Late last year told me something that turned my life upside-down for awhile. It wasn’t shocking, or worrying, just so thought-provoking that I’ve been moving it back and forth between the front and back burners of my brain since then. She said:
Lisa, you are measuring yourself against a four foot yardstick.
I saw this story originally at the ACLU blog, and had to share.
It seems that members of the Westboro Baptist Church (the home of the vitriolic Fred Phelps, owners of the website godhatesfags.com and justly vilified for their picketing of military soldiers) decided to protest against the University of Chicago (for general reasons), the Chicago Theological Seminary (for religious reasons), and the University’s former employment of Barack Obama in the Law School (for racial[?] reasons) on March 10th.
In response, more than 100 students gathered in demonstration against the Church protesters. They didn’t shout, they didn’t provoke; instead, they mocked. They passed out leaflets explaining that ‘God hates figs’ (based on a biblical passage wherein Jesus rails against the fig no less). A fraternity stripped to their boxers and danced to “I’m Coming Out” and the infamous “It’s Raining Men”. Students from the CTS held signs reading “Chicago Theological Seminary: Question, Teach, Transform.”
There are fabulous pictures at the above link. Enjoy.
Borrowed from my friend Anya:
Subtlety in this medium is about as effective as online charades.
This morning it was densely fogged in around our house. You could see maybe a block away, but that’s it. The streetlights glowed like something out of Dickens’ and it was cold. When I reached the top of the hill, however, it was clear and the waning moon lit up the sky full of stars. By the time I reached my office, dawn was just beginning. The sky to the south was perceptibly lightening in shades of progressively lighter blue. To the West the moon was beginning its descent. It was clear enough that I could see the wedge of Mt. Rainier visible behind the office building down the street from me.
As I watched, the sky grew lighter, and wisps of fog/clouds began to turn pink and gold. The water in the sound reflected the growing light like a silver mirror. There’s a strong wind from the East and I simply enjoyed the light, the movement, the beauty that is Seattle.
Thank you to Jeremy for the lovely Yule hat!
and look, a recent picture of me as a bargain.
Because we were meeting Gretchen at 9:00am in front of the Rodin Museum, we asked for a wake up call for 8am. To our horror, the phone rang at 9am – there was no way we were going to make it in time if we were going to shower and dress fancy for lunch. Friends are more important than food, so we canceled our lunch reservation and got with the moving. We were out the door and into a taxi and in front of the museum at 9:30, no later. And no Gretchen! It would have been weird for her to have left, even if we had made her wait for 30 mins in the cold. But when it was 9:45 and still no sign of her, we went in.
Our day began at the Eiffel Tower around 11am. Two of the elevators were being renovated (apparently they were actually being modernized) and we aren’t fans of heights, so we decided to skip the lines. Today was the first day we had sun – the sky was clear and bright blue, the city looked very different.
We planned to wake up early, see the Louvre and then go to lunch at a 3-star (the highest appellation possible in France). Not so much. We slept until 11am and that meant that lunch was our breakfast. So as to not completely lose out on sightseeing, we took a taxi to a point about ½ way up the Champs Ellysses and from there walked up to the Arc d’ Triomphe.
. . . to talk about the fact that I have jet lag like I have never had before.
It is 3:45am (Pacific) as I write this. I didn’t get enough sleep yesterday and so I went to bed at 9pm, feeling that a good 9 hours would get me back into shape.
At 3am I was wide awake and wondering if we’d actually turned on the alarm. (We don’t have any electrical devices, including clocks, in the bedroom. This is occasionally a problem as we can’t tell what time it is until we go into another room.)
Apparently I’m now an even-earlier riser.
We slept until after 11am, and it easily could have been after noon. We clambered up from the depths of a very good sleep and looked at various walks for the day. (Breakfast was a croissant and hot drinks from a local boulangerie.)