Friday, February 29, 2008

Officially "old" - A Nanny's Conversation 29 Feb 2008


Dude: "Hey man, how old are you?"
C: "What?"
Dude: "Like how old are you?"
C: "Why do you want to know?"
Dude: "Cause I wanna know how old I can be and still be cool."
C: "You'll never be this cool."

Friday, February 22, 2008

Most High, Omnipotent, Good Lord,

Thine be the praises, the glory, and the honor and every blessing.

To Thee alone, Most High, do they belong and no man is worthy to mention Thee. May Thou be praised, my Lord, for brother wind, and for the air and the cloudy and the clear weather and every weather, through which to all Thy creatures Thou gives sustenance May Thou be praised, my Lord, for our sister, mother earth,who sustains us and governs, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and green plants

May Thou be praised, my Lord, for those who forgive for the sake of Thy love, and endure infirmity and tribulation

Blessed those who endure them in peace,
because by Thee, Most High, will they be crowned.

 - St. Francis of Assisi

Monday, February 18, 2008

America closes the book on intelligence

"Apparently, even when students felt like talking they didn't know enough about their own disciplines to be worth talking to." http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/02/15/susan_jacoby/index.html

Sunday, February 17, 2008

The view from Ohio

I have just finished reading "The World is Flat" 3.0 (not that different from 2.0 and 1.0) and felt very moved by it. I have decided to vote Barak Obama also. The I read the Washinton Post this morning (on-line of course) and stumbled on to these articles. They point out the major dualities of my life. (I am very binary...on/off...1/0) I offer them to the world (tell you friends about Paddy so it grows again).


Ohio workers

Anti-Webism in America


An answer to Anti-Webism


I am going to try for a video post for Preident's day. Stay tuned!!! And spread the word about PaddyWop.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Friday, February 15, 2008

Alaska Calls


"Grizzly Bear" by John Burroughs
 
Home of the North Star,
I roam the night sky
as well as the north woods.
Nothing escapes me.
They have called me
Owner of the Earth,
Pride of the Woodland,
Forest Apple, Light Foot,
believing my strength flows
from a secret honey in my paws.
What they do not know
who worship me in fear
is the hunger:
the immensity of the search.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Edwards Bows out.....


John Edwards

An a tribute from Flogging Molly....

Rebels

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Some Effects

Well its 9pm on a cold saturday night here in the Regenstein library, south side chicago. I'm farely certain other hogwarts grads are somewhere in the building, which is a strange feeling, I'll have you know. Nonetheless, this is the first moment in a long while that I've had to think, collect, and reflect. Theres been something nagging me since I've arrived at Uni, and I've wanted to run it by the pw crew: the loss of imagination.

I know there are some of us who have been gifted the ability to dream lucid dreams, some the ability to write creative verse, but there are some of us with no such innate imaginative outlet. For some of us the only imaginatinative outlet available is the 10 minutes betwee when we turn off the lights and fall asleep. I first realized something was going on when I went to a movie this fall, a Kirosawa actually, and quickly realized that I was close-reading the subtitles and analyzing the development of scene structure. This was a saturday night outing that my friends and I had planned, and nonetheless, I found myself analyzing. Partially pleased, partially disgusted, I watched the rest of the film wilfully denying myself the opportunity to analyze the movie, and instead watched it just as I've watched every other full-screen showing. This shift, from dyonesian to appollonian, in my creative life then extended to my own music playing, my reading for pleasure, my conversations with friends/family, and essentially every other aspect of my life. I realized that when I turned off the lights and layed in my bed at night I would think critically about everything that went on in my day, etc. I no longer drempt about what I would do if I was in "xyz" situation, what it would be like to be "xyz" person, instead I was making cold, calculated decisions.
I realize that this is my peter-panish realization of the way my brain will most likely function for the rest of my life, but it seems that theres no lack of correlation between my coming to university and my loss of imagination. Whether its a good thing or a bad thing, an intended consequence or an incidental one, I'm not sure. I do know that I never want to lose my imagination, whether it keeps me from being the most rational, reasoning person or not and this is no childish wish of mine. I really value imagination and I feel like you all do to, which makes me ask whether you think there is something going on in schools (even one so bent on promoting liberal arts, as this one in Hyde Park is) that is destroying imaginations, and whether it should/can be stopped.

best wishes,
njs