I Will Remember You

Sheena's Remembrance post says it all.

Family members and loved ones who served, and who are serving; countrymen and countrywomen who have served, and are serving; I salute you.

Sunday's read: Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?

Yes, it's a long a**-article from today's New York Times, but it's a fascinating read: Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?

This is when I voiced a careless thought about whether there might be something negative about the lightning spread of technology, whether its convenience was somehow supplanting traditional values or practices. Chipchase raised his eyebrows and laid down his spoon. He sighed, making it clear that responding to me was going to require patience. “People can think, yeah, monks with cellphones, and tsk, tsk, and what is the world coming to?” he said. “But if you wanted to take phones away from anybody in this world who has them, they’d probably say: ‘You’re going to have to fight me for it. Are you going to take my sewer and water away too?’ And maybe you can’t put communication on the same level as running water, but some people would. And I think in some contexts, it’s quite viable as a fundamental right.” He paused a beat to let this sink in, then added, with just a touch of edge, “People once believed that people in other cultures might not benefit from having books either.”

. . .

Some of the drawings were basic pencil sketches; others were strikingly elaborate, with arrows pointing to different dream features, which were really just a way of pointing — I realized then — to the dreams themselves.

Jung and Tulusan said they’d found this everywhere, the phone representing what people are aspiring to. “It’s an easy way to see what’s important to them, what their challenges are,” Jung said. One Liberian refugee wanted to outfit a phone with a land-mine detector so that he could more safely return to his home village. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people sketched phones that could forecast the weather since they had no access to TV or radio. Muslims wanted G.P.S. devices to orient their prayers toward Mecca. Someone else drew a phone shaped like a water bottle, explaining that it could store precious drinking water and also float on the monsoon waters. In Jacarèzinho, a bustling favela in Rio, one designer drew a phone with an air-quality monitor. Several women sketched phones that would monitor cheating boyfriends and husbands. Another designed a “peace button” that would halt gunfire in the neighborhood with a single touch.

- Sara Corbett, contributing writer to the New York Times

I'm not just some chick

From Married to the Sea

But I am indeed "just some chick", who happens to blog. I'm not yet struggling with the "why am I here" question as Cap'n Noise is wont to do. It's an occasional ponder, yes.

I read about the couple - Pat and Cat - who shirked the possession thing and biked around the world. What Pat had to say has stuck with me:

"Pat says that, more than anything, biking around the world has changed what he values in life. Pat admits that when he was in his 30s his philosophy could be summed up as, "The one that dies with the most money wins." But, once he started making money, he realized he had to find a way to spend it. By the time he reached his 40s, his philosophy had become, "The one that dies with the most toys wins."

"So, I had the cars and the things," Pat explains, "and then, about that time, I took off out into the world on my own for a bike ride, and decided it was experiences; the one that dies with the most experiences wins."

As Pat was preparing for his trip with Catherine, he turned 60. He calls that birthday, and the change in mindset it brought, "a biggie." His philosophy became, "The one that dies with the most friends wins."

"I'm realizing what it's going to be in my 70s, and that's different. It will be 'The one with the most memories wins.' "

Whoa. Profound and simple stuff, here.

The one that dies with the most money wins.
Have never cottoned to this, nor like those who do.

The one that dies with the most toys wins.
Ok, I may like a few toys, but it's not my idea of "winning".

The one that dies with the most experiences wins.
I know a few who roll this way, and I roll with them occasionally.

The one that dies with the most friends wins.
I've been here for a while. Do I win points for figgering it out way before 60?

The one that dies with the most memories wins.
Too many studies verify this. Do things to keep your brain engaged, and participate in the world, and you're less at risk for many health problems. The friends, the experiences, the toys - they collude to bring the stuff of life.

Hoopers

Would have been nifty to see this.

"yuan" - “the concept that certain people are meant to find each other.” - Hoopers, by Michael Schulman, New Yorker Magazine, November 2007

Belonging

"It is not merely happiness we all seek. We seek some place where we belong. For the lucky few, we find it in childhood with our own families. But for most of us we spend our adult lives seeking that place or person or organization that makes us feel that we are important, that we matter, and that without us something would go undone and undoable. We all need to feel that we are irreplaceable." - Laurel K. Hamilton

Ain't dat da truf.

Mark Tonra's James

It's October: Do Your Part

Unless you're living under a rock, you know that October is breast cancer awareness month. I'm angling to score one of the kewl pink ties that the male Delta flight attendants are sporting.

As my 40th approaches, I know that regulah mammograms are ahead. Already had the baseline one a few years back. But regular self-exams are something I need to get more vigilant about, fer sure. Did you know that there's a service out there? Dinner with peeps last week in Atlanta served as my awareness vehicle, adding to the Videos You Should Know About (V.Y.S.K.A.):



Ok, we've already established that I suck. And not always in good ways. Sorry for the dearth in posts. Between stoopid busy work and many peeps in distress, I've been plumb out of time for any self-sustaining rituals. When stress has my plate full - good stress, bad stress - I find I start to lose myself. I'm not even aware it's happening. But it hit me on this second of many work travel weeks.

Hadn't listened to my iPod for, um, weeks? Turned it on whilst unpacking in schwanky Vegas hotel digs. Listened to the last iTunes purchase - the Aimee Mann release recommended by Sheena earlier this month (not bad, by the way). Then listened to a couple fave playlists.

A small, familiar yearning started to build. The music resonated with the bits of myself that I'd turned off to get through the travel, the work, the holding of others' hearts.

Music and words - reading, writing - are my prescription for life. Exposed to those drugs in infancy thanks to my 'rents, I'm a lifelong addict. Cutting myself off cold turkey really sucked. I'm slowly dosing and not yet up to regular intoxication levels, but I'm working on it.

Work and peep sitches still aren't really affording time for proper omphaloskepsis. But life ain't life without my fixes. Looking forward to live tunage action soon with Kimplicated and the return of The Old Ceremony to Atlanta, followed by a roadtrip to see Mike Doughty. In the meantime, my iPod won't be so neglected. The tune whose words struck yesterday: Gomez and "See the World" - an unsuck listen *and* and unsuck watch:

"And when all's been said and done
It's the things that are given, not won
Are the things that you earned"

Enjoy.

Serendipity: Walk This Way

Great piece by Hollis Gillespie this week in the 'loaf. Flies in the face o' stuff I dig by Scott Adams, but still. A great story.

" . . . I just think some tracks are simply meant to cross; they are set in place by some cosmic train conductor, who is telling us there is no that way. There is only this one, and you are goddamn welcome."