Life is grand!
My Free Arts internship technically ended in August.
BUT I stayed on through September to help with the Volunteer Training Day (because as "volunteer cordinator," it seemed logical to stick around for the entire process!)

Today I talked the folks at Free Arts about staying on a couple hours a month as an office volunteer. They were excited and said "YES!"

Of course there is an altruistic aspect to my wanting to volunteer with them (who doesn't want to be associated with such a terriffic organization?) But there are more selfish reasons too - - Free Arts is the sort of "thing" I think I would eventually maybe probably like to do somewhere at some point, and it just seems smart to stick around and learn whatever else I can from this opportunity. The other thing is that I LOVE talking about Free Arts. I love it when people ask me about the organization and our programs. I love talking about our volunteers. I love talking about our kids. It is just cool and I'm so glad I get to be a part of it!!!

The Arts for Dummies!
We're all familiar with those books like 'Auto Repair for Dummies' and 'Computers for Dummies,' and it seems like there is a growing movement to accommodate dummies of all kinds. Apparently, the trend has finally spread to the arts world. This is exciting. Art truly can extend its reach if it makes itself more accessible to America's largest demographic group, namely idiots. Now, when I say 'idiots,' you know I don't mean you and me. Well, yes I do, but I mean it in a loving, affectionate way. [more]

Article via ArtsJournal (of course!)

Literature from the Axis of Evil
The Quote:
Words Without Borders ( www.wordswithoutborders.org), whose far-flung network of consulting litterateurs includes the Nigerian-born Chinua Achebe and the Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya, is predicated on the idea that translation is as thrill-charged as smuggling. "Not knowing what the rest of the world is thinking and writing is both dangerous and boring," claims founding editor Alane Mason, who is also a senior editor at the publishing house W.W. Norton. [more]

Life in General
I appologize for my lack of posts this week - - it's not that nothing is happening -- And it's not that I'm in a rotten mood - This was actually one of my best weeks in a long long long time (It's taken awhile, but I'm FINALLY feeling like myself again! !!!! !!!!! !!!!!)

Here's the quick-and-dirty-mini-life update

* I have decided not to spend hundreds of dollars just to take a bunch of standardized math and gramar tests that will prove me worthy of a permanent Minnesota teaching license. It is just not worth the time or money to get certified in this state.

* My temp license expires at the end of this school year. This means that I will not be teaching next school year (at least not in MN public schools).

* I do not know what I'll be doing next year. This is the source of many serious conversations with myself.

* I have decided to finish ALL the requirements for this degree (including the residency and that damn thesis - UGH!)

* Rasberry Muffins are really good (like plain muffins with expersive rasberry jelly baked in!!) I baked 24 mini rasberry muffins on Tuesday (and had eaten 18 of them by Wednesday evening!!!!) Here's the recipie if you're curious!

* Yesterday was the Free Arts volunteer training day.
It was good.
I got to hang out with great people (volunteers are awesome!)
This is going to sound awful (and maybe it is) . . . but I KNOW I could have lead a workshop that would have been a hundred times better than what I saw yesterday. (So much of the "Volunteer Coordinator" internship was WAY outside my comfort zone - - but I would be fabulous at the training part of it!!!)

* Jackie-Dog is shedding like crazy (there are literally clumps of hair falling out of her!!)

* I will not be taking an Outward Bound Trip this year. )-: Financially I can do it - - but physically, I'm concerned about geting in shape by December. (Maybe, Hopefully, Probably I can do it in December '04!)

* There was an "incident" at the Little Academy on Friday. No one was hurt (smiley face!) But that's all I feel like saying about it right now.

* Things are going well -- not perfectly, but I'm dealing with the imprefections. (It's good to feel good for days (instead of hours) at a time). I am happy! I like that!!!!

Life
by
Our Lady Peace

How many days have you just slept away?
Is everybody high?
Is everyone afraid?

How many times have you wished you were strong?
Have they ever seen your heart?
Have they ever seen your pain?


Oh, Life is waiting for you
So messed up, but we're alive
Oh, Life is waiting for you
So messed up, but we'll survive


(This is my new theme song / favorite song of the moment!!)
(How do they know??)

HAPPY DAY!
The deli downstairs is selling carmel apples for 50 cents!

Not a Piece of Cake

This is a poem about peace
It's hard to make it work.
Peace is like my poem.
It's not a piece of cake.

LOLA GAMESTER (age 13)

About a third of my work at YA falls into the "Other Duties as Assinged" category.
Because we are a small small small organization, we don't have an I.T. person (until now!!) [insert evil laugh here!]
As a part of those "other duties," I just got named "Tech. Support Person"
(Don't laugh so loudly Mr.JRVW - you're hurting my feelings - besides, since I took over the tech "department" (10 minutes ago!!) we have had no major incidents or problems!!!)

Today was a fabulous, marvelous, wonderful, sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows kind of day!! Not that anything fabulous, marvelous, or wonderful happened. (No lolipops or rainbows either - but that's OK!) I am just in an incredibly good mood!!

I spend most of Saturday and all of Sunday in a self absorbed reflective funk. So a really good day really is a marvelous, wonderful, sunshine-y kind of thing.

HAPPY BANNED BOOK WEEK!!
(brought to you by the American Library Association)

Yesterday, Dear Old Dad received notification that his patent was approved!
WAY TO GO DAD!! (I'm just a little proud of him!!)
We spent the evening celebrating!


UPDATE AND CLARIFICATION:
(for the brave souls who actually clicked the link and got a little worried!)

YES, cryogenics is involved in that thing where they freeze dead people so they can bring them back to life once they've found a cure for whatever killed them.
NO, Dear Old Dad is not involved with freezing people.

Cryogenics is a broad term for anything having to do with refrigeration. Dear 'Ole Dad uses cryogenics on semi-trucks to keep stuff like ice cream (not dead people) frozen!

The Messiah is obscene!

George Frideric Handel has at least one thing in common with Eminem and other modern artists: his music was slapped with an "explicit" warning at Apple Computer Inc.'s online iTunes Music Store.
[more]

It is once again safe to eat French toast, French dressing, French Wine, French Pastries (and of course French Fries!!) without being considered Un-Americian!

"Delays in rebuilding international good will are costing Americans lives in Iraq, and billions of dollars to the American taxpayers," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, wrote last week in a letter first reported by the congressional newspaper. "A symbolic start to that effort would be reinstating foods in the House cafeterias and dining halls and their traditional 'American' names � french toast and french fries."
[more]

Another Great Quote from Zen and the Art of Mortorcycle Maintenance

When you live in the shadow of insaity, the apperance ofanother mind that thinks and talks as yours doe is something close to a blessed event. p. 233

A chocolate doughnut is basically chocolate cake which has been deep fried instead of baked.

Chocolate doughnuts are considered breakfast food.
Chocolate cake is not.
Go Figure.

(No, I'm not trying to justify eating choclate cake for breakfast this moring - - I actually had browinies (with chocolate chip frosting) for breakfast - - not cake!)

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determne the speed. If you beocme restless, speed up. If yu become winded, slow down. You climb he mountain in an equilibrum between restlessness and exhauston. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less vixible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. T live only for some future goal is shallow. It is the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. p. 183


fromZen adn the Art of Motorcyce Maintenance
by Robert Pirsig

Most schools wait until the strings program is etablished before they begin ruining it. NOT MY SCHOOL!! The string program at Little Academy is barely a year old, and the admin. has effectively killed it.

AND My health insurance might be dropped because HR just realized that I don't work full time (duh!)

When I accecpted this job, they told me I'd get to start a strings program and I could buy health insurance through their group.
THAT IS WHY I TOOK THIS JOB!

The price of educational books and supplies has risen 238 percent. The price of consumer goods increased 51 percent in the same period.

My Source

My grandmother's recipie for Apple Slices is now in my hot little hands. I have been deemed worthy. Nothing else matters. Life is gosh darn good!

This evenings giggle!

I'm better than you. I didn't plan it this way, but you've made your choices and I've made mine. Let's accept the consequences.
[more]

I have a list.

(Actually, I have lots of lists - I'm an "abstract sequential" which is a big educational word for "List Person")
This particular list the The-Super - Duper - Excellent - Fabulous- Pople-Who-Are - SO- wonderful - I'd -give -them-a -Kidney-List. (I hope they don't all need kidneys - 'cause there are five of them and I only have two!!)

Jenny is one of my Super-Duper-Kidney people.
Jenny is one of my heros
Jenny is one of four cousins who lived down the street when I was growing up. She was three years older than me and kinda sorta filled an "older sister" role in my life. She let me hang out with her ocassionally, and talked about nothing, and things, and stuff.

A couple years ago Jenny went through some awful awful horrible rotten things that no one should ever have to go through . . .
And then she got out of it
I will always remember the first Christmas after her life came back together - Jenny totally sparkled!!
Did I mention that she is a hero?

* * * *

Now . . . let me say that (except, of course, for the 5 people on my "Super-Duper-Kidney-List") PEOPLE SUCK!!!!

Jenny is pregnant
I'm excited for her
She'll be a great mom!
But because she isn't married this becomes a big hairy deal, practically a scandal - - blah blah blah - - I'm so very annoyed. I am annoyed in so many ways that I can't even make a list of all the ways and reasons for my annoyance.

Jenny is cool.
Why does everyone else have to be so stupid??????????

Bush Seeks to Expand the lousy Patriot Act

For months, President Bush's advisers have assured a skittish public that law-abiding Americans have no reason to fear the long reach of the antiterrorism law known as the Patriot Act because its most intrusive measures would require a judge's sign-off. But in a plan announced this week to expand counterterrorism powers, President Bush adopted a very different tack. In a three-point presidential plan that critics are already dubbing Patriot Act II, Mr. Bush is seeking broad new authority to allow federal agents � without the approval of a judge or even a federal prosecutor � to demand private records and compel testimony.
[more]

Radical Self Acceptance

Someone called my inspiration phone line and left this message: "SARK, I send you waking naps, where for brief periods of time, you can stop working on yourself, and simply luxurate in where you are right now, just as you are."

I felt my shoulders come down about a foot and breated deeply. All of the sudden I saw this incessant pattern of working and pushing.

My boyfriend says he feels like sometimes we work on our relationship more than we acutlly just live in it. Women are often immersed in renvation - of deep psychlogical explorations, long processing talks, relationship work, the heaving around of emotional boulders. . .

Whenever I hear the term self acceptance, I usually think "Yeah, after I lose that weight, improve the cellulite, trim those thighs, meditat more often, be more fun"

I popose a new way.
Radical Self Acceptance . . . Simply luxurate in where you are right now.

From Succulent Wild Woman p. 111

In the last 48 hours, my boss (at Young Audiences) AND my principal (at The Little Academy) BOTH offered me extra hours (with corrosponding extra paychecks!). This should be a good thing . . . but . . .

I started this Minnesota adventure thinking that a part time job and a part time education would be perfect. (It was!) Somewhere along the line "part time job" turned into "Part-time-job-plus-a-teeny-tiny-little-office-gig". (And then "Teeny-tiny-little-office-gig" got a little bigger). (And now bigger!) (And now "part time job" has turned into "Part Time Job PLUS!") - - - the result being that if I accecpt both offers to extend hours I'll be working 43 hours a week!!!

I said "no thanks for now" to YA, and am trying to figure out how I can take on extra teaching (which I'd really like to do - - but I'd also like to stay in the symphony, and stay on with Free Arts, pass all my coursework, and spend long periods of time daydreaming, thinking, and imagining.

It's a nice problem to have! (But it's still a problem!)

Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you're thinking in order to make your thinking better.

-- Robert Paul

I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau

The Lowest Sound Ever Detected . . . .
is a B flat 57 octaves below middle C!! !! !! !! !!
Full Story here

A "Poetical Happening"
On Sept. 11th, join a "poetical happening" and free a book! Because a book is a symbol of freedom, sharing and tolerance. On Sept. 11th, 2003, take a book which is important for you, a book that has changed your vision on the world, write in it a dedication, a few words, an address, or a drawing, and free it.

Leave it on a roadside bench, a bus stop or in a cafe making it available for any unknown reader. In this way Sept. 11th will be not only an anniversary of tragedy. Together let us affect this global sorrow with creative and generous action!

A general mobilization from Bruxelles, Paris, Florence, San Francisco,Denver, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Whidbey Island and more! Almost all over the world readers, artists, writers, poets, and publishers of vision and heart will free books that are important for them on Thursday Sept. 11th, 2003.
Because a book is a symbol of freedom, sharing and tolerance!

This poetical happening originated with:
?ditions Maelstr?m - Bruxelles, ?ditions Le Veilleur - Paris,
Edizioni CityLights - Firenze, City Lights Publishers - San Francisco,
A.C. Biofficina - Roma - Leslie Aguillard, Denvern

Not a hard choice - The Very Persistant Grapper of Frip will be "freed" in a public city park totomorrow (unless it is raining!)

I slept and I dreamt that life is all joy.
I woke and I saw that life is all service.
I served and I saw that service is joy.
Mother Theresa

Lessons Learned The Hard Way
If one sings Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes several times with the Kindagarden classes; and then several times with both of the first grade classrooms; Then one should expect to be rather sore the next day.

Development Day!
Today, I moved my desk into the room Young Audiences is now calling "The Development Office." My title is offically "Communications Cordinator" but since I spend aprx. half my time writing drafts of grants, it seemed logical to move.

Soon (very soon) YA will hire a Development Director who will live with me in the Development Office (which makes me happy - 'cause right now, it's just me and it's kinda lonely!!)

I also began my first class of the semester, which is . . .
D E V E L O P M E N T!!

Dear Old Dad asks "Development of What?"
Julie smiles and replies, "Money!"
Dear Old Dad responds, "You can develop MONEY?? ?? ??"

Yep. And I seem to be pretty good at it.

The check for my $3,000 grant came today (yipee!!) (and we find out later this week if my $100,000 grant makes it to the list of finalists!)

I'm getting EXCELLENT development experience right now - and that's exciting. What organization wouldn't want to hire a person who can make money appear seemingly out of nowhere?? Development Directors are also VERY WELL paid -- However (much to dear old dad's dismay) I don't see myself becoming a well paid development director. (The more likely senario is becoming a poorly paid development director, volunteer cordinator, founder, director, accountant, manager, and general staff of a small struggling organization - - THAT is almost my dream position. (Which sort of distresses dear old dad - I wonder why??)

Diversity Does Not Exist?!

Maybe it's time to admit the obvious. We don't really care about diversity all that much in America, even though we talk about it a great deal. Maybe somewhere in this country there is a truly diverse neighborhood in which a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who lives next to an Asian short-order cook, who lives next to a professional golfer, who lives next to a postmodern-literature professor and a cardiovascular surgeon. But I have never been to or heard of that neighborhood. Instead, what I have seen all around the country is people making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves. [more]

The Article bothers me - more comentary coming after I've thought about it a bit . . .

Commentary Update
It's no secret that I desperately want to move out of suffocating suburbia.
I SAY it is because I want more diversity, but the truth is I want to be around people who are more like me!! (Not in an ethnic sense, but in a values way (The Cultural Creatives). That's what I love most about taking classes with Arts Admin. folks - - I get to be around the kid of people who think and value the same stuff I do (Trees, The Arts, Stories, NPR, great discussions, cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate . . . ).
It's an uncomfortable realization.
To truly value diversity - I guess I'd have to stay put in yuppie-ville - - YIKES!!

The End by Shel Silverstein

When you're dropping the curtain on a bad last act, what do you play for the finale?
(-:

1. I am listening (reading?) E.L. Doctrows book Cities of God on tape

2. Audio books are fabulous, there are few things in life better than having someone read to you

3. In the book, there is a German Philosopher who numbers all his thoughts
3a. The "numbered thought" chapter was one of the funniest things I've read (heard) in a long time
3b. Although I'm not as entertaining as the philosopher - I'm obviously stealing his idea.
3b1 But numbering thoughts really isn't an origianal idea in the first place

4. Last night I fell asleep while listening to the book
4a. Not because it was boring, but because I was exhausted
4b. It was nice to sleep again
4c. I'm still kind of tired, but I have about a month worth of sleep to catch up on.

5. The book itself is hardly a literary masterpiece - - but the guy reading it is incredibly talented
5a. I like all of his accents best!

6. Another character in the book, is thinking a lot of the same things I'm putting myself through
6a. But THAT dude is WAY more sure of himself than little 'ole me!

7. School started for kids on Tuesday!
7a. It's a lot more fun being a teacher when I actually get to TEACH!
7b. I'm glad inservices are over!
7c. It's nice to see my kids again!!!
7d. Don't get me started on the administration

8. Tonight is Symphony Rehearsal !!
8a. We are playing Flight of the Bumble Bee
8a1. It sounds more like Flight of the Crippled Elephant
8b. We are also playing The Lark
8b1. I Love The Lark!!!
8c. I have an awesome stand partner !!
8c1. She and I were the only ones to giggle about playing The Lark and Bumble Bee on the same concert
8c2. (Birds and Bees - - get it?!?!?!) (-:

9. The Symphony has been asked to be in a commercial desigend to get people to support the Arts
9a. We will play the part of "ORCHESTRA"
9b. It is a really silly commercial
9c. It will probably be filmed on a basketball court
9d. You won't actually HEAR the Dakota Valley Symphony in this commercial
9d1. They are going to use studio musicians for the auido
9d2. Partly because basketball court acoustics are less than ideal
9d3. Probably because Flight of the Crippled Elephant would be censored as patently offensive by all of the television networks!

10. I had macoroni and Cheese for dinner
10a. Not that anyone cares about my dinner, but I thought 10 was a nice good number for this list, and couldn't come up with anything else to say.
10b. That concludes my numbered thoughts for today.

The real object of education
is to have a man in the condition
of continually asking questions
-Mandell Creighton