that's what i'm talking about!

check out this commentary in the new york times:

"the audacity of hopelessness."

i especially love this quote:

As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.

poetry

I was recently reminded, by katel, that i tend to think of myself as bad a poetry. something i am not always able to see the depth in. but then this blog by a nun that i really like referenced the below poem by mary oliver. during one of the first few months i spent in boston, i had the chance to hear mary read some of her poetry and talk a little bit about a collection that was being released at that time. it was just lovely. lovely.

she talked about these acres of woods she has behind her house. she wanders back there a lot (maybe she was wandering there when she wrote the below poem?). scattered throughout the trees, she has pencils stubbed in trees. just there. ready for her to have a good idea. because, she said, you have a good idea and it might leave you.

its this thing! where do good ideas come from? so often i feel like they come out of nowhere...like i can't trace them back to their origin. and if i don't write something down or don't take the time right then and there to think it through, it's going to leave me. this feeling like i have to grasp at an idea...like there really is no ownership over ideas.

Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver

dham bound

check it!  i head to dillingham the week of my birthday for work and get to stay a couple extra days to kick it with the hoopers of bristol bay.  wahoo!

so here's a funny thing about unalakleet.  i went back there this week for a community night--a chance to talk with folks about how adults can get involved in the lives of kids of their community.  so, i worked really hard to make sure i pronounced it correctly: un-a-la-kleet.  each syllable pronounced.  

but, of course, in unalakleet, its pronounced unle-kleet.  of course.  

even more complicatedly, in nearby st. michael and stebbins, its pronounced, un-a-la-kleet.  

ayay!  its all about local quirks.

on the road again on sunday--shishmaref, brevig mission & teller...assuming the weather goes my way from juneau:).