the biggest difficulty with many mission trips and service projects is that they don’t last long enough for the volunteers to truly begin to relate to the people around them. Around Sibley Manor, it seems that everyone knows everyone else’s business – crossing all sorts of racial and cultural barriers. After only a few months, Nardos was deeply connected to this community. If I can do half as well as she did in just two months, I hope that the knowledge I gain can help both me and the children I work with.

What the heck

2005-06-16T23:16:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm multi-tasking by surfing the net while simultaneously watching TV. (These are the kind of nights that really screw up your average number of hours spent in front of screens.) Anyway, an ad just came on for McDonald's latest service: DVD rentals. Yes, you can now get your food for the night and a movie at that hamburger joint that pretty much sums up everything that's both right and wrong with America. As far as I could tell from the commerical, there was a limited selection of movies the "Red Box" could spit out, but I wasn't sure if they were all originally there or if it was like burning them on the DVD while you waited? I dunno, but it was only $1 for the night. So...now taking bets: How long until video rental stores are obsolete?

The alphabet game

2005-06-07T19:19:00.000-05:00

A is for Age - 18
B is for Booze - um, none. Eventually wine I guess.
C is for Career - Currently a student, in the future, who knows?
D is for Dad’s name - Brad
E is for Essential items to bring to a party - Food. Especially if you're crashing it.
F is for Favorite song at the moment - I'm just loving being able to listen to my KS95 since I've been home and hear actual top 40s variety.
G is for Goof off thing to do - read, dance, talk ;)
H is for Hometown - Ham Lake, MN
I is for Instrument you play - Violin
J is for Jam or Jelly you like - Strawberry
K is for Kids - Don't have any; i live with four
Living arrangement - Summers at home, school year in Breen-Phillips at Notre Dame
M is for Mom’s name - Deb
N is for Names of best friends - Oh, don't make me do this!
O is for overnight hospital stays - When I was really little, I had unexplained seizures, and ended up in the hospital for a few days I think.
P is for Phobias - Bees, the dark, and stalkers.
Q is for Quote you like - Check the top of the page, lol.
R is for Relationship that lasted longest - Approximately a year and a half I guess, depending on when you consider it to have started, but currently almost three months.
S is for Siblings - Jacob, Bekah, Rebekah, Monica
T is for Texas, Ever been? - Why would I?
U is for Unique trait - My strange attraction to foods that are both salty and sweet. If I ever become pregnant, I will have horrible cravings.
V if for Vegetable you love - Potatoes (does that count?)
W is for Worst trait - bluntness, a tendancy toward self-pity
X is for X-Rays you’ve had - Only at the dentist.
Y is for Yummy food you make - Wild rice soup, ice cream cake.
Z is for Zodiac sign - Libra I think?

Kudos

2005-06-05T21:49:00.000-05:00

Congrats to my mom and Mrs. K (identifying her by her initial is only partially for internet security, but mostly because we end up calling her that since she's blessed with a long Polish last name, lol) who successfully organized the "7th annual denim skirt invitational" (TM emily), AKA the MN Catholic Home Education Conference. Everything went off beautifully, and we had over 1100 attendees and more than 70 vendors, as well as approximately 700 pregnant ladies. ;)Honestly, the average number of children for all the attendees must be up around 6 or 7. At least nobody was going into labor during the conference this year.
Anyway, my mom and Mrs. K are severely overworked and underappreciated for all they do (not to mention underpaid!). So...on behalf 0f homeschoolers all over the place, thanks! I'm sure the blessings will be spewing forth soon, eh Mom? ;)

Creative writing exercise ;)

2005-05-30T13:54:00.000-05:00

Riotous colors spin in a circle, the pinks and purples blending in a girlish whirlwind. The wind catches Angelica's hair, and light blond strands stream backwards from her face as she feverishly pedals. My little baby sister - she of the big blue eyes and dimples, who cried whenever someone tried to put her down, who waved at every passing car and only knew that food was "hot" - is racing me, daring me to keep up.
My feet rythmically pound the pavement as I jog besides her. "C'mon, Jessica!" she says. Yesterday she told Mom that mohawks weren't "fashion." She signs her name in tipsy capitals all by herself, dotting the "i" with a little circle: A-N-G-E-L-i-C-A.
My breath comes in short gasps now. Despite my best efforts, she's pulling away. After all, she has the laws of physics and nature on her side; there's nothing I can do to slow down her progress, even for a moment.
Last night she refused to eat the one remaining piece of cake, so that she could share some with my brother. Monday she asked Mom why the neighbor boy can't speak clearly, and why the girl on TV was sad.
"Freeze!" she orders me, and I want to tell her that no, she should be the one freezing in place, but she's already pedaling away, balencing precariously on her training wheels, gravel spitting out from behind her like babyish habits to be left in the dust.
She pulls into our driveway first, white wheels crossing the black tar. "I winned!" she calls, happy until she sees my melodramatically crestfallen expression. "It's ok," she adds. "You winned too!"

Back home

2005-05-15T23:18:00.000-05:00

Wow, two weeks without posting. Oops. Well finals are over and done with (as of May 7) and I came out fine, or at least that's what my psychiatrist tells me, I've already repressed those memories. No, actually, it wasn't all that bad. Packing up and moving out at the end of finals week was an unexpectedly crazy adventure, funny how everything fit so nicely into those boxes at the beginning of the year. :) Muchas gracias to my parents for coming to help me leave - I really appreciated it!
It was hard to leave school but it's great to be back at home too. I'm just grateful for all the wonderful people God has put in my life, because it means I'm happy at either place (of course, it also means I'm always missing somebody). And one of these days I'm going to learn to enjoy the whole process of transition and changes. Sure...
I'm subbing a little bit at the library, which has been nice because making money this summer would be good. I also have that internship through ND, (I think I've talked about it here before) which will probably be full-time working at a day camp in the cities during June and July. It's funny, this is the first summer I can remember that I really want to work a lot - not because I don't enjoy just being around home, but just for the satisfaction of it (and of course the money lol!). That's almost a little sad if I'm getting that "mature" that working a lot can be balanced within my idea of a perfect summer. Although, I still will have to save time for reading books in the backyard in the sunshine!

P-p-p-procrastination!

2005-04-30T12:59:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, but I guess I'll make up for it now with a whole bunch of things. I'm putting them in separate posts so it'll be easier to read.
In other news, it's study days here at ND, and we're all slacki--er, studying for our finals. I don't have any until Wednesday, which isn't helping my motivation. Oh well, the last two days have been really nice, just hanging out and relaxing, recharging for the chaos of finals week and moving out. Next year I think I want to stay for senior week here, because a) it'd be a week at ND without homework, which sounds really cool, and b) it's not so much fun packing and studying simultaneously.
This week shouldn't be too awful tho. I have two tests on Wednesday (music theory and physics), math on Thursday, and Spanish oral on Friday. I will be done with my freshman year at approximately 10 am on Friday, May 6, and I'll leave to come home midmorning on Saturday, probably getting in fairly late.

Accents

2005-04-30T12:49:00.000-05:00

This one goes out mainly to all my ND friends who have accused me of having a midwestern accent:

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

10% Upper Midwestern

10% Yankee

5% Dixie

5% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

I have no idea where the 5% Dixie came from...weird. Maybe down in Dixieland they actually pronounce bagel like it's spelled, not like baygul. (Not that i'm bitter, mind you.)

On related tests on that site I discovered that I act like I'm 28 ("You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences."), my Irish name would be Sorcha Dunne, and *horror of horrors* my inner nationality is French. I don't know what I did to deserve that.

Thoughts on coming home

2005-04-30T12:47:00.000-05:00

This message comes to me courtesy of "one of Andrea's friends." This is pretty much what I'd write about the end of the school year, if I was more eloquent and had more time:
A year has passed and now we stand on the brink of returning to a world where we are surrounded by the paradox of everything yet nothing being the same. In a few weeks we will reluctantly give our hugs and, fighting the tears, say goodbye to the people who were once just names on a sheet of paper to return to people that we hugged and fought tears to say goodbye to before we ever left. We will leave our best friends to return to our best friends. We will go back to places we came from and go back to the same things we did last summer and every summer before. We will come into town on that same familiar road, and even thought it has been months, it will seem like only yesterday.
As you walk into your old bedroom, every emotion will pass through you as you reflect on the way your life has changed and the person you have become. You suddenly realize that the things that were most important to you a year ago don't seem to matter so much anymore, and the things you hold highest now, no one at home will completely understand. Who will you call first? Where are you going to work? Who will be at the party Saturday night? What has everyone been up to? Who from school will you keep in touch with? How long before you actually start missing people bargaining in without calling or knocking? Who will get breadsticks with you at three in the morning? How long until you adjust to sleeping in a room by yourself, or how long before you realize your three best friends aren't in the bed next to your room?
Then you realize how much things have changed, you realize the hardest part of college is balancing the two completely different worlds you now live in, trying desperately to hold on to everything all the while trying to figure out what you have to leave behind. In the matter of one day's traveling time, we will leave our world of living next door to our best friends, walking across campus to eat, instant messenger, 8:00 classes, and perpetual procrastination to a world that will seem foreign to us despite the fact that we have lived in it for nineteen years.
But it is different now... We now know the meaning of true friendship. We know whom we have kept in touch with over the past year and whom we hold dearest to our hearts. We've left our high school worlds to deal with the real world. We have had our hearts broken, we've fell in love, we've helped our best friends through the toughest times of their lives, something their even best friends at home couldn't be there for. We've stayed up all night just to be there for a friend. We've partied the night away, doing stupid stuff, but we were always there for each other afterwards. There have been times when we've felt so helpless being hours away from home when we know our families or friends needed us most, and there are times when we know we have made a difference.
A few weeks from now we will leave. A few weeks from now we take down our pictures, and pack up our clothes. No more going next door to do nothing for hours on end. We will leave our friends whose random emails and phone calls will bring us to laughter and tears this summer. We will take our memories and dreams and put them away for now, saving them for our return to this world.
A few weeks from now from now we will arrive. A few weeks from now from now we will unpack our bags and have dinner with our families. We will drive over to our best friend's house and do nothing for hours on end. We will return to the same friends whose random emails and phone calls have brought us laughter and tears over the past year. We will unpack old memories and dreams that have been put away for the past year. A few weeks from now we will dig deep inside to find the strength and conviction to adjust to change and still keep each other close. And somehow, in someway, we will find our place between these two worlds.
In a few weeks.... are you ready?

Cool NY Times article

2005-04-30T12:42:00.000-05:00

Wow, they actually had a good one for once (although maybe if I'm so suprised by that I should subscribe to a different e-mail paper).
I'm not sure if everyone can read it by clicking on the link, so I'll just copy the whole thing here:

The Pope Without a CountryBy MARTIN MOSEBACH Published: April 30, 2005
Frankfurt
PEOPLE in other countries may have noticed that the official reaction of the German Catholic Church to the spectacular election of a German pope was, to put it mildly, restrained. German Catholicism is quite wealthy and very middle class. It enjoys significant state privileges and is afraid of stepping outside the bounds delineated by state and society. German bishops and prominent lay members are forever worried about losing their voice in the democratic consensus, their position within an enlightened liberal society.
It's as if they've forgotten how old the church really is, how many social systems it has outlived, how many epochal ruptures it has withstood, and the fact that it has spent entire centuries not being fully "up to date" - perhaps especially at the time of its founding in an urban, enlightened, multicultural, atomized and individualized society that it slowly infiltrated and transformed.
Pope Benedict XVI may be convinced that democratic institutions have as little right to interfere in the structure of the church as all the many emperors and kings who tried to do as much in past centuries. This stance has made him unpopular among his fellow German clergymen, who are intimidated by contemporary culture, but it also fascinates intellectuals who are far removed from the church, and who aren't swayed by any superficial rhetoric of reconciliation. In Benedict, they see the authentic representative of a religion that they don't know whether to view as still dangerous or possibly as the only remaining counter to a secular society.
As a German, I myself have always been struck by how un-German the pope is. Consider his strikingly peculiar face, his large, child's eyes lurking in their shadowy sockets, and the eager glow that seems to radiate from them even when he is absorbed in contemplation. It's rare to see a face like that in his Bavarian homeland. The great novelist Heimito von Doderer once said that all of Bavaria can be divided into a small group of butchers and a larger group of people who look like butchers. And unlike many of my compatriots, the pope is unflaggingly courteous and appears to grow even gentler in the midst of debate, though he'd never relinquish so much as an inch of ground. His enemies call him cold because he refuses to feign cordiality. And it's true: his manner shows nothing of the effusive Dale Carnegie mold so admired in Germany.
But his German is beautiful, which is particularly noteworthy for a German in a high position, since the language is not often spoken correctly, not even by native speakers. Although he is a philosopher and a theologian, he has developed a style that is crystal clear in its simplicity, but that never simplifies the complicated topics he needs to address. Is this, too, not a virtue befitting a shepherd of souls?
The name Benedict is clearly indicative of the new pontiff's program. Even as a cardinal, the pope struggled against a tendency that saw the Second Vatican Council as some kind of "supercouncil," as if the history of the church began in 1962. "Benedict" plumbs the depths of that history down to the first Christian century, when the Latin and Greek churches were still united. The great Latin liturgy and Gregorian choral chanting have special ties with the Benedictine order. At his installation, the new pope reverted to a wool pallium in the style worn by the pontiffs of the first millennium. He had the Gospel chanted in Latin and Greek, as once was done at every papal Mass. Clearly he sees in the ancient liturgy a sign of unity between East and West.
His strictness in matters of doctrine is in part an answer to a perceived loss of clarity in both dogma and liturgy following the Second Vatican Council. But his main goal in restoring the liturgy is reconciliation with the Byzantine church. Exactly how charged this project is may be seen in the words he spoke as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, that in reconciling with Rome, the Orthodox Church should not be expected to accord any greater primacy to the pope than it did before the schism.
Any pontiff who truly wants to build bridges must first stabilize his own embankment. While John Paul II's teachings centered on humanity in its God-given dignity, Pope Benedict might turn back to the nature of Jesus. Western theology has long been influenced by a creeping Arianism - the idea that Jesus was not of the same substance as God. It would be true to character if Pope Benedict were to invest all his zeal in the effort to recast the concept of the divine incarnation in a new language, which would once again render it understandable to modern-day theologians, teachers and intellectuals.
Coming from the lips of a man convinced there is no contradiction between faith and rationality, this precept will sound as if it had never been in doubt.

I really like the sentence in bold. It's a good approach to Vatican II - yes, it was extremely important, but it wasn't the end-all, be-all of Catholicism, and an accusation that something is "contrary to the spirit of Vatican II" is only important if you mean "contrary to the spirit of the entirety of Church teachings."

Habemus papam!

2005-04-19T12:23:00.000-05:00

We have a Pope! Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has become Pope Benedict XVI.

Long time no post

2005-04-15T00:21:00.000-05:00

Wow, the rush is on! Finals week is looming and everyone's trying to figure out next year. The priest at Mass on Sunday gave a really good homily for this time of year (although he made the seniors cry!). He said that there's this big push to finals, tests, papers, registration, end of year - and then suddenly it's May 7 and you're sitting on your parents couch wondering "what just happened?" I kind of have the feeling that he knows what he's talking about, because even just thinking about the fact that I'll be moving back home after being at college for nine months is weird. Not so much the living at home part, but the moving back after a year of college sounds so strange.
However, I'm well on my way to planning next year. We had room picks tonight, and after way too much discussion and debate...I know where I'm going to live next year! I'll be in a quad on the first floor - it's basically two adjoining doubles with a connecting door, so we're hoping to have one "quiet" room for sleeping and then a study/hang out room. I also almost have my class schedule figured out. I think I should have some awesome classes, like "Faith, Doubt, and Reason" with Arts and Letters dean Mark Roche, and "US politics since 1865" with John McGreevy (I read parts of a history book by him last year). Also...I might not have class until 1:55 MWF. Yeah. Cool, huh? (although...looking for advice on that: is it possible to be productive in the morning without a class or something that you have to be awake for?)
ND's music department is changing things around a lot and taking away the music minor option, but I can still declare a minor through the last day of classes this semester, so that worked well.
Mono is going around the dorm somewhat so I'm trying to wash my hands as much as I can, and get enough sleep, etc. Sleep...yes...

NY Times - JPII may be "credited with destroying his church"

2005-04-05T15:29:00.000-05:00

According to an editorial in the New York Times today, (The Price of Infallibility, by Thomas Cahill) while JPII was a "great political leader" he was not a great religious one, and is evidentally single-handedly responsible for the (supposed) decline in church attendance and priestly vocations. Since JPII expected bishops to be completely loyal to his teachings, the episcopate is now filled with "mindless sycophants and intellectual incompetents" while the "good" priests are ignored. JPII also took the church away from its roots as the "first participatory democracy" (yes, because everyone else's opinion mattered so much after Peter spoke at the council of Jerusalem) to impose his harsh stance on the rest of the church.
This makes me want to cry...how is it that people can miss the point so completely??
What's even more ironic is that Cahill discusses Pius IX "paranoia" about the evils facing him from the modern world, yet if someone could live for 25 years with JPII's example and still believe that his actions weren't motivated by love? That makes me a little paranoid too.

Well done, my good and faithful servant

2005-04-02T16:22:00.000-05:00

I've just come in from a Saturday afternoon of getting things done to learn that Pope John Paul II, soon to be known as John Paul the Great (IMO), has indeed gone to be with Christ. If there ever was a man in this century who fought the good fight and finished the race, it was him. Even his last few days were a testament to his firm faith and trust in God. I can't help but think that John Paul wanted to die this way, this slow and painful death from infirmity, for the sake of his flock. This way, we've had time to absorb what was going to happen, to resign ourselves to the inevitable, and to say goodbye. In his dying, he proclaimed the gospel as loudly and and long as he could, yet he didn't "rage against the dying of the light" as Dylan Thomas' poem says. Actually, that entire poem contrasts with the life and death of the only pope I've ever known:
"Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightening they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, their last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night."

But our pope's words had "forked lightening" and his deeds truely danced. And what is more, his deeds and words were all inspired by Christ. It brings to mind a quote I read once about Mary: he was so pure of heart that when you looked at him, you see God.

My favorite memory of the Pope: when I went to see him in St. Louis, in 1998 I think, he gave a talk to all the youth gathered in the stadium. It was obviously a written speech that was drawing a comparision between athletes that played in the stadium and Christians training for heaven. At one point, he was listing all the sports people play - basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer. Then, departing from the script, he looked out at all of us and said, "Hey! They forgot to put in football!"

I really liked what Matt of the Shrine of the Holy Whapping had to say today:
Consummatum est.I've just been told the Pope is dead. That he's been dead for an hour. They say the soul doesn't always leave the body immediately after physical death. An hour or two might pass. But that's done with by now. He's in eternity.I kept telling myself that this whole thing was just another false alarm, you know. Even yesterday I thought so. We get so anesthetized by the false starts and mistakes we pick up in the media. And there's something grotesque about just staring at a creen and watching continuous coverage; nothing ever changes until they release a new bulletin and the talking heads just weave arabesques of commentary around the old news until they've finally pounded it into our skulls. We're watching someone die on network television before our eyes. I'm not sure if that's more or less desensitizing. Maybe continuous coverage is a security blanket for us, when you can't stop thinking about it and so you get someone else to do it for you. It's the same with Terri Schiavo.Yesterday they had CNN on in the student lounge, Fox in the study room, and EWTN in the auditorium up on the big screen. Every time they just say the same thing, and we're stuck in real-time limbo.It's like junk food.I don't know. You never know what to think about the death of holy men. You're not sure whether to pray for them to rest in peace or ask them to pray for you. That's the odd thing about death: we know him so well in life, from his work, from his prayer, from his suffering, but yet he can't know every one of us individually. But among the blessed he will be able to hear our own prayers, each and every one of them. Death brings universality.I feel nervous, anxious, but, when I strip that all away, the mere physical impedimentia of emotion, I know what is meant to happen will happen; all we can do is pray for that, whatever it is. The truth is, I feel...ultimately I feel calm about it all, when you get rid of fear that crisis conditions always generate.My friend Rich says, it's like the death of a father. We're more sorry for ourselves than him. We don't want to admit to it, I guess. We don't want to admit our heroes can die. Maybe it would seem like an admission of weakness, a willful ignorance of the nasty reality of Calvary. I was talking to an agnostic friend of mine this morning, and told her I felt resigned to all this. I said to her, "His whole life has been leading up to this moment." She sort of smiled, and agreed, that the Pope had indeed had a long, full life, but that's not quite what I meant. I meant exactly what I said: that his whole life was a dress rehearsal for when he comes before God's throne and God takes him into His arms and weeps for joy.

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
John Paul, pray for us!

Easter recap/A sad day

2005-03-31T21:08:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to write about Tridiuum at ND since Easter, but I haven't gotten a chance to yet, so here goes:

Holy Thursday
Mass was at 5 pm so it was still light outside when we started. It was kind of cool because Thursday was a beautiful day, but when Mass was over the sun was setting and it got cloudy and windy and dark, just kind of a general feeling of "it has begun." Tenebrae at night was cool. It consisted of several "readings" only they were pretty much all sung. Sometimes the congregation joined in with responses, sometimes it was all soloists. It was a little long and "artsy" for my personal taste, but still pretty cool. Plus it started out in candlelight, and they extinguished one candle per reading, until there was one candle left. That candle they carried out into the foyer, and then we all got to bang really loudly on the pews (to simulate the earthquake at Christ's resurrection) until they brought the candle back. Definitely the funnest part of Holy Thursday.

Hmm, I'm noticing the time and realizing maybe I should continue my recaps later. Onto the next topic:
Wow, what a tough day for Catholics. May the soul of Terri Schiavo rest in greater peace than she had here on earth - and may God have mercy on our nation.
Pray for Pope John Paul II. The world will miss the presence of this truely holy man when God calls him home. I've never known another pope!

"This is why I don't go to South Dining Hall...

2005-03-22T23:55:00.000-05:00

...my poor ego can't take the flip-flopping;" or "Jessica's story of the night:"

So I went to dinner tonight at South Dining Hall with Emily and Andrea, and two of Andrea's friends from back home (one who goes to ND and one who was visiting).
1. Andrea and Emily were trying to give me directions to our table, and I was getting confused by the complexities of "right, right" and "right, left" and Andrea asked me if this confusion over left/right was why I lost so badly at Twister. Ouch.
After finding my food amidst the controlled chaos that is SDH (fruit: front of cafeteria; salad: middle, veggies: back; butter: front; ketchup: side; dressing: middle; stop me when this starts making sense) I joined up with the other girls only to discover:
2. Andrea's friend Amy goes to U of St. Thomas in MN and even tho she's only lived in MN for seven months or so, she's firmly on the MN love train. She says she likes cold weather now and MN is awesome. Yay!
3. But then Andrea commented that only ice queens come from MN. Ouch.
4. And I ran into a friend who always goes to South who told me I needed to leave because I was on the wrong side of campus. Ouch. (but a joking ouch)
In the weirdest developement of the night, when Emily and I were walking out,
4. Some guy walking past told me, "This is my friend Andy, and he thinks you're cute, [something something mumble] jacket." I have no idea exactly what was going on, but we're going to give it a Yay! anyway. Especially because shortly thereafter, Emily and I were talking about how didn't know quite what this guy was talking about with my jacket, but she said to just run with the cute part of it. So I did, run with it that is. Only kind of in place. And evidentally
5. I looked so funny running in place that Emily couldn't help but laugh. Ouch.

So there you have it folks, my story of the night.

Also, some links:

A good article on womanhood
News about the shooting in Red Lake, MN (about 6 hours from my house, and a pretty tough area as far as I know. Still, the deaths of students is always tragic. Please pray for the families and survivors.
And the latest updates on Terri Schiavo. Again, a situation where much prayer is needed.

Liberal Bias

2005-03-19T13:49:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has a few articles today about the Terri Schiavo case, both of which are very biased against her. One is an editorial about how the government should interfere in this case (in which Terri is described as "the 41-year-old woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state for the last 15 years, with her parents contesting that sad diagnosis"), although since it's an editorial I suppose it's ok that its biased. However, the other article made me mad, because its a perfect example of how underhanded this bias can be. The article itself actually isn't all that bad; it discusses the politics of the case more than the case itself. However, the headline was "The Medical Becomes Political for Congress." I have a real problem with the use of the word "becomes" in that phrase. It implies that this was an issue that was perfectly fine being left alone out of the political arena, but that Terri's parents and pro-life activists just keep dragging back into the spotlight. In this way, it kind of sounds similar to the abortion argument, just keep it between a woman and her doctor. The problem is that we accept that certain things are so wrong that the government has to deal with them. For example, anyone killing someone in the street should expect government "interference;" if there wasn't any, everyone would be very upset about it. We already have laws against euthanasia in this country - should we argue that that also should be an issue just for the patient and doctor?
Anyway, I have to get going and doing some schoolwork, so I'll cut my rant short. Please however continue to pray for Terri and that whole situation.
BTW, you might have to create an account with the New York Times in order to access the articles. Sorry.

Back at ND

2005-03-14T23:46:00.000-05:00

Well, the two and a half hours I spent on two math problems today (!!!) just reinforced what I already knew: no more lazing around at home, I'm back at school! Break was nice, although not as eventful as fall break or Christmas break. I went skiing on Friday which was fun; Dad and Jake came too so it really felt like old times. We figured out that I've been going to the same ski place at least once a year since I was about 11. Not that that necessarily makes me any good at it... ;)
I also went to the Dayton's/Marshall Fields/Federated Department Stores flower show. They should seriously go back to calling it Dayton's, because I fail to see the value of changing the name of the store every time they sell it. Anyway...the flower show was gorgeous as usual. The link only has one picture but maybe I can figure out how to post the ones that we took, after I get them from my mom.
The bus ride was rather slow this time. We left at 9:45 central time and got to campus at 8:30 eastern time. We picked up Emily (who lives down the hall from me) in Madison and then Chris and Andrea met us at the bus to help us get our stuff back to the dorm, which was really nice. (For the record tho, I could have carried it all back. I wouldn't say I always travel light, but I consolidate things well ;) Then we just hung out until Mass, and continued our Sundays-in-Lent tradition of getting something sweet at Lafortune. A nice day, except for the whole 10 hours on a bus part.
Then came Monday morning...sigh. No, it wasn't all that bad getting back into things, but one of my classes was canceled so it wasn't a full day. But I am already looking forward to the weekend. :)

I so need to try this!

2005-03-07T23:19:00.000-05:00

Does anyone out there have "Achoo syndrome?" From weatherbug.com's annoying little pop up forecast:
Question:“Why do you sometimes sneeze when looking at sun rays?”Submitted by:James and Elizabeth West (Newark, DE)
Answer:
I thought that this question was a joke until two colleagues in the WeatherBug Weather Center, Mark Hoekzema and Alan Petko, both told me that it’s real. Alan, who has the syndrome, directed me to the MedicineNet.com web site for the official definition of “Achoo Syndrome” (I’m not kidding, that’s the name of it):
“Achoo Syndrome is a disorder characterized by uncontrollable paroxysms of sneezing provoked in a reflex fashion by the sudden exposure of a dark-adapted subject to intensely bright light (like brilliant sunlight). The number of sneezes is usually 2 or 3, but can be up to 40.”
In 1964, H.C. Everette studied medical students at Johns Hopkins University and found that 23% of them had the syndrome. He also found that the inherited genetic trait that causes Achoo Syndrome is more slightly more prevalent in Caucasian men. Those that carry the gene have a 50% chance of passing it on to their children.
To test to see if you have the gene, wait until the next sunny day. Sit in a dark room for about 5 minutes, and then go outside into the sun. If you sneeze, you’ve got it!

Home again!

2005-03-06T15:05:00.000-05:00

I'm back home in the superior state of the union (tm Matt) again, yay! I got in at about 1:45 central time, after a rather long bus ride. I guess technically it was the standard 9 hours but it seemed to drag this time. I haven't done a whole lot so far, especially seeing that not many of my friends are around, sigh. I went to Net Mass again, which was awesome as usual. Although it was kind of strange too, because everyone was younger than me. And we knelt on the bleachers during Mass, so the argument that it's too difficult to kneel on the floor of my dorm's chapel...kind of bogus. Supposedly Bishop D'Arcy of Ft. Wayne (ND's diocese) recommended that for the sake of unity none of the dorms should kneel during Mass, because not all of them had kneelers. But we're all college students who can sleep on futons and stand up for four hours at football games - do we really need little cushions for when we kneel?
Wow, that was a random liturgical tangent.
Anyway, for your time-killing pleasure, here's an amusing game involving penguins, courtesy of the IT guys on the sixth floor of Middlebrook Hall at the University of Minnesota.
Penguins make me think of Minnesota weather, which I'm pleased to report is a balmy 72 degrees. I'm going to change into my bikini now.
Aw, you all knew I was joking because, right, like I own a bikini. It is however 60 degrees outside, so I'm definitely heading out and enjoying it while I can.

Missing Bush

2005-03-03T12:12:00.000-05:00

Well, the big news on campus (besides that whole minor spring break thing) is that Pres. Bush is coming to speak on Friday afternoon. He's actually really visiting South Bend more the ND, and he's talking about Social Security, but ND was the only open location big enough to support an event like this, so he's coming here. Unfortunately only 200 tickets were available for students, and I didn't get a winning lottery ticket for that drawing (over 1500 students entered). Turns out I wouldn't have been able to go anyway, because he's speaking at 4:45 and that's the same time my bus is leaving for MN (yay!). I thought maybe roads and things would be closed but I guess the bus will still be able to get onto campus, so we'll leave at our planned time, arriving back home at the lovely hour of two in the morning. Which actually, is no longer so late for a Friday night.
I've had very little homework these past few days, it's been a welcome break as compared to last week, although I feel a little guilty being so relaxed around all these stressed out people. Tonight we're pretending it's Friday night. There's a concert of all the a capella groups on campus and then the ISI (Iron Sharpens Iron) prayer group. I'm always told I should go to that, quite a few of my friends usually go, but I never quite make it. After that...who knows?
But in...umm...about 38 hours I'll be back in Minnesota!!

Honestly Actually Really Truely Done

2005-02-28T16:05:00.000-05:00

Well, this time I'm honestly actually really truely done with midterms. Almost. ;) So technically I have a midterm in my musicianship class, but it will be on dictation (transcribing onto staff paper what the prof plays on the piano), which I really can't study for, and singing, which yeah I'll probably look over the songs but that won't take much time, and it's kind of fun anyway.
This weekend was fun but it went really fast. Every Saturday till the end of the semester I'll be helping out at a Spanish religious education class. I started last week and even tho it's really good to do, both to practice Spanish and just to do something good, and even tho it's been fun...it does make my weekends short. It's from about 10-12:30 in the morning, so if I have a lot of work to do I can't really get up and get going on it in the morning, but if I don't have a lot of work I can't just lay around and enjoy it. Oh well. It's kind of required for my spanish class anyway, so that'd be a good reason to keep doing it. ;) Anyway, the rest of the weekend was lots of fun. I had a great time at the dance, I think it was my favorite ND dance so far (although the Christmas dance under the golden dome would be a close second). We had an orchestra concert on Saturday night which was good but looooong. I must be "out of shape" as compared to when we had those GTCYS marathon rehearsals/concerts last year.
Starting to think about spring break, which, seriously people, why aren't you coming home for my spring break?? Most of my friends will be either away at college or else in the middle of midterms, sigh. I'd propose that colleges time their spring breaks to coincide, but...that would probably be a bad idea. I can just imagine the general chaos that would ensue on warm beaches.
I'm also starting to have to think beyond spring break (the horror). Like Easter, for example: come home, see all my friends, go to Easter Vigil at home (yay) BUT spend 18+ hours in a car, probably with ppl I don't know, for three days at home? Or do I stay here, go to the reportedly beautiful services here, and relax BUT miss out on the time at home?? Then we have summer jobs and WYD and roommates and don't even mention next year's classes or majors. Can't believe it's almost March already.
*~Happy Birthday, Mom!!~*

The good, the bad, and the ugly

2005-02-25T14:55:00.000-05:00

Well, my week is done! done done done done done. yay!
The good: My Spanish midterm got moved back to Monday, and I think my music theory test went well this morning. And the best: it's Friday, I'm done with all my tests except Spanish, and we have a dance tonight!
The bad: My math test was horrible. Seriously, I had no clue what to do on like 3 of the 7 problems. Luckily the whole class did badly so the prof realized that he made it too long and made it out of 100 points, not 120. This worked out well for me because I didn't think the test was really too long, just too hard, but I'll take free points from wherever I can get. Curving it like that got me from a C to an A-, so yay...?
Also I had an extra orchestra rehearsal last night.
The ugly: My physics test was supposed to be Tuesday, however after he handed out the test he realized that only half of it had copied. So we had to take the second half on Thursday, which was really annoying to have to study everything all over again.
So there you have it, the good, the bad, and the ugly of last week.
Why is it "the good, the bad, and the ugly" anyway? Anyone know? The optimist in me thinks it should be at least like "the good, the beautiful, the bad, and the ugly" to even things out, but that gets rather wordy I suppose.
Happy weekend everyone!

Prayer intentions: Terry Schiavo, Pope John Paul II (add your prayers to the spiritual bouquet

Catch-up

2005-02-20T23:54:00.000-05:00

Sorry the posting has been slowing down, it seems like life has been picking up the pace. Yesturday I went and helped out at a spanish religious ed class, that was fun if challenging. The little kids laughed at my spanish (when I actually spoke) but it was really good for me I think, it's basically short-term immersion. That will be happening every week from here on out.
Otherwise, not much of a weekend. Saw the Second City comedy show on Friday night, they were pretty funny. Saturday was the religious ed class like I said, and then the orchestra played for Mass that night. Today Emily and Melissa and I went shopping - quality girl bonding time! :) Next week my dorm is having a dance (the theme is Masquerade Mardi Gras) so we had a fun time picking out crazy Mardi Gras jewelry and things. It's a semi-formal/formal so I'm wearing my prom dress last year (sparkles=Mardi Gras?) but I got a different necklace and Emily got some cool looking make up. And of course we took advantage of the "Sundays in Lent" rule to get a blizzard at Dairy Queen - Chocolate Extreme!
Next week looks like really not much fun. I have a math test tomorrow morning, and a Spanish quiz, a physics test on Tuesday, and a Spanish midterm and Music theory midterm on Friday. Yikes! But then next Friday is the dance so once these five days are over I can have lots of fun. Anyway...I'm really thinking I should be studying instead of posting. Catch you all later!

More random ramblings

2005-02-12T19:31:00.000-05:00

I'm currently rather bored, waiting for a dance to start later tonight. Yes, that's right, I've been asked to a dance. It should be an interesting night anyway. The guy who asked me is more of a friend of a friend than my friend really, I haven't really spent a whole lot of time with him so this could be rather awkward. But I know he's a nice guy and all that, so the worst that can happen is I'll have a funny story to tell. This feels like a very collegiate thing to do, or maybe a freshman thing to do, going to an SYR with a guy who had to look up my phone number.
In other words, today was absolutely amazingly beautiful outside. Sunny, warm, slight breeze...ahh. I walked around the lake without a coat on, or even a sweater, it was a wonderful time. Although my friend Katie in North Dakota just kind of stole my thunder by telling me it got up to 60 degrees there. Seriously, will she always be able to top my weather stories??
Oh yes, I hope everyone is having a penitential Lent. (Penetential? Penitential? Yes, I could go look it up, but now you all can laugh at me for not knowing how to spell it). I gave up sweets and I'm trying to read through Psalms like I said on the last post. I'm also aiming to spend a little bit of time in the chapel every day, but that hasn't been so succesful.
Ash Wednesday was a good Ash Wednesday, meaning it was a hard day overall. Fasting always makes the day longer, and I also helped my rector get cacti for the chapel and set up for Mass and things, and then I watched The Passion afterwards. One of those days where my prayers were something like, "I hope you can do something with what I have to offer here, Lord, because this is really all I've got, and it ain't much." I suppose ashes and dust really aren't known for being all that impressive anyway.

Which book of the bible are you?

2005-02-08T15:21:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of a link on Catholic Ragemonkey : What book of the bible are you?
I'm Psalms:

You are Psalms.

Which book of the Bible are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Ragemonkey's suggestion was to try to read the book that you "are" over Lent. Hmm...40 days plus 7 Sundays equals a little more than 3 Psalms a day. It could be done - we'll see.

These are a few of my favorite things...

2005-02-07T19:44:00.000-05:00

It's Monday.
It's foggy.
and dreary and gray and not-quite-winter-but-not-quite-spring outside.
And I'm feeling very unproductive today.
So...here (in no apparent order) are a few things that make me happy:
*Smiles
*winking
*frosted brownies at NDH
*chocolate
*new music/good music/hearing "that one" song on the radio
*songs that bring back memories
*snuggles (with my little sisters, duh)
*talking after midnight
*chick flicks
*debates
*waking up without an alarm clock (best when it's relatively early in the morning) (and by relatively I mean before 10:30 am on the weekends)
*breakfast/breakfast food
*getting real e-mails
*mail
*unintentional compliments (or intentional ones, if they're about not-surfacy things)
*making up words lol
*Eucharistic adoration and being alone in the chapel
*doing all the things on my to-do list in the time I thought it would take (you know you're a nerd when productive days make you happy)
*giggles
*Minnesota (and driving across that bridge across the St. Croix when I can finally say I'm back in MN)
*Notre Dame (and seeing the Dome from a distance)
*When the orchestra plays a piece that's hard but it actually sounds good
*Poking :)
*inside jokes
*baking cookies
*Getting dressed up (although this may depend on the shoes, lol)
*dancing
*singing
*sunny days
*walks or bike rides around the lakes
*The ND Glee Club and/or men singing in general (especially when they change the words for me, like Dad) (Of course Dad's the only guy who's ever changed the words of a song to apply to me, but hey it makes me happy)
*when people trust you enough to show you their vulnerability
*simple pleasures
*knowing that simple pleasures make me happy :)
*Fridays
*meals when the eating part takes less time than the sitting around talking part
*bonfires
*finding something in common with somebody that I didn't know we shared
*football games
*good conversations (especially when they take place in the chapel)
*watching movies on the couch with my friends
*when boys open doors for me
*IM conversations that last for way too long
*randomly feeling like its going to be a good day
*holidays
*Thinking about all my friends and family!

NY Philharmonic

2005-02-04T01:40:00.000-05:00

Yay! I've seen the New York Philharmonic! It was a wonderful evening. So much fun to dress up and go to the performing arts center. It's a beautiful new building (for pics, see here) and fun to mingle with the upper crust. New World Symphony was amazing - especially the 3 movement. It was incredible. The second piece was not as cool, a more modern style Bartok piece, but also very cool. Then they did two encores - one was one of Brahm's (?) Slavonic dances that I played for The Conservatory's winter concert last year. Yes, my version was a lot simpler and didn't sound nearly as awesome as when the NYPO did it, but still, i could sing along to the whole thing and even "air play" it a little, so that was pretty cool too.
It felt like we should ride back in our limo and stop for wine and cheese, but seeing as only the cheese would have been really easily and legally available to us, Chris and I had ice cream instead. Then I got back for some bonding with the girls in the dorm...honestly I've had 4 conversations about relationships in the hour since i've been back. Girls who broke up with their boyfriends, noticing cute guys in the hallway, etc., etc. These (and chick flick nights) are when single sex dorms are really fun.
Embarassing story of the night:
I was talking to Emily outside her doorway and she noticed that she needed to shave her legs, but she said that eh, it was wintertime, it didn't really matter. I commented that I agreed, and in fact "in wintertime I need advance warning of events I need to shave my legs for!" As I turned around...and saw this random guy standing there listening to us, looking at me like he was thinking "ok then, that was more than I needed to know." Turns out he was campaigning for student body president, and we then proceeded to discuss the needs of the student body, but it was a really awkward moment standing there with my last line just hanging in the air.
Tomorrow: Friday! yay!

Random Thoughts on a Wednesday Evening

2005-02-03T01:08:00.000-05:00

Yup, halfway done with the week again. The fact that it's Wednesday evening is also a good thing because it means that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are all done with, everything gets better from here. I mean, it's almost Thursday, which means it's almost Friday! ;) For some reason this has been a long week, maybe from getting off of the Freshman retreat with all the lack of sleep that entailed. The retreat was fun by the way, the focus was definitely more on building relationships and sharing common experiences than any super deep religious transformation, but evening prayer was still pretty good and my small group was awesome about talking about things.
Tomorrow night I'm going to hear the New York Philharmonic play here on campus. Getting tickets was rather lucky, they held a lottery and had about 1200 entries for about 800 seats. The e-mail said the event would be "black tie optional" so I have to figure out what I should wear. (Mom, guess I should have gotten one of those dresses at Dayton's. Grr.) Vote now: black formal or the dressy skirt and sweater I wore for Christmas? Try out the new Haloscan comment boxes. ;)
Mmmm, I'm sleepy. Maybe I should go to bed...what a simple solution eh? My roommate is staying up studying for a chem test tomorrow, but I know she'll be up much later than I want to be so I guess that's not really an excuse. It's funny, this is a stressful week schoolwork-wise for a lot of people, but not so much for me. 3-4 page paper due next week, a music theory worksheet, and leading the discussion in spanish class on Friday, but otherwise not a whole lot. When I do get to my week of doom - three midterms and a paper in a week - I don't know what I'll do, not having been used to, like, having tests. ;) Oh well, my patented system is to panic about a week ahead of time, which works out well because then I don't procrastinate and really have something to stress about.
I mistyped staying in the paragraph above as tayig. Don't you find it funny how taking out just a letter or two can make a word totally unrecognizable? It's just me? Ok then.
Off to bed! Goodnight all!

Pray for the Pope!

2005-02-01T18:33:00.000-05:00

Pope John Paul II was taken to the hospital today. Please pray that God's will would continue to work through this holy man.

2005-01-27T17:28:00.000-05:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Hey, I have a job now!

2005-01-27T17:04:00.000-05:00

Well I've finally gotten an on-campus job (well technically I still have to fill out some forms and stuff, but by tomorrow I should be unemployed no longer). And the job I got? Is awesome. Evidentally there's a student in my math class who has some sort of disability, so the Office for Students w/ Disabilities sent out an e-mail to everyone in my class asking if anyone would be interested in taking notes for this student, copying them, and bringing them back to the office once a week. In return you get paid $6.85 an hour. I was the first one to respond so I got the job. :) I'm not really sure how they'll be defining how many hours I'm working - if it's just the time spenting copying the notes and turning them in, I'd get like $2 a week, lol. But if I get paid for the hours in class - score! That's still only three hours a week, but the concept of getting paid to go to class is just so cool that I'm pretty excited.
Tomorrow I'm leaving for a freshman retreat with my friends Melissa and Chris. It's just off-campus (literally - at the seminary w/in walking distance) and only for one night, but it should be good/fun. Please pray for us!

Simple Pleasures

2005-01-22T22:09:00.000-05:00

It snowed quite a bit last night, probably about 8", although its really fine and powdery snow so not very good for making snowballs. Still, we couldn't resist going out for a romp in the pristene whiteness. Melissa and I met up with John, Chris, Andrea, and Rachel between North and South quad and the snow was definitely flying. Andrea and Rachel had to head back to the dorm but the rest of us ran around for awhile. Then we figured that we had snow, and some hills...all that we needed were some sleds. Being the creative college students that we are, we went "dumpster diving" for some cardboard (don't worry, the cardboard boxes are next to the dumpster, not in it). It worked moderately well, and if we just ended up kind of sliding/rolling/falling down the hill, that was ok too. And of course we finished off the afternoon with hot chocolate.
In my personal opinion, not many of the "typical" college activities can top laughing hysterically as you slide down the hill, off your cardboard replacement for a sled, and into a pile of snow only to be pounced upon by your friends (with more snow of course). Sometimes simple pleasures are the best...
On a much more somber note, today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade; the beginning of the 32nd year that abortion has been legal in the United States. Pray for an end to this tragedy.
Also, watch the news for stories on a March for Life to be held on Monday. At least a few buses worth of Notre Dame students went out there to participate.

Grr...

2005-01-18T17:35:00.000-05:00

I was a little bit worried about taking a class called "Energy and Enviroment" but it was the only non-lab science that fit into my schedule really well. On the first day, the prof identified himself as "right-wing" so I figured it wouldn't be too bad. Ha. Today we talked about oil prices as a possible cause for the war in Iraq, which...I guess his reasons seemed valid (basically, if the new Iraqi gov't went into debt b/c of reconstruction, they would increase oil production which would drive oil prices down and conceivably save the US $180 bil a year). Still, I kind of doubt that was the only reason, I think there was something about this Hussein guy too... But then he said that US oil usuage would double in 25 years. Why? Not because of increased usage per capita, but because our population is increasing too rapidly, but, as he said "As a professor at Notre Dame I can't talk about that." ??? Ooh, the restrictive regime here is preventing its faculty from discussing birth control. At least I think that's what he was trying to say. Sigh. Anyway, even if birth control was supported by the church, as long as it remained a controversial issue a professor shouldn't identify it specifically as a good thing (or for other matters, a bad thing). Debate and discuss all you want but I don't think it would ever be appropriate to offer birth control (or other such things) as a main solution to a "problem," even if you were allowed to do so. Like I said, grr...

Another fun quiz

2005-01-17T22:52:00.000-05:00

Just think - answer 20 questions and you'll find out exactly how your brain works! I'm left-brained and visually oriented, what are you?
Otherwise...12 Angry Men is a good movie, the Vikings lost to the Eagles, and it's cold here (around 10 degrees w/ single digit windchills), but not as cold as it is in Embarass, MN. Despite it being MLK day, it was a music/musicianship/spanish/math day for me, as ND stops for no man, no matter how politically correct. My math prof put us in groups of three, and now we only get one homework grade for the group. Isn't that kind of strange? In theory this means I could put off doing my math homework by surfing on the internet for awhile...oh wait...

It's the weekend

2005-01-15T19:44:00.000-05:00

It's always nice to have those two days off of classes, even tho this week has been a short week. We don't have MLK day off either, sigh...
I went to see The Phantom of the Opera last night. It was awesome - a great movie!! The camera angle and styles (old fashioned black and white vs. color) were really cool, and the music was of course beautiful. Definitely worth seeing again (although I wonder if it wouldn't be as good on a small screen?). Plus now I know that going to a movie in south bend is only $10 including taxis there and back, which is really pretty good.
We actually went to see the movie with a group of Chris' friends as part of a surprise birthday party for two people he knew but Melissa and I didn't. Slightly awkward...but they seemed to be nice people and had excellent cake-baking skills, so it was fun.
Kind of a lazy Saturday. Another men's bball game, a win this time. Tomorrow is the big Vikings-Eagles showdown, in which I will valiently cheer for my team against any stupid Eagles/Eagles by default (ie anti-Vikings) fans. Skoal Vikings!
Oh, and anyone who still thinks Pius XII was "Hitler's Pope" should read this.

First Impressions

2005-01-13T15:21:00.000-05:00

Well I've been to all of my classes at least once now, and this semester looks pretty good. Music theory is same old, same old, although the prof did say that he'd require more in-class participation from us, so that should be helpful. Spanish might be the class that keeps me busiest, I have to write half a page in Spanish every class day and talk with a native speaker an hour a week. Calc I have the cutest old Italian man as a teacher. He has white hair and an accent and talked about pulling all nighters studying in Italy with "a bottle of wine and a hunk of salami." My science class so far is rather boring (plus its right after lunch - naptime!), but I know a few people in it and so far we haven't had any homework. Weird. Finally I have a history seminar on the Vikings, which is also looking pretty easy. My poli sci seminar last week was like 100 pages of reading and a two page paper every week, this is like 20 pages of reading a week and 4 papers the whole semester. Its not the most thrilling class ever, but I think I like history enough to make it ok. So there's that and orchestra and violin lessons, no on campus job yet, but hopefully sufficient time to have fun.
Speaking of fun, here's a good way to kill time: the website 20 questions. An "artificial intelligience" will guess what you're thinking of, usually within 20 questions. We got it to 28 questions with "okra" and "boyfriend" and it never guessed "garter" (it gives up after 30 questions). Let me know what words you confuse it with - I have a feeling its not going to get "Tridentine Mass." ;)

Back to life, back to reality...

2005-01-11T11:49:00.000-05:00

Yup, I'm back at ND and starting classes again. The last week of break was fun but it just flew by. The highlight was Neal and Emily's wedding on Jan 8. It was kind of surreal to see my friends getting married, but Emily was radiant, Neal seemed so mature, and dancing the nite away with my friends was so much fun that I couldn't help but be excited for them. Congrats!
The bus ride back went really fast (7 hrs 45 min plus 45 min of stops) and it was fun to pick up Emily Meyer in Madison and talk to her for the second half of the trip. We struggled in with our luggage to be swarmed with hugs as we got off the elevator. Chris and John had a slightly different type of welcome as they immediately began a snowball fight when they saw us. We did build a really big snowman and decorated him with candy before somebody knocked it down that night.
Yesturday I spent getting books and rearranging my room before the ND basketball game. My class schedule is pretty good, MWF I have classes straight from 9:30-1:40 (music theory, musicianship, spanish, and calc), TH I have PE at 9:30, science at 12:30 and history from 2-3:15.
I hope everyone else has a great spring semester!

Party at the Romens!

2005-01-02T23:56:00.000-05:00

Today was a nice Sunday. Early Mass, brunch, watching the Viqueens lose...well that part wasn't so great. Then we packed up and headed over to the Romens' house (friends from homeschool group). The house was packed (seriously, my little sister Bekah counted 55 people on the second floor alone, not to mention all the adults on the main floor and kids in the basement and outside). I got to hang out with a bunch of the gang, chatting and laughing and having pillow fights. Fun times!

New blog for a new year!

2005-01-02T00:33:00.000-05:00

Hey everybody,
So this is my first excusion into the realm of blogging. I figured so much of my life is connected to my computer anyway, I might as well have another way to kill time on the internet. Plus it will be fun to look back at what I did my second semester at Notre Dame. So yeah, I have no idea exactly what kind of stuff will be on here, but happy reading anyway!