Springtime and Change

It's springtime in Chicago. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the new quarter began today. And as if that weren't enough, I head to western Mass in a few days to bask in the wonderous, joyous, three-day bonanza that is the CLPP Conference.

Happy happy day.

In honor of all that, here are some words far more eloquent than my own:

"But now that so much is changing, isn't it time for us to change? Couldn't we try to gradually develop and slowly take upon ourselves, little by little, our part in the great task of love? We have been spared all its trouble, and that is why it has slipped in among our distractions, as a piece of real lace which sometimes falls into a child's toy-box and please him and no longer please him, and finally it lies there among the broken and dismembered toys, more wretched than any of them. We have been spoiled by superficial pleasures like all dilettantes, and are looked upon as masters. But what if we despised our successes? What if we started from the very outset to learn the task of love, which has always been done for us? What if we went ahead and became beginners, now that much is changing?"

- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Spring Break, Sort Of

Now that finals week is over, I have a minute to relax. Well, actually, I haven't but I'm pretending that I do. I spent today sitting lakeside in the glorious sun, reading. And the reading was not related to courses, the thesis or papers. It was reading FOR FUN. (Imagine that.)

Aside from all the thesis-related-work and work-related-work I have to do this week, here are my meager plans for fun:

Today: Reading The Year of Magical Thinking by the lake.
Tomorrow: Dinner and Jazz at The Negro League Cafe
Wednesday: Shopping downtown
Friday: Dinner party at a friend's place

It's not MTV's Spring Break Miami, but it'll have to do.
Livin' it up. Or something.

P.S. I updated the sidebar, more fun links to come. Enjoy!

In memory, and with newfound inspiration

As I sit for hours and hours in the face of a blinding screen-glare, it's nice to find a gem that reminds me why I even bother.

I want to write what will help change that which is harmful for human beings in our time.
-- Tille Olsen

Deep breath and back to it.

De-light-ful

I break from paper writing (it's finals week) to bring you a little bit of yum. This chandelier is made of gummy bears. Delish.



Click here for detail.

Something Ain't Right...

... when the global economy makes things like this possible.

Now I know that, all said and done, this is a good thing. Schools being built for girls in rural India -- I'm all for it. My question here is a simple one: Why does it take charity to make these things happen? And secondly, how on earth can we justify such a skewed moral, poltical and economic value system where one dress can build a school? Where one strand of Hollywood anointed pearls could save hundreds from starving? My hunch: we can't. This, in my humble opinion, is exactly where the free-market missteps. There are no safe-guards in such a system for ensuring that what is important is valued. No. In this world, it's perfectly fine for something like a dress to be worth many human lives. The econometrics of worth never come out in favor of the ones most vulnerable. Waste is glorified and charity is lauded.

And oh what a world it is.

Though somewhere, some capitalist is saying something like, "see all the good things that globalization can do?"

Though it does make me wonder if the necklace could Save Darfur.