Simple living. Simply loving.

Electronics: They come from where?

2012-02-15T15:33:00.000-08:00

A couple of my friends linked to Mr. Daisey and The Apple Factory on Facebook recently, and one friend asked if I had heard it and said:

"Maybe you could do a blog post about "good" vs. "bad" companies: are there any that are responsible third-world employers? What does that even mean? Which major (tech) manufacturers don't use third-world labor?"

Well, I had not yet listened to the radio show, but I had heard of Foxconn and their policies. However, I am going to go ahead and listen to the show (which is about an hour long), and I will make notes as I go in case you don't have an hour to listen to such things. I am taking notes quickly, so let me know if you thing I mistyped something that was said. The notes are in purple, so you can skip them if you just want to see the punchline at the end: I will tell you my findings about "good" and "bad" companies and third-world labor.

Daisey loves his electronics, but he points out that he rarely thinks about how things are made. He says that he sort of assumed that robots made them. However, he learned that humans are involved in the process, and then he started to think.
Shenzhen (a city of over 8 million people) is the place in China where almost all our "crap" comes from, yet most of us don't know it's name. We know the stuff's from China, but we don't realize it usually comes from one specific city. Corporations made a deal with the Chinese to help create a modern China. Shenzhen is part of this deal.
Daisey plans to go to Foxconn which is a company that makes electronics for Apple, Dell, Samsung, Nokia, etc. He plans to stand at the main gate and talk to anybody who wants to talk to him. Journalists in Hong Kong tell him it's a bad idea, but he can't get any information through the normal channels.

When he got there, he saw that the plant is enormous - 430,000 workers. There are more than 20 cafeterias at the plant each one holding up to 10,000 people. (Try to visualize that!) There are guards at the gate who look "really pissed", and they carry guns.
Recently a journalist had been beaten for taking pictures near the Foxconn building.
Daisey was there right after the successive suicides at Foxconn. The nets to catch the suicidal people have been put into place.
A huge line of people show up to talk to him! They want to tell him the stories of their lives and workplace.

One lady cleans the screens of I-phones. She's 13 years old. Some of her friends have jobs at Foxconn too. Foxconn doesn't check ages. During an inspection, Foxconn puts the oldest workers on the inspected line.

Can Apple not know? A company obsessed with the details? Or are they just doing what we're all doing? Do they seek what they want to see?
His next plan was to visit a bunch of factories, pretend to be a businessman, and pretend to want to buy whatever factories are selling.

Each factory had gates and guards. Then big green lawns and huge lobbies. The executives come down "in a gaggle" and escort you to a conference room. Then they show you the factory floor. The floors are silent. Nobody is allowed to speak on the line. The only sound is bodies moving constantly.
Anything that can be made by hand is made by hand because the cost of labor is effectively zero.
The people he talked to worked 12 hour shifts standard, but often much longer than that. When a "hot new gadget" is coming out, they might work 16 hours or more a day for months. While he's in the country, a Foxconn worker died after working a 34-hour shift. That's not the only case of that happening.
Dormitories are cement cubes. About 12'x12' with 13-15 beds. There are cameras in the rooms and hallways.

The way Daisey sees everything is starting to change.
He notices that things are still "handmade", just not in the way that we always wish things were handmade.
Runs through his head: "Paranoia is not paranoia if they're actually out to get you." He goes to a restaurant to meet with a union interested in labor reform. These are secret because you can go to prison for years for being involved with one of these unions. He wants to hear what they have to say.

There is turmoil is Southern China. They helped organize a strike in Honda factories.
n-hexane is used to clean screens, and it's a known neurotoxin.
Peoples' joints have disintegrated by the time they are 26 of 27 from doing the same motion over and over and over. Then they are fired.
If you talk to the labor board about problems, you get put on the black list and you get fired.
The workers usually never get to see the final product on. A worker said, "It's a kind of magic," when he got to see an I-pad working.

His partner (Kathy, a Chinese translator) wonders if they are mentally ill. "Are they making it up?" Daisey's answer, "What do you think?" Kathy says, "No... It's just, you hear stories, but you do not think it is going to be so much, you know? It's just so much."

The following is the host's responses and further exploration (I didn't do a terrific job with this section, sorry):

The host did their best to fact check everything from the excerpt. The host tried to get Apple and Foxconn to respond, but they refused.

Only one real objection from Ian Spaulding, founder and managing director of INFACT Global Partners, which goes into Chinese factories and helps them meet social responsibility standards set by Western companies: There is child labor in China, but not in top-tier electronics factories. Daisey continues to claim that he met the workers. Not many, but some.

Apple found 91 under-aged workers in an audit of it's own factories. It helped the kids get back in school, and ended working with one supplier.

SACOM, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, based in Hong Kong claims:

The workers are forced to stand to improve productivity

10-20% overturn of workers every month

Workers leaving forces factories to make some improvements

Apples claims they are 100% transparent, but they refuse to come to the air

They have a code of conduct the suppliers must comply with, and Apple conducts audits
If audits don't go well, Apple claims to end work with supplier
Apple asks suppliers not to use n-hexane

Daisey is happy they do some things, but he is concerned that even in Apple's own reports, things aren't good. He thinks companies need to be held responsible, but they won't provide supplier names so that people can independently check up on things.
The question is, "Should we feel weird about buying these things made faraway?"

Many say no. Sometimes the factories are an improvement from other possibilities (including poverty).
People say that the factories provide employment opportunities in China, especially for young women. It takes people from the grimness of rice paddies to the grimness of Foxconn.
Sweatshops are bad, but they help fight poverty.
"Sweatshops are a phase countries go through."

Daisey just wants basic worker protection. Rotate people in jobs in factories. Inspect without announcement.

We fought for these things in our country to protect people. Then we just shipped the jobs to other countries to treat other people as poorly.

"Out of sight, out of mind..."

First of all, the ethics of electronics goes way beyond the serious labor issues. I just read The Story of Stuff recently, and I learned a lot about electronics. (I highly recommend that book, by the way!) The ethical issues begin with sourcing of materials which often damages natural resources in other countries and even forces people off of their land, and the issues end with the fact that electronics are often sent to China at the end of their lifetimes where they are recycled by workers who are not properly equipped to be dealing with the toxins and other nasties that the electronics are filled with. From beginning to end, and all the way throughout the process, the manufacturing of electronics is a messy process that maybe should probably turn some heads.

Now back to the original concern. I am similar to Daisey in that I think that we should care that people are not being treated well as they make all of our "crap". However, in my research, it is really hard to label any company as "good" or "bad". I have read that HP does a fair amount to try to be "good", but even HP is not close to perfect when it comes to helping the environment or people.

So what should we buy? There is no black-or-white answer here! However, first of all, buying used or refurbished is probably best for the environment and people. Additionally, buying fewer electronic gadgets in general is an option. If you are going to buy something new, though, you might want to check it out on the Good Guide which is an amazing site (recommended by the author of The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard). You can get the Good Guide to rank potential purchases by different issues (environment, society, health, etc).

Other sites that I found interesting:

Green Peace ranks electronics companies based on environmental concerns
Here is where HP discusses their supply chain policies. There website has a lot of information about their social and environmental policies, although it isn't easy to verify that they are maintained.
This post is a similar discussion to that of this blog post.
The Ethical Consumer site has information about audio/visual electronics, and they are similar to the Good Guide in purpose.

Good luck to all of you who are interested in being an ethical consumer! It's not always clear what the best decision is, I don't think, but I personally think that if we choose to work to improve things, things will get better. At the very least, let's not have the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality anymore. Let's keep this in the open and keep discussing things because we want to make the world better for everyone. Additionally, feel free to contact companies when you question their values. Let them know if you choose another company over theirs because companies will respond to consumer pressure.

Keeping the Baby, but throwing out the Women with the bathwater

2012-02-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

If you have been following the headlines much recently, you may have noticed that Susan G. Komen for the Cure has pulled its contributions to Planned Parenthood with the reasoning that they do not give money to agencies under investigation by Congress.

I know that a lot of anti-abortion people rejoice as Planned Parenthood loses funding. I understand that Planned Parenthood performs many of our nation's abortions, and I guess that the idea is that if they aren't funded as much, then people won't have as many abortions. I assume that the symbolism of crushing a huge abortion provider is also appreciated.

The thing that bothers me is that I haven't seen a single anti-abortion person or website acknowledge the fact that there will almost definitely be huge negative consequences for pulling funds from Planned Parenthood. The consequences, in my opinion, deserve consideration.

Here is a side rant. You can tell because it's in a new color. While I want abortion to be gone from the world, there are a few reasons why I really struggle to label myself as "pro-life" in the political sense. One of the reasons is that I feel like there is too much hypocrisy. The pro-life politicians are the same ones that do not seem to be worried about providing for our poor. They are the ones who often do not want the government to guarantee healthcare to everybody (instead letting the free market choose who gets healthcare, I assume). They are the ones who are more likely to jump at going to war. They are the ones more likely to support capital punishment. It is fairly convenient to outlaw abortion. It is incredibly inconvenient to be willing to give up our resources to help those who need it. If I am going to jump on the "pro-life" train, I need to know that the train is not only concerned about the rights of the baby before it's born, but also the rights and health of the baby (and mother!) throughout life. Until then, I continue to stand against abortion, but I view it as a cause that is intermingled with other causes that need to simultaneously be addressed if I say I believe in the value of all life. Which I find that I do!

*ahem* Back to my main post. The problem is that Planned Parenthood does more than provide abortions. It is a huge provider of birth control, cancer screenings, preventative education, STD treatment, menopause treatment, etc. The kicker? 75% of its clients have incomes at or below 150% of the federal poverty level. (According to Wikipedia.) This means that millions of poor women are using the Planned Parenthood facilities to participate in potentially life-saving activities. Additionally, other services provided (like the STD treatment) are generally just improving the quality of life of the individual receiving treatment.

So why is no anti-abortion person talking about the fact that the defunding of Planned Parenthood will likely cause poor women to be less likely to receive the care that they need? Why are we praising God that Susan G. Komen is removing its funding for cancer screenings? Doesn't this appear to be callous? Isn't there more to be talked about here?

I think babies are incredibly important people, but I don't want to just keep the babies and throw out the women with the bath water.

Note: As I am about to publish this, I found that Susan G. Komen has decided to continue providing Planned Parenthood the grant money to provide cancer screenings and preventative education. I hope that we can all agree to celebrate the lives that hopefully will be saved or bettered by the treatments provided through this grant money!

Second Note: Regarding the investigation... I understand that if Planned Parenthood is illegally using federal funds then, from my understanding, it forfeits the right to those funds. That is a separate issue.

Awesome breakfast

2012-01-24T17:51:00.000-08:00

Pear-berry crisp. It's quick, it's easy, it's healthy, and it's delicious. Therefore, it's an awesome breakfast in my book. I have been using pears and marionberries since we have a lot frozen from last summer and they aren't Matthew's favorites. I think it would be delicious with any mixture of berries, pears, peaches, or apples that sound appealing at the time.

How to make Pear-berry Crisp
1) Fill some sort of bakeware mostly full with fruit. Stir in some cinnamon and/or ginger to taste. If you have super juicy fruit, you might want to toss a bit of cornstarch in to keep it from being too runny.

2) In a bowl, mix together about a cup of quick oats, around 1/4-1/3 of a cup of oat flour, and about 1/2 tsp of cinnamon. Use your fingers to combine with 1 Tbsp of butter until the butter has been combined fairly evenly. Pour the mixture on top of the fruit in the bakeware.

3) Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until nice and hot. This will depend on your choice of bakeware! A bread pan will probably take 30-40 minutes.

My New Rest of the Year Resolution

2012-01-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

New Years' Resolutions? Overrated! January 21st is a great day to make a resolution. Haha!

Today I decided that I want to read more. My "Books I Want to Read" pins on Pinterest are just growing at an unsustainable rate with my current reading habits! The books all look so amazing, though...

MUST READ ALL THE BOOKS!

Therefore, my New Rest of the Year Resolution of today is to read books for half an hour a day.

And if a nap occurs directly after reading... so be it.

Some Chocolate Love

2012-01-21T12:56:00.000-08:00

Do you think that chocolate is one of God's gifts to humankind? I can't argue with you there. It's delicious and apparently is even considered good for you when you eat it in the form of dark chocolate!

Unfortunately, the way that cocoa is grown and sourced is currently not one of God's gifts. There is a huge problem with child labor and even slavery in the industry. Beyond retaining people against their will, the form of slavery used includes physical violence including whipping.

These people are real people. I quote from Food Is Power:

"Drissa, a recently freed cocoa slave who had never even tasted chocolate, experienced similar circumstances and when asked what he would tell the people who eat chocolate made from slave labor, he replied that the people enjoyed something that he suffered to make, adding: 'When people eat chocolate they are eating my flesh.'"

There is a lot more information about the conditions and reality of cocoa farming at the same page on Food Is Power.

The good news is that there are things that you can do to try to avoid this chocolate! Perhaps the best way would be to look for Fair Trade certified chocolate. (While there are imperfections in any certification, it does provide accountability.)
There is a more comprehensive description about how to find slave-free chocolate at this site, and it even includes a list of Slave-Free chocolates to choose from! If you find you really get into the issue, you can let your favorite chocolate companies know that you do not approve of slave labor in the acquisition of cocoa products. If you can honestly say that you will avoid buying their chocolate until they change their policies, that provides a good consumer pressure on the company.

As you buy some chocolate to say "I love you" to people this year at Valentine's Day, you can also say "I love you" to some people in Africa by getting slave-free chocolate. How cool is that?!

Daily Decisions: Some CSA action

2012-01-20T17:10:00.000-08:00

Recently Matthew and I bought a share in a local CSA. The acronym CSA, in case you are unaware, stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Generally, you will purchase a share from a farm before the harvest season, and they will provide you boxes of fruits and veggies (or possibly honey, eggs, etc. depending on the type of share you are buying) during the harvest season. The benefit to this approach is that it supplies farmers with the money that they need when they need it. The risk to the buyer is that crops aren't guaranteed; however, while one crop might not come in, others almost definitely will because our farmers know what they are doing! Regardless, the money goes to a local family to support them while they do a hugely important job: Providing good, healthy food to people!

One thing that could be good or bad depending on how you see things is that you don't control what produce comes into your home any given week. I personally try to cook with the seasons anyway, and I like figuring out what to cook based on what's available, so to me it is an exciting challenge!

The farm that we picked is Sun Gold Farm which is in Forest Grove, OR (just two suburbs west of us... a hop skip away!). One reason that we picked this farm is the growing practices that they use (sustainable, people-friendly, earth-friendly), and another is the fact that we can pick up the food box at the Farmer's Market that is just half a mile away from Matthew's work (about 1.2 miles from our apartment). If I'm teaching Wednesday nights during the season, Matthew can pick it up right after work. Otherwise, I can go up to pick it up and meet up with Matthew on his way home. Plus, if we want any specific produce that doesn't come with the food box, we can pick it up while at the Farmers' Market. Perfect!

If you are interested in supporting a local farm through a CSA program, you can visit the Local Harvest site to find one in your area!

God Grew Tired of Us

2012-01-16T16:13:00.000-08:00

If you are into watching documentaries, God Grew Tired of Us is a really moving one that is worth watching. It is a bit old (released in 2006), and the genocidal conflict between the north and the south of Sudan was declared finished with a treaty in 2005. However, tension remains in Sudan (you may have heard of the recent war/genocide in Darfur). In fact, according to a New York Times article linked from Genocide Watch, early in 2012 there was a massacre in South Sudan that left 3,000 killed. To make a connection in our US minds, this is just about the exact same number as the count given for the death toll from the 9-11 attacks (2,996 including the 19 hijackers according to Wikipedia). And this is just the most recent attack in Sudan in a conflict that dates back to at least the 1980s!

In addition to gaining some information about the conflict and the consequences for the people, it is amazing to watch pastoral Sudanese be introduced to what we take for granted: electricity, abundant food, and showers. It also gave me a glimpse into how different our cultures are, and it made me feel like we could learn a lot from each other!

The story is not for the faint-of-heart: The images of refugees are heartbreaking. However, I cried out of happiness, too, as there were happy endings for some of the individuals' stories.

Not just relevant to the past: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2012-01-16T09:36:00.000-08:00

On this day, many people in our nation get a day off from school or work in honor of someone that our nation has decided is a hero worth honoring. We know that Dr. King was a huge force that pushed the civil rights movement to a new level. However, I think that if he visited our nation today, he would probably not think that he could rest. I believe that he would continue to fight for the underdogs in the system since the civil rights movement did not immediately create balance, and I learned today that he was a activist for the poor as well.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Indeed, there was more to Dr. King than we commemorate! While he was probably speaking out against spending our resources in Vietnam (a war which he opposed) when he said this, would he feel much different about the endless wars that we have been in since his untimely passing? How would he feel about how we treat those in poverty today? Would he think that we are sufficiently lifting them up?

I don't believe that Dr. King's goals for the US must be your goals. I don't believe that he was a perfect man with all the right ideas. However, from what I have heard, I do believe that he was a hero, and I respect him. As such, I think that it is worth considering his ideas outside of the realm of civil rights. So, as you go about your day, perhaps you can take a few moments to honor our hero by asking yourself what you are called to do to uplift those who need uplifting.

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

May we live unselfish lives filled with love. I leave you with a favorite quotation of mine:

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Because things are complicated...

2012-01-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

... I write this post. I reposted this meme on Facebook yesterday:

I do not know where this image originally came from! I found it here,
but they do not state where they got it from.

I then explained what I thought when I saw it:

"I suppose that some explanation would be good, too. I'm not positive what was intended by these photos, but what I see is the irony of people thanking God for food that was provided to them (so cheaply!) at the expense of the underpaid, overworked workers. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it though, and perhaps it's just making the point that we should be grateful for our farmworkers (especially since they don't get paid much... and they are part of the reason food is so cheap...)
I stand by the point of irony, though."

I think that some people may have interpreted my words as saying that the family was conscious at the time of thanking God that their food was likely provided by workers that were, in some peoples' opinions, unfairly treated. That honestly wasn't what was happening in my mind. I was just noticing that in our system, we end up regularly thanking God for His provision, and to me something is wrong with this because it is hard for me to say that "God's provision" is food provided by workers in horrible conditions. Minus the provision of the sun, the rain, and the beauty of growing plants, I do not see a lot of God in our food system. This is where I find unfortunate irony.

Before I continue, I want people to realize that I am not suggesting that families starve before buying unfairly provided food. Life is not black and white. We all have our own decisions to make and battles to fight.

Now, here is where I confess that I draw these conclusions on my own. There is nothing in the Bible saying that the US food system is broken. There is nothing stating how much farm workers should make. There is nothing stating how often farm workers should get breaks. There is nothing stating how much compensation they should get when they get injured doing their jobs. It is not even a church teaching that leads me to my conclusions. I have not yet found a church who openly speaks about these things. It is my own personal convictions that lead me to want others to know more about our system so that they can make their decisions based on knowledge. I do not claim to be God's voice although I believe that He is the root of my passion for these issues. If you disagree with me, that is certainly your right. I'm human. It's a humble position. I could be wrong.

If I am honest, though, I do personally believe that Christians are sorely lacking when it comes to responding to issues of social justice. I think that this happens partially because the issues are very complicated and not very self-apparent. When you buy green beans at the store, you probably don't even think about where it came from or who picked it. This isn't because you are a bad person, but it is because it is not how our culture works. However, I also believe this happens because Christians do not separate themselves from the rest of culture when it comes to consumer habits. While we say that "whatever we do, whether in word or deed, we do it for the glory of God" (or at least make it our goal), I think that somehow our consumer decisions are often made based off of the black and white ethical guide of, "Can I afford it or not?" While certainly it is good to avoid debt if possible, I believe that a lot more should go into the decision to purchase almost any sort of item. Food is certainly one example. Another example that has gone painfully ignored is the use of sweatshops around the world to create almost all of the consumer goods that we buy: clothing, toys, electronics, etc. Unlike our food system, I do believe that it is widespread knowledge that sweatshops are a problem, but I do not observe that Christians have, in my opinion, reacted accordingly.

I know I am not perfect. I do try to buy food from farmers making fair wages. I do this by trying to buy most things from local farms and looking for the fair trade certification. I buy what I can from the co-op in Corvallis since I know they research the origins of products as much as they can. However, there is a chance that some of my food still comes from poorly treated workers. I also try to avoid sweatshop labor by buying almost everything used. However, even in the last year I couldn't find a used soap dispenser (which I wanted to buy to use for homemade tooth soap so that we could stop buying toothpaste), so I ended up buying a new one. I looked, and it had the typical "Made in China" sticker, and I felt the pang of guilt, praying that the workers who made it were treated well and apologizing if they weren't. I know I am not perfect.

It is with humbleness that I ask you to weigh my words in your heart and decide for yourself whether or not these are problems that you are called to address in your life. I don't expect anybody will be perfect, but I think that with God we can change the world just by trying to do right! I personally believe that our government can be used to effect positive change as well, and I encourage you to use your voice in our democracy. However, I think it would be huge and beautiful if we all work to put our money in positive places.

Because things are complicated... I ask you to consider my words and ideas.
Because things are complicated... I come to you humbly. I could be wrong.
Because things are complicated... I hope to give and receive grace if and when we disagree.

Thank you for all of you who take the time to read my words on this blog. I hope that I generally come across as informative and maybe occasionally inspiring rather than judgmental and critical. I love you all!

Animals: The feathered and the furry

2012-01-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

Recently some friends posted a picture of an abused dog on Facebook. In my opinion, animal abuse is horrible. To me, it seems bizarre to needlessly, purposely inflict trauma and pain upon a living creature. I think that most people probably agree with that. This always stirs in me a question: Then why are so many people not disturbed by how the animals that provide them food are treated? The same people furrowing their brows about a dog in pain may easily have eaten eggs from chickens that were debeaked or beef from a cow skinned alive during slaughter. There is a disconnect in my mind, so I wanted to present some information to hopefully help bridge the gap. First, here are some pictures:

From Alliance for Natural Health USA.

Here are some of your cage-free laying hens. From Powered by Produce.

Chickens aren't meant to live like this, and it stresses them out. To keep them
from attacking each other, they debeak them. From Powered by Produce.

It's not just chickens...
Picture from eutrophication&amphypoxia.

Cows too...
Picture from Kitchen Stewardship

After living a stressful life, these animals don't always even get to enter death peacefully. In a book that I read (I apologize, I don't remember which one although it was likely Fast Food Nation or Food Inc.), I learned that animals are sometimes skinned alive and, if things don't go quite right, they can even be skinned while conscious. Talk about torturous. This is also incredibly dangerous for the worker skinning the animal for obvious emotional reasons but also because the heavy, flailing animals can hurt the human.

How do you avoid all of this? That's a great question. While "organic", "free range", and "cage free" labels may sound like the animals producing your eggs, dairy and meat lived happy lives, that's not necessarily so. I would look up the farm, talk to the store that you are buying the products from, and/or buy directly from a farmer that you trust. For more on eggs, here is a good source (there is a great table on Pages 14 and 15 that show you how tricky certifications can be!). It is helpful to look up certifications so that you know what each one guarantees.

It is likely that a good source of animal products will be more expensive, so you might find that you need to cut back on these products to stay within your food budget. I've mentioned before that Matthew and I eat an almost exclusively vegetarian diet, and this is why. For us, meat was the easiest animal product to cut back on because there are a bunch of amazing vegetarian recipes out there! You can eat a bean and cheese burrito, enchiladas, various soups, vegetarian chili, lasagna, etc. A lot of the meals that you eat can be turned into vegetarian meals. If you consider eating more vegetarian foods or vegan foods, just make sure that you look up some information about how to make sure you are getting the nutrients you need. It's totally doable though, and a vegetarian/vegan diet can lend to a super healthy life as long as you are grabbing whole foods instead of processed stuff. If you need any more motivation: I gained a bit of weight near the end of my undergrad career, but I have lost fifteen to twenty pounds in the last year and a half to two years. I'm smaller than I was in high school, and I feel good, too. I also tend to move a lot (partially because I avoid our car like the plague, but that's a different story), but I'm pretty sure that diet plays a large part in my weight and health.

Any thoughts about why people are not concerned about animal welfare when it comes to animals providing our food? Do you think people don't know about it? Are we just so used to seeing animals crammed together that it seems normal now instead of cruel? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

And then POOF I was gone!

2012-01-13T18:09:00.000-08:00

I actually didn't go anywhere. I just feel like I have been gone from the blogging world for awhile. The last couple weeks I prepared to begin teaching and then began teaching two classes at Portland Community College. I tend to obsess and freak out about new things. Part of the reason that I gave up the idea of being a high school teacher is because there just wasn't enough time in the day for me to do enough that I felt like I had done my job and done it well while I was student teaching. I would work 12 to 14 hours a day and still feel like I was barely hanging in there. I also cried a lot. However, part-time teaching is TERRIFIC because it leaves me with plenty of time to prepare and still have time to live the rest of my life! I probably am working about half-time right now based on the number of hours that I put in, but I can see how the time will decrease if I reteach any of these courses. For now, I figure that the extra time that I put in is just part of my contribution to society.

Here are my thoughts so far:

1) Everybody I have worked with so far has been super nice. I have talked to and emailed a fair number of people during the new hire process, and I have really appreciated how genuinely friendly people have been!

2) Getting put into a bureaucratic system isn't particularly fun. It takes a lot of time to fix a few mistakes made along the way. At least everybody is nice while calling and emailing people, though!

3) I hate lesson planning. It gives me the biggest feelings of inadequacy. I feel incapable of making the best lesson plan. I want to plan time for group work, but I can't seem to lecture for a short enough time to get that to happen. I want to give them more time to work problems on their own during class, too, but that hasn't happened... yet. The first week is crazy though. We'll see.

4) Teaching is fun. As soon as I get over the initial shock of having 30 people I don't know staring at me, I start to really enjoy doing my job. I don't know how or why, but when I'm teaching I feel casual, relaxed, and in a groove of mathiness. I occasionally make stupid jokes, and the students laugh at my ridiculousness. I love watching peoples' faces to see that they are understanding what's going on. (Although, it's a bit painful to see panic on faces occasionally... I think some of my students probably have my personality!)

5) Students are generally great. I have students from all over the board from straight out of high school to coming back to college after having dropped out with a 7th grade education level. So far, they have all been friendly to me. Some have been so kind as to take the time to let me know that they are happy with how things are going so far. I also have students who are honest enough to tell me that they are horrified about the speed of the class. It's really nice to have students who are willing to honestly communicate.

As a student teacher and then as a TA, my strengths and weaknesses became clear to me. I feel like I am really good at creating a good classroom atmosphere. My students (in the past and this term) have told me that they like that I am enthusiastic, relaxed, not arrogant, not intimidating, and laid-back. It makes me happy to know that my class is probably not one that they dread. I also appreciate that I have a chance for ten weeks to let people know that someone cares about them and believes in their ability to be successful.

My weaknesses, as hinted at above, are in figuring out exactly how to plan "the most effective" lesson plan. I got better at this during my six terms as a TA, though, and I expect that I will gradually figure things out again in this situation.

There you have it. Now you know where my mind has been the last couple of weeks. I have other blog post ideas that occasionally pop to the surface of my head, so we'll see what comes of them.

I hope you all are enjoying January! Isn't it nice that the sun now sets after 5pm again? I'm loving the changes as we head toward spring!

Karen's Creed of 2012

2012-01-06T12:32:00.001-08:00

As I consider the last year or two, I realize that I have learned a ridiculous amount about our world, and I have been madly working to change my life in light of my discoveries. As we start a new year, I think I want to just write a post that summarizes where I am at this point in time. Obligatory Note: My goal isn't to convince you that my beliefs are right and yours are wrong.

I do believe that my primary purpose on this planet is my spirituality which first involves how I relate to God and second involves how I relate to other humans. I believe that God loves all people and all creation, and I believe that He sent Jesus to our little planet to show how much He loves us. I believe Jesus was a great man giving a wonderful example of how to treat people, and I also believe that Jesus was and is God with us. I believe that God miraculously and mysteriously invites all of us into a fulfilling relationship with Him through Jesus. (I also believe that I don't understand fully how this works or why it works this way!) I believe that it is important for me to have this relationship with God so that we can use His infinite love and power to decrease world suck levels because it's just so hard to do it on my own. I believe that the Kingdom of God is here, and I can bring it to people if I love them with God's love.

I believe that I am called to respect and love those around me when they don't agree with my opinionated self! I am grateful that I am allowed to speak freely, but I believe that God makes me responsible to pour out love and grace generously on those in my life, not to generate a list of people that I make it my project to "save".

I believe that through God I am motivated to be a positive force in the world. I believe that my life is not my own but God's and others', and as a result I work to decrease the amount of time I spend striving to bring about my own gain. However, I believe that there is a lot of joy in decreasing the amount of time I spend focusing on myself. There are also challenges, fun times, friendships, fulfilling moments, and painful moments along the road.

I regretfully believe that I live in an overly selfish, self-absorbed culture that focuses on current gains over future losses. As such, I work to put my life in order so that the way I live does not harm future generations. Sometimes I fail, but I find joy in the changes in my life.

I believe that I live in a fast-paced culture that is too busy to eat nourishing foods, spend time with family and friends, and relax. As such, I work to put my life in order so that I have time to live fully.

I believe that I am called to fight for our wonderful planet. I believe Earth was a gift from God that we are supposed to care for so that it can continue to provide for us and delight us. I believe that we have gotten off-track and out-of-control. I believe in promoting inner peace and gratitude instead of materialism. I believe in promoting sustainable agriculture and consumerism practices. I believe that humans are happier when there is balance.

I believe that I am called to fight for social justice. I feel strongly about my actions matching my words, so I research products and do my best to buy products that were not made by underpaid, overworked workers in dangerous conditions.

I believe that my life, family, friends, job status, and finances are all gifts from God. As such, I am humbled because I know that we are blessed. Instead of searching for material wealth in my life, I hope that I can successfully invest my time and finances back into the world to bring good changes.

I believe that every decision I make affect others both now and in the future. As such, I try to make wise decisions.

I believe in giving grace as we all stumble about on this confusing and often seemingly cold planet.

I believe in receiving grace from God even as I regularly fail to give it.

As I go into 2012, I pray for a year of positive change!

A winter dinner and a pile o' worms

2012-01-06T12:30:00.000-08:00

Some dinners are just worth sharing. This is a kale salad, sauteed crimini mushrooms
and sunchokes, an orange, and a homemade whole wheat roll with strawberry freezer
jam made last summer. Simple and yummy!

I haven't said much about my worm bin since I got it. In short, the worms seem to be
pretty happy and productive! We produce too many plant scraps to throw all
of them in the bin, but we do what we can. Hopefully in the not-too-distant
future we'll have a home with a yard and a compost bin... We'll see.

Local Eats - Sunchokes with Crimini Mushrooms

2011-12-28T12:49:00.000-08:00

It's winter, and the veggies at the store seem to be coming from California more and more often. Living in northwest Oregon, I prefer to buy foods grown in Oregon and Washington. Enter in the sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) and mushrooms!

As a kid, when my mom made artichokes, I remember digging through the leaves with great anticipation for the best part of the artichoke: the heart. What does that have to do with sunchokes? Sunchokes taste a whole lot like the heart of an artichoke. YUM.

I more or less used this recipe when cooking yesterday. I only used olive oil, sunchokes, and crimini mushrooms though, and it was really good.

If you like artichoke hearts, you should really give it a try! It's easy and delicious!

A Cactus Christmas

2011-12-28T12:40:00.000-08:00

I've been gone for awhile because Matthew and I were in Arizona this year to celebrate Christmas with my family. We're back now, and I will share a few pictures with you for fun.

Another quilt!

2011-12-17T17:29:00.000-08:00

Here's the quilt that I just finished for Matthew's first cousin once removed! It's fun! It's pink! :)

I link to the instructions in this post.

snapshot of a winter day

2011-12-13T18:09:00.000-08:00

There's no time like winter to sew a quilt! When finished, this quilt is going to go to a very lovely three-year-old on Matthew's side of the family. I am hoping that she will get years of snuggles and cuddles under this colorful blanket. It is really special, too, because the fabric for the blocks came from some of her old clothing that her mom saved.

This has been a cold, dry winter so far. We have had no rain this month so far, but we have had an abundance of winter sunshine. While most of our apartment does not get any direct sunlight this time of year, between 2pm and 3pm, if I open the blinds in the bedroom, I can see a patch of sunlight on the wall. I love seeing light on walls. During last summer, I would lie on the bed and lazily watch the shadows of the maple leaves dancing on our bedroom wall. While there was no dancing on the wall today, I still welcome the light.

A partly cloudy winter day lends itself well to a spectacular winter sunset. The photos speak for themselves!

The Obsession with "New"

2011-12-12T21:10:00.000-08:00

In my experience, when there is a drive for toys, clothes, etc. to help families, there is often a mandate that donations be new items. I understand that it is not as sacrificial or desirable to give someone else your worn out clothing or half-broken toys. I also understand that people are requiring this out of a good heart because they feel like since they don't give used gifts to their own families and friends, why should other families have to get used gifts?

It's just that I think the question should be, "Why shouldn't I give already-been-loved gifts to my family and friends?" The answer in our household is, "No reason. Do it."

For this reason, it actually becomes a very odd experience to want to give items to people in need and to be told that I have to buy new items. Here are some thoughts that end up going through my head:

"I rarely buy anything new... period."

"We can't always all have new things. There is so much stuff already floating around needing a good home to use it up. By always demanding new, we are effectively taking away at least some of ability for future generations to have the resources and ability to make their own new products."

"If I am buying something new, I feel led to research my item to buy something that was made in a way that tried to avoid harming the environment and did not exploit human workers."

"New things cost a lot. If a family needs hand towels, why can't I buy a few adorable, gently-used towels at a thrift shop for way less money? Then I can use the rest of the money to do more to help people out."

I love that people want to meet others' real needs, and if you have ever done so then awesome! If done out of compassion and generosity, then your good heart is admirable. I'm just saying: Here's for creating a culture that views used goods as valuable and equally awesome instead of "cheap" and of poor taste. After all, I'm not too good for something someone else no longer wanted/needed... Are you?

Solar Lighting

2011-12-10T10:34:00.001-08:00

While solar lighting doesn't make a lot of sense to me right now as I look outside at a gray, cloudy day, it does make all kinds of sense to people in sub-Saharan Africa. This post talks about how much sense it makes when compared to the alternative -- often kerosene. It also make sense because it can free up a significant portion of a person's income!

In case the term "solar light" is new to you, the light is simply a lamp that contains a rechargeable battery and is charged by a photovoltaic panel (like those you see on roofs, only little).

After considering the list of projects, Matthew and I found Solar Sister to be the one that most caught our attention (although there are a lot of other wonderful projects...) What appealed to us was the fact that a donation would provide the means for a woman to gain income through the sales of these solar lights. It reminded us of Kiva. (Speaking of which, have you set up an account at www.kiva.org yet? Because it's awesome. Seriously.)

Legislation-palooza

2011-12-09T08:27:00.001-08:00

Today when I got on the computer, I was immediately bombarded with news of some bills that made me go, "Cool!" Now, maybe these bills aren't perfect, but they are all things I personally have been hoping that congress would do something about.

Here is a description of a bill that would protect farmers from the current ramifications of genetically engineered (GE) seed technology. In short, patents have made it so that certain big corporations (*cough* Monsanto *cough*) have been able to commit what I consider heinous crimes against farmers. For example, farmers who did not plant Monsanto's GE seeds can get sued for exorbitant amounts if some of that seed ends up in their supply when they save their seed at the end of the season. (This happens when other farmers in the area have GE crops. Cross-pollination occurs.) Small farmers have been going bankrupt as a result. I've been hoping for legislation to stop this.

Here is a description of a bill that would mandate that GE foods are labelled in stores. Americans polled have said they'd like to know, and there are also health safety issues when people eat GE foods. For example, if you are allergic to a food, and you eat another food that has been given genes from the food you're allergic to, you might possibly have an allergic reaction to a food you'd normally be OK with.

Next is a bill that would help to prevent plants the have been engineered to produce substances (human or veterinary drugs, biologic, industrial, or research chemicals, or enzymes) from being able to let loose this new DNA into other crops or the wild.

Finally, here is a proposed constitutional amendment that would deny personhood to corporations.

Will any of these things pass? I have no clue. I do expect that they will be lobbied against with full force. They all involve corporations losing power and, consequentially, possibly money. However, what is good for corporations isn't necessarily what's good for the people of the US, and the government is supposed to do what's good and right for the people.

If you are interested in any of these issues, feel free to look up more about them and then maybe consider writing to your representatives in congress.

Bike excitement

2011-12-03T15:16:00.001-08:00

Remember my grand adventure last month that involved me hauling a bazillion pounds of groceries on my back and handlebars? I promised that I'd set up a rear cargo rack, and I did! Well, Matthew and I did. He helped.

This was a learning experience for me, too. At first I went to Fred Meyer to raid their biking section, and the only rear cargo rack that they had was this. I naively assumed that since it was all they had, it must be decent. No. False. Bad. It was a piece of garbage that only held value in being a great device to whack against your head after you realize what a stupid purchase it was. While it does not say so, it doesn't fit all bikes, and even if it did fit mine, it would have been mostly hidden under the seat. Fortunately, I returned it, and no great harm was done.

Next I used the powers of Amazon.com to find a good rear bike rack. This is the one. The reviews were super helpful, and it sounded perfect for me. And it is. The one thing I had to take care of was procuring little pieces of hardware because I don't have eyelets on my seat stays (gosh, I sound so knowledgeable). I ended up going to a bike shop, explaining my problem, and they handed me what I needed (minus a few nuts that Matthew easily picked up at his work). In retrospect, I probably could have asked them to help me find a cargo rack, but I still am happy that Amazon helped me know what I was getting through all of the good reviews. Sometimes you just need to know something is good.

As you can see, the cargo rack was needed so that I could attach an egg crate to it. I found this green crate at Goodwill for $2 (woo!), and then we bought some bungee cords to do some ninja stabilization moves. And now it is stable. And holding a heavy bag of groceries. And my back doesn't hurt.

So there you have it. Bike excitement.

What I'm thankful for...

2011-12-02T09:18:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving came and went, but I have really been feeling like a "thanksgiving" post would be good. I give thanks because I'm grateful to God, and I give thanks because it is through finding pleasure in my life that I find contentment that helps me to not needlessly and tirelessly strive for more.

I am thankful for Matthew and I both finishing our Master's degrees last June. What an exciting time!

I am thankful that Matthew got a job only a few months after graduation. In fact, it was really a blessing to have a final summer break together even if it was spent somewhat in anticipation.

I am grateful that Matthew got a job in the Pacific Northwest, and even in Oregon. We could have had to go much farther.

I am thankful that I lived in a place (Corvallis) that I loved enough to still sorely miss even after I have been away from it for almost three months. I miss my friends there, but I also sincerely miss the town itself. The streets, the parks, the co-op, the trees... everything.

I am grateful that I have had a chance to explore a new area. It is pretty out here (once you ignore all the cars...), and it is truly a lovely place for being a suburb of a large city. I think that since we live near a bunch of marshy areas we get a lot of wildlife that we didn't see in Corvallis. I love seeing an occasional heron and huge flocks of ducks and geese. I also really like the treefrogs that make their ridiculous croaking sounds outside of our windows.

I am thankful that I will be teaching at Portland Community College next term. While I admittedly have the inward anxiety that I for some reason will not be able to handle things or do a "good enough" job, I mostly am excited to work with two classes of math students.

I am also grateful for all of the experiences that I have had that have helped prepare me to teach!

I am thankful that I got to see my parents and brother a fair amount last summer, and I am happy that we get to spend Christmas together this year.

I am thankful for always having more than enough of what I need.

I am thankful that God has given me a chance to experience more freedom and love as I continue to learn to be less selfish and to love others more.

I am grateful for public libraries and the Internet because I have had a chance to read so many interesting things and learn so much now that I'm not doing homework and studying all of the time.

I am thankful that our new apartment has big windows and more of them than a typical one-bedroom apartment... I love the natural light...

I am thankful for Facebook because it is taking time for me to meet people and get a support group up here, and I feel like I am blessed to have some support through that medium while I work and wait to see what friendships are waiting for me up here.

I am of course thankful for my dear husband who is a rock of support for me. He celebrates for and with me, he loves me even (and maybe especially) when I'm being crazy or silly, he has been my biggest supporter as I change the very way we live as I work to live sustainably, he has learned that I can't talk when I'm crying, and he patiently waits until I can talk again... even when he's painfully unsure about why in the world I'm crying again. While he has his own quirks and faults, he is the most patient, loving, and supportive man that I can imagine, and I'm grateful that every day he chooses to continue loving me.

Finally, I am thankful to God for blessing me more than I deserve, patiently dealing with me as I doubt and question and work to figure things out, and loving me with a love that I can't even really understand.

What's going on out there...

2011-12-02T08:27:00.001-08:00

I've been reading and listening to some interesting things this week, so I thought I'd share some of them here.

First up is an article about how large multinational corporations are marketing their junk food products to new people... the poor and malnourished around the world. It really does bother me that corporations are willing to grow at the expense of the health and well-being of people. Want to know what you can do to help? My personal method is to do my best to avoid products from large companies unless I figure out that they're a good company. Every time I spend money, I view it as a vote in my mostly capitalistic economy. If you want something else to do, I think that it might also be good to write to corporations to let them know how you feel and why you will not buy their product.

The next article discusses the future of global warming and some geoengineering ideas of how to combat it. It really scares me to have humans try to play with the atmosphere, clouds, etc to try to affect our climate. I totally understand why they are considering these ideas, and I respect them for acknowledging that this would be a last ditch attempt to buy more time for humanity to stop destroying our home (you know, Earth), but I think that such a large-scale action that cannot really be tested in advance could also be devastating. The idea of temperatures rising 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 90 years is overwhelming, too. I know I will only be around so long, but I'd really like for my children and grandchildren to be able to live a peaceful life and enjoy our beautiful planet. (To Christians who believe that Jesus will return and make it all better before any of this happens, I must say this: You don't know that. We have no guarantee that we won't destroy much of our population in the years to come. God loves us, but He certainly is not obligated to miraculously save us from our own selfish actions, right?) Want to know what you can do? Take some time to learn about what's going on. Be willing to change yourself. Be willing to speak out at the political level. Again, vote with your money. Learn to live differently, and pray that your life will positively affect others.

Up next is a video of a young man speaking about how he was raised by a lesbian couple. When I was adamantly against the legalization of gay marriage, I was asked why it mattered if a homosexual couple had the same legal rights as a heterosexual couple. The reason that I was taught to give was that adopted babies wouldn't be given as good of a home to live in. Now I just don't think this argument is fair, and I don't think it should be used. I do think that children should having loving relationships with both men and women (opinion, not fact), but I think that a homosexual couple could ensure that this happens through extended family, church family, and other groups. I know that not everybody out there agrees with me, and I think that everybody has the right to their own opinion, and they should vote for what they believe is right. I just encourage people to think about their decision and be open to listening to God even if it might mean changing. At this point in my life, I feel strongly that I need to support homosexual couples in their endeavor to be accepted in society. I tend to believe that in 100 (or fewer) years, people will look back and view the efforts to prevent gay marriage similarly to how most of us view the efforts to prevent interracial marriage (which was also justified using the Bible).

Speaking of interracial marriage... Here we have an example of a church who still struggles to accept that it is truly alright. If this isn't a humbling example of why we should keep our heart open to change, I don't know what is. What comes to mind is: Live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God... (Micah 6:8 for those of you who are amazed that I'd come up with something so lovely on my own... I didn't!)

I will leave you with a really neat story about a man who, to me, seemed to follow the teachings and show the love of Jesus. I have no clue whether or not the man was intending to do so, but my heart tells me that God was in the details.

Crafting!

2011-11-28T13:23:00.001-08:00

Knit headband. Now I can stay warm without
abandoning my standard ponytail.

Lamp before-ish! (I added the blue ribbon
on the top and the bottom before I took the
picture... oops.)

Lamp after! Some glue, some yarn, and some
crocheted circles (or closed disks, to those
of you who like to keep your mathematical
definitions straight...), and you have a super
cute lamp!

OWL PURSE! Wicked awesome.

The pattern for the knit headband can be found here. I made my owl by making up a pattern after admiring the owl purse found here. If you aren't comfortable making up your own pattern, you can buy a pattern at that site.

Massage Giveaway... just in time for the Holidays!

2011-11-28T12:47:00.001-08:00

*NOTE*: December 10th through 12th you may comment each day for an entry into the giveaway. If you have not given a Christmas story or tradition yet, you may still provide one for an extra entry.

This is a giveaway for one of the following three things: one 60 minute Shiatsu massage, one 60 minute Swedish massage, or two Reflexology massages. The massage of your choice will be provided by my friend's new business, GivingTree Massage, LLC in Corvallis, Oregon. The massage therapist, Robert White, received his license this past year, and he is committed to providing a comfortable, peaceful experience to all of his clients. As he was getting hours of practice to get his license, I received a massage; I can attest that he was professional, and the massage felt great! :)

If you would like to win a massage at GivingTree Massage, please leave a comment with your email address on this post by December 12th! For TWO entries into the giveaway, include a short (or long!) description about a favorite holiday tradition that you have. I will only use your email address to contact you to let you know you have won. On December 12th (*Edit*: December 13th. You may enter all the way through the 12th), I will use a random number generator to choose a winner. At that point I will contact the winner so that I know which massage choice he/she wants and a mailing address so that I can send out the gift certificate! (*Note*: If you don't want to leave your email address and you have a way to contact me, just leave a comment below and just make sure that I know who you are!)

If all of this massage stuff sounds amazing, then you can consider buying a massage gift certificate at GivingTree Massage through me from now until December 15th. Robert has given me some discounted rates to offer to those who are interested:

$45 for a sixty minute massage (either Shiatsu or Swedish) (usually $60)

$25 for a Reflexology massage (usually $35)

$12.00 for a Chair massage (usually $15)

If you are interested in this offer, leave a comment with your email and a statement of your interest in purchasing a massage (or contact me with another method if you can/want to), and we can work out the details. If you comment and buy a massage before December 12th, you will be given THREE entries in the giveaway!

Please let me know if you have any questions! I haven't done a giveaway before, so I am hoping that things are clear.

To contact Robert directly, please call him at 541-760-7239 or email him at GivingTreemassage.rw@gmail.com. Even after this promotion ends, he'd be happy to let you know what his rates and specials are!

Daily Decisions: Banking

2011-11-18T12:36:00.001-08:00

When Matthew moved up to Beaverton for his six month internship right before we got married, he got an account at Washington Mutual (now Chase). The reason for this was that he knew he'd be coming back to Corvallis for another few years, and after that he didn't know where he'd be. I was added onto this account after we got married, and we still have it open.

However... There are a lot of good reasons to support local banking instead of big banks, and a local credit union is a terrific way to accomplish that task. After moving to the Hillsboro area, we started an account at a credit union in our area. We have started switching everything over to that account so that we can close our Chase account once we're sure everything has cleared from our checking account.

Coincidentally, there is a current movement to leave big banks and to join credit unions that I didn't know about until after we made the switch.

Especially with the ability to use the ATM pretty much anywhere, I feel like we have no need for a large bank. Switching is truly an easy way for us to take away support from the banks that operate like those that we had to bail out a few years ago.

Want to know an added benefit? We found a checking account that offers a 2% interest rate as long as we satisfy a few requirements like using online banking, having a direct deposit occur once per period, and using our debit card for a point-of-sale transaction 12 times per period (good thing I can only carry so many groceries at a time on my bike!). Two-percent is much better than the rates out there for savings accounts that we've seen, and even if we don't satisfy the requirements one period, the interest earned that period is the same as we were earning at Chase in our savings account.

Yay credit unions!

Honey Honey

2011-11-17T08:33:00.001-08:00

For those of you who enjoy honey and hope to get all of the nutritional benefits it can offer, I suggest reading this over at Eat Drink Better. The article they are using as a source is found here if you tend to like to read things from the original source.

In short, honey is being ultra-filtered to remove the pollen so that the source is hidden, but this process removes the health benefits of the honey. It also technically makes the product no longer "honey" as defined by the FDA. Unfortunately, not much is being done to test and regulate this, so it's up to the consumer! You might want to buy honey from a co-op, farmers' market, or natural foods store as these honeys tested well for having the appropriate amount of pollen.

Slippers for the feeties

2011-11-16T20:44:00.001-08:00

Look at those warm feet! Give me the correctly sized crochet hook, and I will whip up these guys in two days! I apparently will also add an extra band and a crocheted "button" (most visible and better looking in person than in the photo) for more pizzazz (and to make up for the fact that the slippers were just really long thanks to my husband's size 11 or 12 feet.)

In case you are interested in making these, I will let you know that I actually had to play with the pattern a bit because Matthew's feet are kind of wide. I added an extra round to the bottoms. This created minor adjustments in the number of stitches the rest of the way. I also added extra rows on the tops of the slippers so that there would be maximal foot coverage.

Daily Decisions: Hand washing vs. Dishwasher washing

2011-11-16T20:02:00.001-08:00

Perhaps as you go about your journey to save electricity and water you have asked yourself which one is better.

I recently watched a (corny) video from PGE where they tested and compared energy consumption done by a few different types of hand washing and a few different types of dishwashers. As a note, they didn't discuss the amount of water used, which is an important factor to consider. You also can't tell how full they fill the dishwasher which is clearly a large factor as far as energy and water efficiency go. It's also challenging to factor in the environmental costs of creating and shipping a dishwasher in the first place!

I currently only hand wash items that can't go in the dishwasher, and I will wait until I get a stack to do these dishes. The way I currently do the rest of the dishes is by running a (very full) dishwasher on light wash instead of normal wash. I get away with using light wash by pre-rinsing all the dishes. I don't use extra water to do this, though. We put dishes that need rinsing in the sink, and they get water in them as we wash our hands/produce/etc over them. Then I use the scrubby brush to brush the food out. We also, of course, air dry the dishes instead of drying them with heat. We also try to minimize the number of dishes that we use. For example, his mug for his morning coffee becomes my mug for water or tea during the day. This all takes a bit more effort than just using whatever dishes we want to or running water whenever it's convenient for us, but it becomes routine, and it's really not that challenging in my opinion.

Personally, I think that video makes one thing clear: By being conscious of the energy and water you are using, you will save a ton when compared to taking the resources for granted. It's very challenging (at least for me) to know what "the best" way to do some things is, and I think that it's OK to just be thoughtful and do our best!

Crochet hooks

2011-11-14T20:08:00.001-08:00

Look! Pretty crochet hooks! I learned how to crochet on a few hooks I got from Goodwill, but I've been unable to do a few projects because I had the wrong size hooks. Here is D through K as found used on Ebay. Yay! My husband shall (hopefully) have slippers for his feeties this winter!

I just thought I'd share since I'm excited about them. :)

Angrrrrrrrrrrrr

2011-11-14T08:53:00.001-08:00

In church recently, the pastor has been talking about emotions that get in the way of having peaceful, strong relationships with each other. An interesting take on these emotions is that they generally result from a debt-debtor dynamic in the relationship. For example, the emotion of the week is currently anger, and anger often results from a "you owe me" feeling.

I appreciate the chance to think about anger because it's something I feel fairly often, and I know that it's an emotion that can (and does) easily cause me to hurt people. While I am not as explosive as I was as a teen, I find that when I am angry now, I do one of two things. If I'm angry at you and I don't feel comfortable expressing that to you, I will likely keep my anger in and stew about the situation. If I do feel comfortable expressing it to you (this would be you, dearest husband Matthew), then I am likely to express it through grouchiness, a bit of nastiness, and maybe an insult or two for good measure.

Neither of those reactions are particularly good because in one case, I am harming the relationship by holding onto really negative feelings. In the other, I hurt Matthew through my words.

The pastor at our church talked about how in his experience (and through the verses Ephesians 4:31-32), he thinks that the answer to our anger lies in forgiveness. I would add to this a healthy dose of compassion and understanding. By forgiveness, he meant that we should figure out what we thought the person owed us, and then to consciously decide to cancel this debt. This makes sense in my circumstances because my anger often stems from when I think people owe me respect, consideration, time, or thoughtfulness. While someone may have legitimately wronged me, it is my choice to hang on to the anger. The compassion and understanding come in because the action that caused anger may very well have been done without any intention of harm, or I may have misinterpreted an action or some words.

My anger for Matthew is generally spurred by the silly things. I think that this is probably fairly typical for a married couple. You might call the feeling "annoyance", but I think that it's a form of anger for me, at least. He'll do little things in a way that seems totally wrong/illogical to me. I can't even think of a specific example right now. However, this little thing happening in a way that I don't want or expect, and I can be set off. The thing is, though, that Matthew usually isn't even doing anything wrong, and I know that. While some of the problems he could prevent by being more careful and thoughtful, many times I'm just expecting unreasonable things from him. I think that another group of people who might experience our anger similarly is children. I know that I'm going to get angry at my kids when I have them because I'm kind of a human being. However, I think that it's good for me to start thinking about what should cause anger and what shouldn't. For example, while a child might not always listen to me, I shouldn't automatically become angry. Perhaps the child has a reason for not listening. Perhaps I am expecting more from the child than he/she is able to handle. While I'm not saying that I won't expect my kids to listen to me, I think that I will bear the responsibility of trying to fully understand each situation and not wrongfully accusing a child of being willfully disobedient.

I'm not going to say that I'm the best at forgiving people for things that they said or did. I tend to replay conversations and events over and over in my head, and I can work up a good amount of anger doing this. Even after realizing that I need to let things go, I can still try to pick things apart again later. It's something I work on.

One thing that came up was the idea of reconciliation versus forgiveness without reconciliation. I think that reconciliation is optimal, but I think that forgiveness can happen without reconciliation. Sometimes I hold onto something little for so long, it's probably not even good to broach the subject any more because what is past is past, so I just need to forgive the person and move on. However, sometimes I think it is totally appropriate to respectfully talk to a person about a problem in the hopes of coming to a reasonable agreement. I personally think that this has to happen to keep a marriage as healthy as possible. To me, it goes along with the vital need for open, respectful communication about pretty much everything. Sometimes an agreement won't be met, and then the choice of forgiveness should be made. Sometimes an agreement will happen, and forgiveness naturally occurs.

The pastor emphasized Ephesians 4:31 as it says to "get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior." As such, he made it seem like the emotion of anger was to generally be avoided. Maybe I misunderstood his intention though because I'm sure that he knows that Jesus expressed anger. In fact, earlier in Ephesians 4, Paul writes that in our anger we should not sin. Based on this, and the fact that verse 31 talks about "evil behavior", I feel fairly confident that we should not try to quell all anger but rather bear the responsibility for our actions and treatment of people.

In fact, I realized that I actually think that anger and discontent can be a good and healthy thing. I think that it is good to get angry when people are being wronged. I wrote a post last year about how I was angry as Wisconsin stripped their unions of their rights and power. I thought of this as I considered this week's emphasis on anger, and I do not think that my anger was wrong. In fact, I think that I had an appropriate response to my anger: Writing a blog post to express myself. I honestly believe that it is appropriate to feel discontent and angry when people are being wronged, but we must always remain conscious of our actions. If we use Paul's writings to justify complacency and lack of emotion for our fellow human beings, then I think we are missing the point.

I'd love to hear any other thoughts about anger that you might have!

The Grand Adventures of Karen

2011-11-08T15:02:00.000-08:00

*Note* All pictures were taken in the safety of the living room. No Karens were biking around with a camera in one hand (and unchanging scenery) in the making of this blog post. Faces were recreated for the benefit of the reader.

This is my face when heading out on some errands.
Note the jaunty look with the stylin' helmet.

This is my face when I watched a woman park in
a 5-minute book drop off spot at the library. Only she
missed the parking spot and ended up parked mostly on
the sidewalk. Seriously...?

This is my face as a giant oak leaf attacks my face
briefly as I bike down the path away from the library.
*Note* This is not a real oak leaf. No oak leaves
were harmed in the making of this blog post.

This is my face as I leave the grocery store with 19 pounds
of groceries on my back and another pound hanging on my arm.

What the...? Who knows why I have this face.

It should be noted that my pants are not being
caught in the chains of my bike anymore. Why not?
Fabric scraps, a button, and a chunk of elastic that
was used to package a duffel bag we bought a couple years
ago. About 15 minutes of sewing later, and now I be STYLIN'!
Also, do you see the stained patches on my knee? That is how
you distinguish me from the other people
in Hillsboro. "Who's that ragamuffin over
there.... Must be KAREN!"

I hope that you have enjoyed the great adventures of Karen. I was thinking today while riding my bike that I really do enjoy biking and walking over driving because when I drive now, I realize I am missing out on things. The exercise is an obvious plus to biking (I got in 6 miles yesterday and about 9 miles today), but I also notice more about what's going on around me when I'm biking. I can notice birds and people, and I can smile at people walking by. It was actually really comical when the oak leaf attacked my face today. As soon as it fell off, I couldn't keep from laughing. Part of this post is also to let people know that if you want to haul stuff while biking, it might take some forethought. I actually am in the process of getting and setting up a rear cargo rack with a basket so as to be able to carry groceries without carrying a heavy backpack on my back. Pictures to come. There are also bike trailers for things and for children, and there are bike seats for kids, too. Just yesterday, I was admiring a bike seat for small children because it allows the kid to sit between you and the handlebars.

I hope that you have received some bike inspiration! Have a wonderful autumn day!

The Occupy movement... money... life... and stuff

2011-11-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

Unless I have written a post that I have forgotten about, I think that so far I have not said anything about the Occupy movement sweeping the nation. I have mixed feelings about the movement. I am so happy that people are able and willing to assemble to express their dissatisfaction about a system that has failed them (or not them, but people they know). I am concerned that the movement has no clear direction and will thus fizzle out without causing change. When doing a sit-in type protest, it seems like it is vital to have a list of demands. With that, I actually really want to talk about the reactions to the movement that I have heard. Not that this is a new thing to hear, but one recurring response is essentially the thought that the people participating in the movement are freeloaders who need to go get a job, any job, and stop trying to get pity.

It breaks my heart to hear people speak about the jobless, homeless, and penniless (especially when including debt like student loans) in this way. It ignores the elephant in the room: The way our system currently works does not give the same opportunity to every American in the room. What's more, our system is not fair.

I can go on and on about what is unfair about our system. It includes the fact that we bail out big banks while still foreclosing on peoples' home. It includes the fact that not all public schools are created equal, and the richer your area is, the nicer the public school probably is. It includes that fact that our government's decisions are being affected by the people with the most money more than those with no money.

I am an example of our unfair system. My mom stayed at home with me and she and my dad both gave me a jump start in my education; I could even read before kindergarten thanks to my parents dedication to reading to and with me. My parents also had enough money to give me a chance to be involved in sports and other activities through my K-12 education. Being educated themselves, they helped me to value learning and education. My dad, being a high school counselor, helped me prepare for college when I was in elementary school by teaching me to save my money and do my best in school. Not only that, but by luck of the draw, my very genetics allowed me to get straight A's in high school. Add the activities I participated in (thanks to my parents' ability to make sure I had transportation) and the fact that I happened to be in a small school, and I was a great candidate for scholarships. I took my eighteen years of privilege to OSU, and I worked hard, and I got enough scholarships to live on each year as long as I lived frugally (which my parents also taught me to do). I also finished needing summer jobs before the economic crash, so I could earn money each summer. We also believe that possibly the only reason Matthew has a job now is that (through his own story of privilege) he had an internship at the company that hired him. Matthew was applying to entry-level positions and never receiving a response despite his grades and internship experience.

I've had people tell me I've done a good job and that I have earned my achievement, and yes, I have worked hard. However, it's just not fair. What about the people who could have found stability if born into the same privilege? What about the simple truth that I would almost certainly not be this well off if I hadn't been a product of all those factors that had absolutely nothing to do with my choices?

So, to me, it goes beyond asking for our system to be fixed of its glaring faults. It's about being humble about my position of power and compassionate to those who have need, not from fault of their own, but because of circumstances out of their control.

I had three things that I was looking forward to as we exited college: starting a family, buying a house (and more importantly, some land), and having more money to give away.

We've always agreed as a couple that tithing (the literal 10%) is something we should do but should not ever be the end of our giving. Even throughout college, we had a few extra good things that we made sure to support, but I felt that as we entered the middle class, we'd have a chance to do more. Immediately upon Matthew starting work, though, I realized that it can take some time to save up for a down payment for a home. While we don't need a house right away (or technically ever), I think it makes sense for us to own, and as quickly as possible, because I want to make good use of the space through gardening, storing food, maybe having chickens, allowing kids a space to run free and learn about the land, etc. The "as quickly as possible" part comes from the fact that every month we are shelling out $770 in rent, and while some of that would be going to property taxes and the like, I'd say at least $500 a month is really going toward nothing. I'd rather be using this money to pay off the house.

So, as we start making more money, I immediately start feeling like we need to make sure that we are saving a fair amount which terrifies me. I am horrified about always feeling like I need something and, as a result, never giving as much as I can. From what I have experienced, it seems that no matter how rich people are, they seem to always feel the need to hang onto their money. People making $20,000 say that if they made even just $50,000, they could give more away. People making $50,000 say that if they made $100,000, they'd give more away. If we all do this, it's no wonder that there's a lack of "giving away" in this world. Financially, and for the lifestyle we live, I still believe it makes sense to aim to own a house. In the long run, this type of purchase can actually free up more money.

Before I fell asleep last night, I made a decision to remain open to giving freely even while we are saving for a home. I have a couple specific things I plan to do, and the rest I hope to remain sensitive to.

May God poke me with a big stick if I ever lose passion for doing my part in this earth and instead gain interest in my own first-world wants. If God seems to be holding off on poking me, it might be because He's hoping one of you will. Please do!

Fall is in the air (and the food)

2011-10-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

I love this time of year. I love the colors on the trees, the rain, the frost, and the nippy mornings. With the coming of fall, our diet changes as summer fruits and vegetables go out of season.

One of my favorite fall treats is slow cooker spiced apples. I just cut up a bunch of apples into thin slices and toss them into the slow cooker with some cinnamon (and sometimes some nutmeg, too). Just cook on low until the apples reach the consistency you desire. I usually eat these with my oatmeal, but they are wonderful plain, too. I will probably raise my young children to believe that these are dessert.

Here's some other food.

Vegetarian shepherd's pie. REALLY GOOD. Recipe here.
I mostly followed the recipe, I think. I did add carrots, though

Chard. Looks like Christmas, no? I think I prefer kale to chard.

This bread is stinking amazing. I don't have white flour so I
used half whole wheat flour and half whole wheat pastry flour.
The bread has great texture and great crust. It's a little salty for
our tastes, so I'm going to add less salt next time.

The argument matters

2011-10-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

I recently wrote a post about abortion, and since then I have been considering the stereotypical pro-life voice and why it makes me want to fight against it even when I think we agree that part of our well-wishes for the world include the wish that that there weren't abortions. I have realized that, oddly enough, it is the way that logic is used to support the pro-life cause that is one of the biggest reasons that I felt like I couldn't support it. I'll give you some examples that you almost undoubtedly have heard before.

"Life begins at conception."
This is certainly a valid viewpoint. Certainly we can all recognize that a human life begins somewhere. It is the use of the Bible to back this assumption that bothers me. I don't think that there is any verse in the Bible to back this up. I once had a person tell me that "God told us that He knit us together in the womb", and this was part of his/her rationale for the biblical support of a fetus being a human being. From what I can tell, there are a few errors in that logic. First, the verse in the Bible that he/she was referring to was Psalm 139:13 where the psalmist (David, in this case) told God, "For your created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." So, this is not God speaking, but David. Of course, if one believes that what David was saying was inspired, inerrant truth from God, then the point still stands. (However, I request that you read Psalm 139:21-22 and ask if the same logic can be used to say that God wants us to hate our enemies.) Regardless of whether this was God's inspiration or simply David's poetic devotion to God, this verse says absolutely nothing about when God starts knitting us. It is still an unjustified claim that it is at conception when this process begins.

"Abortion is MURDER!!!"
This is of course assuming the first point, that life begins at conception (or at least by the time you realize you're pregnant.) Of course, I'm not going to bother with discussing the point that murder is wrong. However, I think that the question, "What is murder?" has been left unanswered or is incomplete, and this is fundamental here. I think that the Christians saying this would probably answer that murder is the killing of an (innocent) human being. (Tell me if I'm wrong!) I add innocent because the pro-life camp generally tends to be for capital punishment (justified by the Old Testament stonings, or at least that was how I justified it in my past). From what the Bible relates to us, God told Israel to go into nations and kill all men, women (including the pregnant ones), and children (including infants). I think that infants are generally considered fairly innocent, so is God now commanding Israel to commit murder? What about soldiers killing civilians (again including pregnant women and infants) in wars? By supporting any war, are we supporting murder? Perhaps at this point we redefine murder to be illegal killing or killing with malice aforethought, but then we've now defined murder to not include most abortions. I suppose there is an occasional women who has malice aforethought when having an abortion, but as far as I know, most are just scared and concerned about the implications of bringing a baby into the world.

"If you believe in legalized abortion, you are going against God/are not Christian/are for murder/etc!"
I personally have never had anybody explain to me why followers of Jesus are required by the Bible to push for their own morals to become state/federal law. I mean, I think we are all glad that we don't have some laws about morality so that we can stand together as a nation in the support of people not shooting people and not stealing others' possessions. However, I have not yet heard, or found for myself, biblical justification for being mandated to regulate people at all (especially those outside of the Christian church). Feel free to point me to a verse if you think that it provides the mandate to regulate.

It is funny for me to write this post since I have actually proclaimed all of these italicized things with righteous certainty at some point in my life. I knew I was right and that I had God on my side, and it was a powerful feeling. It was also really nice to feel like I could have all of the answers. Doubt and ambiguity lead to some serious wrestling, and it's not always easy.

I write this post mostly to those of you who feel like I do: Concerned about women, concerned about babies, but also put-off by the pro-life arguments including the ones I listed, and many others, that we hear over and over. I am personally worried that these arguments that we hear are doing damage as they frustrate people and damage the credibility of a legitimate cause. For what it's worth, I personally feel like abortion, like miscarriage, is not the way God wishes for a pregnancy to be ended. I believe that regulation for abortions should be on the political table; however, I think it is equally important to consider the underlying causes of these abortions so that we can serve women in a way that prevents unwanted pregnancies and supports and enables women once they become pregnant. In the end, I can't find a verse in the Bible that tells us not to have abortions, and I certainly can't find a verse that tells us that we have to regulate abortion. It is through various teachings about love, life, and helping those around us that in my heart I reach my conclusions about abortion. It's subjective, but most of the decisions we make in life really are. I'm doing my best.

Last night I stumbled upon this website, and I read a bunch of what they have on their website. Gosh, I love that they make it clear that their genuine interest is in respecting and valuing women as well as babies. Their target group is college-aged women since apparently that is a the group in which about half of US abortions occur, and I was filled with joy when their methods to help prevent these abortions was to empower women to be able to have their child and stay in school. They also graciously acknowledge that most women really don't want to have an abortion, but the women also don't want to drop out of college, and women tend to think one or the other needs to happen. It just thrills me that this organization works to help people in a way that does not condemn or judge them but rather gives women a new perspective about their worth and their ability to raise a child and not spend the rest of their lives in poverty.

Food... Food... Food...

2011-10-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

Just when I have it all figured out... Somehow our needs change again.

Despite eating the same types of meals we have been eating for awhile and eating our normal assortment of snacks (homemade granola bars, crackers, quick breads along with peanuts, sunflower seeds, raisins...), suddenly we're both starving. I've lost another five pounds since coming here despite eating more than I was in Corvallis, and Matthew is just hungry all the time. His poor skinny body is probably too little to allow him to lose five pounds. *sighs*

I think that part of it is that we are up earlier, and I think I'm a bit more active than I was. I also have been playing a smidgen with what we eat. I watched the documentary Forks over Knives, and I was impressed by what scientists found out about the relationship between animal products and human diseases (primarily cancer). After learning about dairy and how it's not necessarily as amazing as we're taught that it is (I think that the large dairy farming businesses manage to find a way to influence our government's food recommendations...). Add to that the fact that organic milk is expensive compared to plant foods, and I hate using milk cartons... and I suddenly felt motivated to not eat as much dairy. We've been using homemade oat milk instead of cow milk, we traded cream cheese for a homemade bean spread, and I started making fewer recipes with cheese.

The verdict? I think we can drink less milk, although I don't think we will give it up completely. Bean spread is actually more delicious and substantial than cream cheese, so it's totally a winner. (Yay! One less plastic container!) We both miss cheese a lot. Thinking back, I'm realizing that most of my dinners in the past had some cheese involved, so now I will just consciously throw in some cheese in our diet to keep up morale.

It's funny how much milk products mean to us! When we pretty much gave up meat (and I honestly can't remember the last time I bought any... I think it was last winter or spring), it happened really naturally, and we pretty quickly settled into a mostly-vegetarian cuisine. Fortunately, dairy products aren't nearly as destructive to the environment as meat products. I was mostly interested in optimizing our health (and our budget), and I think that what will work best for us right now is to limit our dairy intake but not remove it completely. On the plus side, there really are also studies (not done by the dairy industry) showing that milk also does some good things for the body. For us, it's time to not fret about it and just eat it in moderation.

I also have been mostly giving up cookies. I still make them for Matthew, but I realized that I felt addicted to them, and I don't like feeling that way. I use organic unrefined sugar which is a step up from the refined sugars, and I use about 3/4 to 1 cup per batch (we used to eat one batch a week), so it's really not a horrible amount of added sugar. However, for now I'm just eating a couple of cookies when they come out of the oven, and the rest of the week I satiate my sweet tooth by eating a little bowl of oatmeal with some peanut butter and dark chocolate chips on top. Yes, I measure out a portion of chocolate chips each week so that I know how much I'm eating. :)

That all being said... The next change I need to make is to keep us from feeling hungry most of the day. We're just kind of hungry people these days. I think what might work best for us is having four meals each day. Breakfast at 7:30am, elevensies (!!) at 11am, lunch around 2pm, and dinner around 6pm. I think that 7:30 to noon and noon to 5:30 is just too long for us to go without filling our bellies. Instead, we both go through periods where we are really hungry but we've already eaten our snacks for the day. I'm thinking that veggie and/or bean quesadillas will be my first attempt at solving this problem. Since it's winter veggie season, perhaps sweet potato quesadillas are in order? Once a week I can make tortillas and then immediately turn them into quesadillas and then we can just reheat them as we go.

As a final comment, I just want to say that it is totally true that if junk food isn't in the house, than you can't eat it. I'm not trying to lose weight, but I can't imagine having done so if I had unlimited calorie-filled prepared food lying around the house. The reason that this post exists is because none of our food has preservatives in them, so I have to make only as much as we are going to eat each week. The current problem is that what was enough in the past just isn't right now. What a weird problem in our country, no?

Daily Decisions - Clothing

2011-10-24T15:29:00.000-07:00

Goal: Reduce clothing waste
Problem: Inevitably, socks get holes.
Solution: Darn those socks! Actually, I don't think I'm technically "darning" our socks, but I'm taking a needle and thread to them. If it's a nice clean hole without much wear around it, usually a lasting fix is to just sew it up. I'm finding that some of my socks are so threadbare at the point that as soon as I sew one hole, a new one rips right next to it. I'm going to take one of my most beat up socks and start using it to make patches. The ball and heel wear out while there is still so much good fabric elsewhere! Doing this I think that I can get our socks to last a good, long time.

Reaching for life

2011-10-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

Spinach plant at 9am

Spinach plant at 3pm

Grow, little guy, grow! :)

A challenge for Christians

2011-10-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

The rest of you are welcomed to join us, but you probably will find that you don't have the same problem. ;)

When I get all gung ho about Jesus in high school, I find myself split between my "Christian friends" and my "non-Christian or people-who-call-themselves-Christian-but-I-don't-consider-real-Christian friends". I spend most of my time with my "Christian friends", but I make sure to be self-sacrificing and spend time with the other group too. After all, Jesus loves those sinners. Perhaps if I spend one more lunch period with them, they too shall be saved. What kind of Christian would I be if I didn't sacrifice my time to try to save these people? I just make sure to interject and let them know when they are saying or doing ungodly things so that they can become more aware of how wicked they are. Plus, I don't want to stand for wickedness myself! I must say something! I am offended when they reject my faith.

Now in college, I start out spending time with different types of people, but I quickly wind up having almost a purely Christian social group. I have my Christian roommate, my boyfriend's Christian co-op, my Campus Crusades Bible study... Now I can pray for all these poor people in my dorm and classes who are off getting drunk on Thursday instead of worshiping Jesus!

In high school and college, I am offended by the swear words people say. I am appalled by the girls' clothing. I am shocked by pre-marital sex. I am trying to keep myself from being contaminated by all of the horrible sin around me. I am distressed when I must argue with yet another person about why my views about religion, abortion, homosexuality, politics, etc are Bible-based and thus correct!

I am telling Jesus that He made a mistake when He broke bread with sinners. I am telling Him that they are too offensive. I am telling Him that He should be trying to reason with them about truth instead of leading them there with love. I am a Pharisee asking, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" because even when I am around sinners, my attitude is not that of respect and unconditional love. Jesus seems comfortable with these people. He fits in without being aloof. He is respected and loved. He meets needs without making demands of people.

Jesus answered me, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."

Here's the challenge, Christians: Go through your Facebook friends and figure our what percentage of them are Christians. What about your in-person friends? What would you guess the percentage to be? When you do spend time with your "non-Christian" friends, are you being their friend and meeting their needs, or is your only thought to chalk up another tally mark on your personal chalkboard for Jesus. What actions show God's love? What can you do to share the compassion, care and understanding of Jesus?

If you are like me during high school and college, you might be legitimately uncertain of how to act around people who don't know share your faith. It took me years during college to change my very attitudes so that I could be graceful around people I didn't agree with. In grad school, a few of my closest friends were lovely people that do not choose to follow Jesus. They are still my friends even after moving away from them. With these friends, I feel like I finally did a decent job of loving them and sharing my life and faith while remaining respectful of their right to choose their beliefs. Here are some of the things I ran through my head to make sure that I remained Christian-but-not-obnoxiously-so:

To be friends with anybody, I have to be able to give grace when I find I disagree. I do this for my Christian friends, so I can do this for my non-Christian friends.
I can acknowledge a person's opinions and beliefs without agreeing with them. I appreciate it when others do the same for me.
I can also share countering beliefs... when appropriate. I don't always have to make sure that people realize that I disagree with them.
Loving someone doesn't mean interjecting "Jesus" into as many conversations as possible.
It is OK to accept love and support from non-Christians.

OK non-Christian friends... I've left you out for too long. Thank you for being patient with me as I have stumbled in learning about how to be a Christian and a good friend. Thank you for not abandoning me if/when I was obnoxious. Thank you for listening to my beliefs and considering them (and not thinking I'm crazy for loving and following a man who lived, died and came back from the grave over 2000 years ago...). Please feel free to talk to me any time about questions and thoughts about faith... even if you're telling me that you don't agree with me.

Birdie pillow

2011-10-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

You know what makes me happy? Sweet little colorful birdies. Very happy indeed. Can't you hear their hand-stitched beaks shyly peeping?

You might not realize it, but you've seen this pillow before.

Like here. See that burgandy pillow there? That is what has been birdified. (The birdie pillow really is just a sham I made for the burgandy pillow.) The pillow actually has a snowman on the other side. The snowman gets to cuddle with the loveseat for all but two months of the year. At some point early in our marriage, we kind of thought that we would be navy, burgandy, forest green type people. Now I am realizing that those colors were really representing what I thought I wanted (don't they just seem like blissful middle class colors?). However, I'm really attracted to brighter colors, and I really love having a handmade look in the home. I have also learned that I prefer not to have much of a color scheme. I like having things work well together, but I don't like being confined to specific colors. A pillow full of colorful birds is perfect for me.

Do you have a color scheme in your living room? What is it?

A quilt

2011-10-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

I finished a quilt yesterday! Since I have time these days, I figured I'd make a small-ish quilt for when we have kids. I made it small enough for a baby to play on, a toddler/young child to sleep under, and an older child to adult to wrap around them. I think it will be easy to find used baby blankets, but I wanted to make something special that will last and be usable for a long time. So, here you are, Not-Yet-Existent Child!

If you are interested, I used these instructions only without the gathering. I just cut out 4" squares.

This is a good project for small scraps, too. The squares don't take too much of any fabric. I used some scraps of my own, and I also used some given to me by a friend's mom who quilts for charities. (Thank you!) For the off-white borders and the blue binding/backing, I needed a fair amount of fabric, so I got a couple of sheets from Goodwill. I had a bag of batting that was supposed to be used by a friend but ended up not being used, so I didn't have to go out and find that this time. Hooray!

An apple a day...

2011-10-17T16:58:00.000-07:00

... and we might be able to eat all of these apples before spring!

Yesterday we went to an apple festival, and they had u-pick apples. We picked about 92 pounds of gala, jonagold, and empire apples. That's kind of a lot of apples. Jack Johnson and I sorted them today into "need to be eaten right away", "need to eat fairly soon", and "to be stored" piles. (Well, at least Jack Johnson serenaded me while I sorted. It's what he does.) I am going to try storing these apples in our outdoor shed so that they can stay cool. I used tissue paper and made layers of apples to separate the ones that will be stored the longest. You just can't have over 90 pounds of apples without being concerned about chaos. Apples can rot, and they can then cause each other to rot, so I expect to keep checking on them this fall and winter. What will I do if they seem to start going bad? Applesauce. Giant jars of applesauce. When playing with 90 pounds of food, one should always have a contingency plan!

I think this concludes the u-pick season for us, too. We have frozen strawberries, blueberries, marionberries, boysenberries, blackberries, zucchini, tomatoes and pears. I have also canned 14 quarts each of tomatoes and pears. I missed peach season this year, which is unfortunate, but I think I got everything else I aimed for at the beginning of summer! I'm hoping to buy a lot less produce this winter, and, as a result, require a lot less fuel for our food needs to be met. Plus, I've shelled out a bunch of money to a lot of wonderful farmers. It feels good. What's exciting to me is that this is also my first year of intentionally "putting up food", and it went so well. I'm excited to see how long it takes for us to eat all of what we stored, and I look forward to doing even more next year!

See the "ugly spots"? They're beautiful to me
because they indicate the lack of chemicals used
on the fruit! Yay!

Consider not choosing Lifewise of Oregon for your insurance provider

2011-10-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

I just left this review on a website that takes reviews/ratings for insurance companies. However, I have had just too many bad experiences with Lifewise over the past three years, so I decided to post this here as well. I would love to prevent others from wasting money and time on this insurance company. To be fair, if you read this and you had an awesome experience with Lifewise, you are welcome to put that in the comments! The review is as follows:

This insurance company has the poorest overall communication skills and competency level that I have ever witnessed in a company. My husband and I never had to make a claim, but getting on and off of their insurance plans was a nightmare.

The first time I tried to get on the plan was when I was getting married. We called and asked if we could apply together even before we got married so that we could start our joint plan a few days after our wedding. They told us we could and we should explain on the application. We did exactly that, and a few weeks after our wedding we found that my husband was accepted but I wasn't because we weren't legally married. Because they gave us the wrong information, I was without health insurance for a month. They even made me refill an application and send it in again despite the error being theirs.

I was a TA during grad school, so I jumped onto a health insurance plan through that, but my husband stayed on Lifewise. At the end of grad school, I wanted to get back on Lifewise until one of us got a job. I sent in my application, and it took one and a half months for them to finally get around to approving me. During that time, I didn't know if I had health insurance or not which made me anxious. Additionally, part of the hold up was because they took so long to get to my application that they sent out a form to ask me if I had menstruated since I applied! The nerve! Additionally, when the customer service representative said she'd call us back by a certain day, she didn't.

By the time I had gotten on the plan, my husband got a job. We called to ask what we'd need to do to get off the plan, and they said to just send in a request in writing. We did this, and we got a letter back saying that they couldn't cancel the policy because we still owed $189 (they were billing my insurance for Aug. and Sept. in October since I wasn't approved until mid-Sept.). We expected to see the money taken out of our bank account at the beginning of the month as usual, but it never was. So we called, and they said that our policy HAD been canceled with the end date being 8/31/2011 (instead of 9/30/2011 as we asked) which is why our online account stopped allowing us to pay. They made it sound like we should still pay the $189 though, so they gave us an address to mail in a check. I mailed the check this morning, and then I got our Certificate of Health Coverage in the mail today ending 8/31. Now I wish I hadn't mailed them another $189 since I guess it doesn't really matter if we were insured the first half of September. SO FRUSTRATING.

Additionally, their rates rise incredibly quickly. They started at $62/person for our plan three years ago, and they have raised the rates each year to about $90/person now.

Please consider getting a different insurance provider if at all possible!!!

Global warming + chocolate

2011-10-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

Read this! Don't you want to help fight global warming now?!

Winter Squash

2011-10-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

Today's post is brought to you buy nutritious, delicious winter squash. There they are. In a cabinet. Most of these came from a Farmers' Market trip today. The person at the cashier was impressed as we kept pulling squash out of our bags.

What's cool about these guys is that they stay good for quite awhile. I've had a butternut sit around on my counters for a couple months with no problems. I have read that optimally they should be stored in 50-60 degree temperatures, and then they can last 2-6 months (depending on the type of squash). We keep it below 70 in here all the time, and in our last place it usually was in the low 60s during the winter (sans heaters). I'm not sure about what will happen in our new place, but I'm guessing it will be about the same? If I need to, I can make room for these in the outside shed. And I will be using them as we go. And I will keep tabs on them. And I have a freezer I can store cooked squash in if things somehow spin out of control.

Mmmm... squash. It's exciting stuff that's fun to load up on from local farmers, but it's worth knowing how to take care of your produce investment... Happy Autumn!

Crops in Pots Update... plus chocolate mint tea!

2011-10-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't shown pictures of my window garden in a long time!
Summer has passed, and this:

has turned into this:

See how they are tall and a bit gangly? That's my fault. I'm still working to not hesitate when it comes to pruning.

Also, this:

has turned into this:

Oregano madness!!!

I have really liked using my basil and oregano this summer and fall, and I planted some spinach and cilantro today. I have entered the anticipatory period that comes when waiting for germination... Hooray!

Midsummer, one of my friends pruned her chocolate mint plant, and I was the lucky recipient of one of the shoots. I threw that thing into soil, and it has started to turn into a nice mint plant.

However, you can see that it's a bit gangly already, so it got a haircut today.

That's a bit better. And what better way to use the mint leaves than to make a nice cup of tea. Yum!

Call to Civility...

2011-10-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

... on the issue of abortion.

My cousin-in-law (my husband's cousin's wife... that's a cousin-in-law, right?), wrote a lovely post about issues and causes. In particular, she talks about abortion. I have largely remained silent about my thoughts about abortion, but it's a big issue (with about 50 million babies aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973). I try not to skirt around big issues, but this is one that I have intentionally left alone. However, since my CIL wrote such a lovely post, I feel able to go ahead and talk a bit about this issue. So here we go.

Here's the deal. I'm not a fan of abortion. I think babies are very important people. However, as I say this, I fear that I am going to be clumped in with the loud religious voices yelling at people and being very dogmatic and perhaps self-righteous. I'm absolutely not calling you a murderer if you have had an abortion because most likely you are not one (unless you had "malice aforethought"), and I'm sorry if anybody has tried to instill guilt in you using this tactic.

I am concerned about unborn babies lives, and I am concerned about the effects of being a society that pushes down the moral questions that should naturally come with removing a baby from the womb so that it will die or killing the baby first in the womb (as in a partial birth abortion).

However, I also care about you, mothers. I can't imagine how scary it must be to be pregnant as a teenager or to be pregnant after rape. I can't imagine the feelings that you have as your doctor discusses the disability of Down Syndrome instead of the blessing that your baby can still be. I can't imagine the panic rising in your chest as you fear the life that your child will have as you feel unready or incapable of raising this new little human. I would love to talk to you, and I would love to pour love and support into you.

There is so much to discuss if we can just cool down and discuss it. We also really need to talk about what will happen to the babies that would otherwise have been aborted. Will they really all be snatched up by loving homes? If the mothers choose to keep their children, will we agree as a society to support them financially and emotionally? What about doing more as a society to help people value sexual relationships and family? What will be the rates of illegal, and probably very unsafe, abortions if we make abortion illegal? Is there something we can/should do to help prevent the large number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place?

We live in such a hurtful and complicated world. The fact that there are so many unwanted pregnancies in the first place is evidence of this. I just don't want it to be made more hurtful by ignoring the needs of the unborn.

So, I'm really here just asking us to get back to considering this issue civilly and without political tricks and maneuvers that has escalated this serious issue to an undignified level. I love you all, even if you disagree with me. God loves you, regardless of any opinion or action that you take. Let's communicate. Let's work to make this world better for everyone.

Daily Decisions - Personal care

2011-10-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

Here's the next-up in the Daily Decisions series...

Goal: Use fewer resources
The Choice: I stopped wearing deodorant on the days that I'm not interacting with people (besides my DH). While I am a smelly enough person that I wouldn't want to make people smell me unnecessarily, I really don't need to mask myself from my own nose. Plus, since I make my own deodorant, this helps me have to make more less often. :)

Daily Decisions - Purchasing power

2011-10-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

One thing that I was thinking about today is how much my change in attitudes and understanding of the world has affected all my decisions including ones that most people probably don't think twice about. I think that being conscientious of our role in our family, community and world is important, so I decided to start sharing my thought processes through a "Daily Decisions" series. I'm not saying that all of the decisions I make end up being the best possible ones, but I do my best, and I'd love to just get people thinking (and sharing your ideas with me, if you find you have some to share!). In sharing, I will explain which goals influence my decisions, what my options are, what choice I made, and any other factors that may be pertinent.

Here's my first one to start...

What's happening: I'm buying thread to sew the binding of my quilt
Goals: Buy locally to keep money in the community, Find a store in walking/biking distance to avoid oil use
Options: Joann's Fabrics and Crafts (1.7 miles away), Sharon's Attic Quilt Shop (2.2 miles away)
The Choice: Sharon's since it is locally owned and operated
Considerations for next time: What about organic cotton thread since cotton is where a lot of the nasty chemicals are used in the agriculture business?

Humanity: All Suck or Just Some Suck?

2011-10-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

Recently, I questioned the viewpoint that man is "totally depraved". Now that I have let you think about it for awhile, I figured I'd let you know what I think about it. For those of you who like Bible verses to back things up, I apologize in advance. I am certain that I can use verses to use to make either point. (For example, the "all our good works are filthy rags" verse can be used to explain that humans are totally depraved, and the "humans were created in God's image" verse can be used to explain that it doesn't make sense for humans to be totally depraved.) I'm sure that you can find places on the Internet that support either point of view, so I'm going to just talk about what I have thought about.

I guess we should first figure out what it even means to be totally depraved. The word 'totally' seems fairly straight-forward, and my handy-dandy Internet dictionary tells me that 'depraved' means 'morally corrupt'. So, if we are totally depraved, then we must be absolutely morally corrupt. But what does that mean? Does that mean that our morals are all completely wrong? Or that each of us has some wrong morals? Or that when making moral choices, we are never able to make a completely moral choice?

It really boils down to how we define things, doesn't it?

With that, I don't think that humans are all suck. I think that as humans (Christians and non-Christians alike) strive for good, it is clear evidence of us being God's loved creation that is not completely bad. And since all good things come from God, we can see how much God loves us by the good that results from our efforts. However, I would say that probably everything we do gets tainted by the hurt in the world. Whether it be pride or selfishness, I think that even our good deeds are rarely done without thoughts of the self instead of purely out of love. I think this is where I can see humans pale in comparison to the perfect goodness that is God.

The reason that the doctrine of "total depravity" bothers me is that it seems like it turns into a very negative, self- and other-deprecating belief. It's like the focus is turned from how beautiful and wonderful God is compared to us to having an excuse to say how horrible humans are. This is subtly different, but it is different because one focuses on the good and the other focuses on the bad.

I think that it is important to take the doctrine of our imperfection in the more positive light for a few reasons. First, focusing on the positive turns our attention to looking for and toward the good which is just way more helpful than focusing on the negative. Second, I think that focusing on how awful humans are tends to promote hatred and stifle compassion.

So, there you have it. Humanity: Just Some Suck.

The nerdy fruit fly trap

2011-10-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you allow over forty pounds of pears ripen so that you are able to can them? FRUIT FLIES! I take fruit fly antics seriously. You think they're cute and little, but I saw one gunning for my eyes today while I was devouring a pear. I saw its wheels turning: "If she doesn't have eyes... She won't be able to see the pear to eat it." Well thought out, Fly.

While they seemed to decrease over the last week as I worked fairly hard to keep food sources out of the picture, today they had a population explosion, so I decided to set up a fruit fly trap. It's simple: A jar, some fly bait (a pear core, in my case), a piece of paper rolled into a cone, and a bit of masking tape to close up the gap that the cone kept leaving. You can see a few flies in this picture, but there are really about 20 in there. I let them go outside right after taking the picture.

What makes this trap nerdy? The fact that the flies must enter through a vortex of nasty looking tensor calculations. I have no clue what's going on there... It's engineering stuff. However, the nerdiness factor is strong.

Blowing Your Mind... Bible Style

2011-10-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

The current belief held by most churches today seems to be that humans are essentially evil or totally depraved. One of the verses used to support this is Genesis 6:5. Below are the surrounding passages.

The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. Genesis 6:5-8

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth." Genesis 6:11-13

Here, we have a story where God regrets creating humans, so he plans to just get rid of them. However, Noah finds favor with God, so God tells Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people because they have all become evil and awful and are making the world a truly horrible place. Oh, but not you. You're not part of all people."

How does this seeming contradiction affect our theology? Also, what does it mean that the amount of wickedness done by humans changes? Does that mean that we are sometimes more evil than others? Does being more evil imply that at some point there was more good?

I might write a post in the future regarding my current personal stance on Humanity: All Suck or Just Some Suck?, but I figured that it'd be fun to give the few of you who read this a chance to think about it yourself first so that you can tell me where you think I'm wrong. ;)

Happy thinking!

WORMS!

2011-10-04T16:12:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about worms for a long time...

Most of Matthew and my waste these days comes from the leftovers from our produce; rinds, cores, and the like. I know it seems like this is innocuous stuff to send to the landfill because it's totally biodegradable, but unfortunately it's not. In short, the conditions in a landfill are not those such that food waste can biodegrade. (For more information about this, you can read about it here and here.) What's worse is that because the waste is in an anaerobic environment, it ends up producing a lot of methane which is a major greenhouse gas that is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. (Which is another reason to consider eating less beef, since cows are amazing methane producers, but I digress...)

In Corvallis, we did our best to keep our food waste from going to the landfill by hauling most of each week's scraps to church on Sunday and handing them off to a family who owns goats and chickens who eat said scraps. If you happen to live in Corvallis, you might be interested in their municipal compost heap. They have "green carts" that you can put in all kinds of plant and food matter along with paper towels and certain paper plates/cups. (You have to verify that the plates/cups that you use do not have a plastic coating on them which many of them do... You may think it's wax, but it's probably plastic. Look for plates that say they are compostable, or contact the manufacturer and ask them what the coating is. Or, better yet, just use reusable plates.) We were unable to participate in this awesome program, though, because we lived in an apartment that didn't have a bin. I considered asking our manager to get one, but I realized that based on what I found in the recycling bins, I didn't think that the people in our apartment would use the green cart properly. I digress yet again...

Now that we are in Aloha, we know no farmers, have no green cart, but still eat fruits and veggies! We also have a little outdoor storage closet... Enter the worm bin.

I found directions about how to set one up here and found fairly local worms here. I bought my plastic tub at Goodwill for $2.99, and I used our drill to put holes in it for ventilation and draining. As I was walking home with my container (seriously... who walks 1.7 miles hauling one of these things? I do.), I remembered that worms don't like light, but I had just bought a clear plastic container. I remedied this by using some random spray paint that we have. (For the record, I hate spray paint. It is full of nasties, as your lungs will attest as you spray it. From here on out, I'm only buying canned paint and use a brush when we need to paint... preferably the low-VOC variety.) I happened to have pink, so I painted on a worm. Or a "W". Or whatever your imagination says it is. My wormies arrived in a little box in the mail today, and they were still wriggling, so they're alive. I prepared their bedding, and I placed them in it, and then I tossed in the few scraps that I managed to save today.

Make worm poop, young pinkish wrigglers! Then make more worms! Then I will steal your lovely worm poop and throw it at plants! It shall be MARVELOUS!

The Oregon Food Bank

2011-10-04T15:45:00.000-07:00

Since moving to Aloha, I have found that I have a fair amount of free time and no friends nearby. To combat both of these issues, one of my thoughts was that I could volunteer somewhere. I searched on Craigslist for awhile with no great opportunities popping out at me, but this past Saturday I somehow ran across the possibility of volunteering at OFB. The Beaverton warehouse is about three miles away, so I signed up for a couple of hours today, and I ended up packing a bunch of frozen carrots into family-sized (3 pounds) packages for distribution. I met a few nice ladies, and we ended up working with a group of students from a high school. It turned out that in about an hour and a half or so, we prepared about 5,000 pounds of food for distribution which is a lot of food. I really enjoyed doing this, and when I got home, I signed up for a few more shifts in the coming weeks.

For those of you who don't know much about this organization, it is a private non-profit that does a lot of work to try to prevent Oregonians from going hungry. OFB is centered in Portland, but, if I remember correctly, the central Portland warehouse works with/feeds into 20 other warehouses across the state, and each of these warehouses works with smaller agencies that actually do the food distribution or cook the food for people to eat (like soup kitchens). Even better, OFB is genuinely interested in helping prevent hunger, so they run free classes that teach people how to make good food choices to stretch their food dollars farther, how to cook inexpensive and nutritious meals, and how to grow gardens to produce their own food. A couple blocks from the warehouse that I was working in was a garden that OFB runs, and they use this garden to teach people, and they also use it to create produce (5,000 pounds this year so far as of a few weeks ago) for the food bank. Additionally, OFB advocates at a legislative level to speak for the hungry and poor in our state.

I really like the idea of doing something to help people be able to feed their families. I think Jesus had compassion for the hungry, and I want to share in His vision for a world where people are not in need. It would be very cool if we could all reach out to the people around us who are in need and spread our resources that way, but that is clearly not working, and I think that from my research and experience so far at OFB, it is a great (and perhaps efficient) way to reach out to people in need. I maybe handled 100-200 bags of carrots today, so I feel like I'm now involved in that many people's lives.

Apparently Oregon is the "second hungriest" state, following Mississippi, I believe, in the nation right now. The people in our state have been hit very hard by our economy, and OFB is distributing record numbers of emergency food boxes. From the OFB website, "As a result of growing levels of long-term unemployment, 260,000 people per month eat meals from emergency food boxes. Of those, 85,800 are children. For the first time ever, Oregon Food Bank distributed more than 1 million emergency food boxes in fiscal year 2010-11." People are hungry!

If you are interested in working with OFB, visit their website. If you want to find your regional center, you can find that here. You can also dig around a bit to find local agencies to work with if you want to be a part of actually distributing the food to people. Of course, OFB takes donations, too. They accept food donations, and if you find your region's food center, you should be able to either find a list of drop-off sites on their website, or you will be able to find a number to call to ask for this information! If you want to get more food for your dollar, I'd recommend donating money directly to OFB. By using their connections and by buying bulk, they can get four pounds of food for a dollar, and that's just impressive.
I think that's all I can think of to say for now, but please let me know if you have any questions!

Canned pears

2011-09-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

The pears Matthew and I picked a couple of Saturdays ago finally finished ripening, so I canned 14 quarts of pears today!

The little pumpkin is an upcoming project... Matthew and I both really love pumpkin, and I always bought it in a can. I finally realized that the canned pumpkin had to come from something I could probably buy. Indeed, this pumpkin is a pie pumpkin. I'm going to try using this one, and then I'll probably buy a few of them and freeze some pumpkin this year. I read the frozen pumpkin is even more delicious than canned... Can you imagine that?

Rethinking laundry

2011-09-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

Part of what has come with this move is rethinking all of our old solutions to "problems". As we took steps to become a more simple, sustainable home, we had to consider how we would do things that would work in our apartment. Well, we have a new apartment now, and it's time to solve all of the same problems... again!

In our old apartment, I'd wash a load of laundry in a common washing room, and then I'd haul it out to the balcony and hang it on our wooden laundry rack and our clothesline. Once the days stayed below the 60s, I would use the dryer again. Our apartment stayed cool, and in the Pacific Northwest you just can't leave damp things around in the winter!

Upon arriving at this apartment, we noticed that one of the rules is that we are not supposed to put laundry on our patio (any at all, I am assuming). I quickly realized that the clothesline is going to take an extended vacation, and I started drying our clothes on the drying rack inside in front of the sliding glass door where there is a fair amount of light. However, a full large load of clothes doesn't fit on the drying rack, and the clothes just don't dry as quickly inside, so they sometimes smelled a bit sour. That's just not going to work for me.

Fortunately, we have our own washer and dryer, so I can be a bit more flexible about their use since it isn't a flat rate of $1.00 any time you want to turn the thing on. I also decided to break the rules. I'm putting the drying rack outdoors whenever it is warm and dry enough. I am sticking it in the back corner, and I'm placing our outdoor chairs in front of it, so I am hoping that nobody even notices it. If the management says something, I'll bring it back indoors. I'm also considering writing to the property management company to suggest that they rethink their rule and perhaps at least allow drying racks although I'd understand if they don't want clotheslines or clothing on railings. Must.... fight... ridiculous rules....

Anyway, about being flexible with washer and dryer use... I used to do absolutely full washer loads because I read somewhere that the motor used to run the washer worked just about as hard for a medium or small load as for a large load. I haven't been able to find that again, and I'm not even sure it's true; however, that was my working assumption. Here, if I do a large load there is just no way to dry it without using a dryer. I figure that the dryer is more of an energy hog, so I have started doing medium loads. This size of load fits on the laundry rack, and I can (sneakily) dry it outside if it's warm enough.

For all of the frustrations and backward stepping here, I have found a way that this whole thing might actually break even or come ahead energy and possibly even money-wise. Since I can run the dryer for as short of a time as I'd like, I've decided to employ a "finishing it off" method to drying. Unless somebody complains, I think I can continue to dry clothes completely outside during the summer. However, now when it's cold, I plan to wash clothes in the morning, let them hang dry in front of the glass door until early evening, and then finish them off in the dryer using as little time as they need. Sound good?

Starting a home church

2011-09-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a Craigslist ad that I just posted. I figured I'd post it on my blog as well in case people use Google to find out about a home church in the Portland metropolitan (specifically Beaverton, Aloha or Hillsboro) area. I was Google-ing such a thing recently, but I found no such blog post! ;)

If you want to contact me after reading the following ad, please leave a comment or, even better, find the ad on the Portland Craigslist (search for "Starting a home church") and reply by email to that. Thanks!

My husband and I just moved into the area, and we areinterested in forming a small “home church.” Please read on to get an idea of what we areimagining and to get to know us a bit better. J

For years, it has been challenging to find a churchcommunity that feels balanced and good. We were attending OSU in Corvallisfor the past six years, and it was just over a year ago that we finally found achurch that worked for us. What made thechurch work for us was that they genuinely loved and accepted people, werehumble, and made every attempt to form a good community. People often spent time together outside ofthe Sunday morning service, and we got to actually know people by eating mealsand playing games together on Tuesday nights each week.

My husband just got a job in the Beaverton/Aloha area, andafter moving here I have been distressed at the thought of finding a newchurch. I have looked into all of thechurches within a couple miles of us, and most of them are just too large forus. It also seems like most smallerchurches tend to lack people our age (we’re in our mid-twenties).

I have thought for a few years that perhaps an ideal churchfor us would be a small-ish group of people who meet at a home and get to knoweach other enough to form friendships and a genuine community. We want to make friends here, and we want toappreciate a community of people who support each other with the love of God,and I feel so much more optimistic about forming this group rather than tryingto make things work when in big churches.

What we are imagining is meeting regularly (although itdoesn’t have to be Sunday morning necessarily) to have some kind of structuredmeeting where we discuss thoughts about God/the Bible/etc, pray, and do somesort of music. In addition to themeeting, I think it would be great to regularly share a meal together and playgames/socialize. We could also gettogether to volunteer if interest is there. All of this can be done in a variety of ways, and I have ideas and wouldbe happy to organize things; however, I want to leave things open for other peoples’ideas as well! One thing that I’ve beenhoping is that our community could be relatively close in proximity so that weminimize travel. We live near theintersection of NW Quatama Rdand NW 205^th Avein Aloha. Also, we’d be happy to hostpeople at our home, but we’re open to having it elsewhere or to rotate, etc.

If this is sounding appealing, read on, and I’ll let youknow a little bit more about myself and my husband.

Matthew and I both went to OSU for our undergraduate andgraduate work. Matthew is a mechanicalengineer, and I am a mathematician/math teacher. Matthew currently is working, and I’m goingto apply winter term to be in the part-time pool for teaching math at Portland Community College. We are both quite shy and introverted, butwe’re friendly, good listeners, and I’ll open up a fair amount if you get toknow me. (Matthew might open up too, ifyou’re lucky! He’s quiet…) Regarding our faith, over the past few yearswe have become less than enchanted by the current beliefs held by the majorityof churches. We’re interested in truth,but we have realized that churches don’t have as much claim to the truth asthey think they do, and it feels like pride and legalism have taken the placeof humility and love. People seem towear masks to hide their true human selves. For this reason, we feel unable to be ourselves when in most churchsettings. We have rebuilt ourrelationship with God by focusing on the compassion, love and grace of God forthis imperfect, hurting world. Anotherimportant aspect of our life is our goal to live simply in an effort to takebetter care of the world God gave us, to fight materialism, and to promotesocial justice. We do things like try tospend our money with socially responsible companies, make our own food fromscratch, avoid packaging waste, and many other things. We have been analyzing all that we do to tryto match our actions to our values.

In general, one or both of us enjoy having good discussions,hiking, walking, running, cooking/baking, crafting (sewing, knitting,crocheting, etc.), reading, going to farms for u-pick produce, canning, playingonline RPGs (that’d be Matthew…), singing, music, and other things!

If you too are looking for a close community and our storyspeaks to you, please send me an email! I’d love to learn about who you are and what your hopes for the groupwould be! Questions are encouraged aswell, of course! We’re hoping to meetsome people in our age group (20-40 ?), but if you feel like this is perfectfor you and you’re not in the range, don’t let that deter you. If things seem to click well enough, we’dprobably set up a meeting outside the home for a bit, and then hopefullyeventually bring it into the home.

Famine in East Africa

2011-09-20T08:32:00.000-07:00

I find it appropriate that just after I posted yesterday about having problems finding "the right food" to eat, I learn today that millions in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya are facing a famine. Perspective!

One blog I follow has a post that talks a little bit about the impacts of the famine, and it also has a suggestion of a campaign taking funds to help relieve the people in East Africa. In short, crops have failed for a few years, and food has run out for many families. People are dying quickly, and many more are malnourished so there is concern that the death toll will continue to grow. If you are so inclined, please feel free to donate to help the people at this page. I should at least mention on my own post that the money will be distributed to World Vision which is a Christian humanitarian organization that has been helping the people in this area for decades and is stepping up to continue to help during this time of crisis.

If you want to help but you don't find yourself wanting to give to World Vision, this CNN article has more options for people accepting money. If you can't give money right now, you can certainly pray for the people in need and/or make others who might be able to contribute money know that there is a need for humanitarian aid! Matthew has a news feed that he follows for news stories, and I don't think that this famine ever showed up, so we didn't know about it. Perhaps there are others who have not learned about it?

If you want to learn more about the famine, if you Google "famine in Africa" or "famine in Somalia", you will be able to find more news about it.

Thanks for considering these families in need!

Food Woes

2011-09-19T16:53:00.000-07:00

So, here's the earth. Well, at least our little chunk of earth.

One of the things that has been making me kind of stressed out this week is food. The closest food store to us is Whole Foods which lies about 1.3 miles north of us. My opinion of Whole Foods is that it's an even snootier Safeway. The produce isn't particularly local or fresh. They make a show when a product is "local" (from Oregon), but I read in a book that they pretty much sell all of the same things at each store, and in each store they brag about what's local to that particular store. They do sell a lot of organic food, though, and I try to remind myself that it's not the worst place to go when needing to get some groceries once or twice a week.

Another food option is New Seasons Market which is local to the Portland area. The closest market is about 2.5 miles away which is kind of far when one considers hauling groceries. Perhaps if we get set up to be able to bike and carry things on a bike, this will be more of a regular consideration... However, the market that we went to on Saturday was near to the Beaverton library and Farmers' Market. It had a slightly more local, co-op feel. However, I just felt like my trust in their product choices could go only so far when they had Betty Crocker cake mixes and the like. Truly a relationship breaker, let me tell you. However, this store has some options that Whole Foods doesn't have (like taring my reused containers so that I can use them in the bulk section), and some of the products tend to be more local since New Seasons is local to the area. (*EDIT* 10/2/2011: I had a moment of bravery and asked a cashier at Whole Foods if we could bring in our own containers and get them tared. It turns out that you can, and he was even super nice and showed me how to do it at any register even if no cashier is there.)

However, the desperation didn't dissipate after visiting these two stores. For one thing, I use a LOT of wheat flour in my weekly baking escapades. Whole Foods didn't have whole wheat flour in bulk. New Seasons did, but it wasn't organic, and it was still $1 per pound which is a lot for non-organic flour. Neither of these stores had good options for buying non-bulk flour. Ideally, I'd buy a 25 pound bag of flour. The stores carried 5 pound bags, and most of the flour has traveled halfway across the country to get here. Bob's Red Mill is a local option, but it makes my head hurt to think about all of the plastic packaging that they use. (WHY, Bob's Red Mill, WHY??? Nobody else wraps EVERY product that they create in PLASTIC!!) I also couldn't figure out a way to buy masa harina without getting it in a plastic bag.

So, today I started considering the option of visiting an actual co-op. The reason that I wasn't before is because the nearest co-op is about twelve miles away. Fortunately, I guess, the library is halfway between, so it would actually "only" be an extra twelve mile round trip on the one day every three to four weeks that we would make this journey. Perhaps that would be worth it to find a place that values buying local, organic food? We also could become owners and support their cause. Meanwhile, we could get 10% off discounts on case orders (which I'm hoping would include large bags of flour). So, that's my current hope, and we'll probably head that way in a couple of weeks.

I also miss having an easily accessible Farmers' Market. There is one near Whole Foods (about 1.3 miles from us) that runs a short season and ends at the end of August, so we missed it. The next nearest one is 2.5 miles away right near New Seasons, and it runs Sundays 10am-2pm. We can go to the Beaverton one when we go to the library, but that'll probably be about every three weeks, and I can't stock up on most types of produce, of course!

Finally, I have been going through "packaging panic" where I can't make seemingly simple decisions because I'm trying to minimize packaging issues. Here's one example. I can't figure out what type of milk to buy. Since we are employed now, I'm trying to switch to buying organic milk products. I have a few options. I can buy a plastic gallon milk jug, half gallon paper cartons, or half gallon glass merlons. The milk in the merlons is from California (while the other two are from Coos County, Oregon), so it has to travel farther and in a heavier (glass) container to get here. They also have a plastic top that I'd have to throw away, and they are significantly more expensive than the other brands. The milk jugs and paper cartons are not from as far away, and they are both recyclable. I am leaning toward getting the paper carton, but I'd happily take advice if you think I'm weighing the factors incorrectly.

Anyway, this has been one of my woes this past week. Really, my woes have boiled down to food, transportation, and friends/church. I'll probably blog about the latter two in the near future, too.

Also, thanks for listening to the woes. I want you to know that I realize I really have nothing to complain about because I am fully blessed just to have the food that I need to sustain me. However, if you know me very well at all, you probably know that if I choose to address a problem, I can't help but to throw myself at it and give it everything I have, and that's simply what I'm doing here. I'll figure out a system in the end, but it's very different from the system I created in Corvallis, and it's just taking me time because I'm just that picky! : )

Our new place

2011-09-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of our new place so that you have a mental picture of where we're at. While I might be struggling to get used to the location of our apartment (more on that later), we chose an apartment that is well-suited for our lifestyle. It has plenty of storage space for food, lots of big windows facing west to let in light for my plants (and myself), our own washer and dryer, and a dishwasher which is nice since washing dishes is the one job that Matthew and I both really just don't like doing. The kitchen has a little bit more counter space which is good, and the walls are white instead of brown, which is pretty much amazing.

Without further ado, here are some pictures. Sorry some of them have a weird stripe thing causing an image problem; the blogger picture uploader was not working well yesterday or today.

Bedroom...

More bedroom...

Dining room...

Part of the living room. The boxes are textbooks and stuff Matthew's going to take to work.

More living room.

View from the dining room.

View from the living room.

What else is a person going to do with a walk-in closet except stow a small deep freezer inside?

Kitchen and stuff...

More kitchen...

Even more kitchen...

Pantries are kind of awesome. Now I can buy 25 pound bags of oats and still have somewhere to put them.

View from the bedroom.

I got attacked by our stuff while moving... It's worth sharing, I think.

It's GO time!

2011-09-10T19:42:00.000-07:00

After four plus months of job hunting, Matthew got a job! He interviewed last Friday, and they called him Wednesday letting him know that he got the job. Needless to say, we were pretty excited. :)

We put in an application for the apartments that we decided we liked best (we thought about it ahead of time... you know, just in case...) that same evening, and since then we've been packing and cleaning and doing all sorts of oh-my-gosh-we-suddenly-need-to-move-because-Matthew-starts-work-on-the-20th activities. We've been lucky to sell a couple large items (a monitor and a set of dishes) that we didn't want to move again, and along with that we have been fortunate to find a lot of boxes using the power of Craigslist. Things have mostly been falling into place. Originally, we were thinking we'd move Monday, but we seem to be having troubles with our current management filling out the paperwork for our background check. Now we're planning to pester them Monday and then hopefully get to move into our new place on Tuesday. Hence we have another day to pack and clean. Hence I have time to take a hot afternoon/evening off to blog.

What with all this insanity, I have mostly managed to consider the forward direction: moving to Aloha. Sometimes it hits me, though. After six years in Corvallis, we're leaving this place that I consider home. I'm also leaving a large number of people that I'd kind of rather not leave behind. And it's kind of sad.

This is our home that we've enjoyed for about two and a half years. Now we go off to a world with a lot of people and a lot of cars. I have this really horrible picture of Portland/suburbs where all I imagine are big four-lane roads with cars and cars and cars. I lived in Beaverton with Matthew for two weeks right after we got married, and I've been in the Portland area other times in my life, and for some reason this is all I see in my mind. My mental picture of Corvallis is mostly filled with trees, and I'm having a hard time not being scared of moving from tree-world to car-world. I'm also currently scared of big cities in general. It's not even crime or people that scares me, but really just the idea of feeling like I'm surrounded by so many people and buildings that I'm lost and kind of alone. I also have obsessive-compulsive worries about figuring out where to buy good food (we're so spoiled by living about half a mile from the co-op), figuring out how to use the MAX successfully (we're so spoiled by being able to easily walk, bike, or ride the free bus pretty much anywhere we want/need to go), learning how to deal with everything just being so spread out because it's just so darn big, and figuring out what to do with myself since Matthew will be gone most of the day (I'm thinking I'll apply to work at Portland Community College in the part-time pool, but that would start in January...). I avoid thinking about these things too much by allowing myself to stress out a bit about moving and driving our car to our new place by myself because Matthew will be driving the moving van. Then again, I felt like Corvallis was big when I moved here, and I needed time to adjust. I guess that's just how things work.

Wish us luck as we move and adjust! It feels absolutely wild to not be going to school in a couple of weeks since this is the first time in twenty-two years that it has happened!!

Canning tomatoes!

2011-09-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

I canned for the first time today!!! How exciting! I canned tomatoes because we use crushed tomatoes fairly often, and I found a u-pick place in Corvallis. Its website is here if you're in the Corvallis area and interested in getting some tomatoes. We got about 58 pounds for $35, and it was really fun! The tomato plants just sprawl on the ground, so it's like an Easter egg hunt when looking for the ripe, red tomatoes. If you are interested in canning, I recommend the Tattler canning lids that we got because they are reusable and BPA free. Anyway, I'm just kind of exciting about canning the first time. It's really cool to pick our own food at a local farm and then store it away so that we can eat it over the winter.

Enjoy the pictures!

58 pounds of tomatoes

Part of my fleet of canning jars. I only used 14 today.

Making a mess...

It's a pumpkin tomato!

Simmering away...

The 14 quarts of deliciousness...

Weddings!

2011-09-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about weddings recently! I went to one last weekend, and I sold my own wedding gown today, so it's just been on my mind. Part of what I have been thinking about is how much I have changed in the last three years and how different our wedding would look as a result. I'm not saying that I am not happy with our wedding, I really am. My family and friends were there, and it was a really beautiful and happy day for us. However, it's kind of fun to consider what would have been the same and what I would have changed.

I did pretty much all of the planning myself which I didn't mind doing being it was a welcome study break throughout that year! I figured out the food, attire, decorations, photos, and other details, and I made sure they all came together. It's not that I didn't have help; I did, but I was pretty much "the planner". I would do a lot of it the same. I baked my own wedding cake, and I frosted it with some help from my now sister-in-law. I also baked some of the food for the reception; some Amish friendship bread and some chocolate chip cookies. The rest of the food my mom, my bridesmaids, and I prepared the day before the wedding. I think that it was really fun to do this, and I remember the excitement of the day as my friends and I made my plans come to fruition. I ordered flowers wholesale, and a lovely lady from the church volunteered to arrange them for me. I used a fair amount from the church, too, like vases, pedestals, tablecloths, etc. My friend from high school did our photography, and I had a couple family members with video cameras catch the footage.

I think that the biggest things that I would change are the attire and the flowers. My wedding gown cost $600. Because our wedding was put together by ourselves and our family and friends, it was not a terribly expensive wedding by the end of things, so I decided to splurge on the dress. Mind you, I realize that $600 isn't even that much compared to many dresses, but it was a LOT to me.

It is pretty though, no? However, I think that if I was getting married now instead of then, I would have either rented, found a gown used, or ditched the "gown" idea altogether and found a nice white dress that I could wear for more than just the wedding. I did decide to sell my dress, and I finally sold it today for $40 to a friend-of-the-bride who wanted to buy a dress for someone who couldn't afford one herself. I'm happy that it sounds like it will be put to good use, but it took me 2-3 years to sell it, and it didn't sell until I listed it as $150 or best offer. Tux rentals were also fairly expensive, and that could have been saved by going with a more casual feel for the attire. Additionally, my bridesmaids bought their own dresses. While they weren't particularly expensive for bridesmaids dresses (I think they were about $70) and I let them wear any black shoes that they wanted, I doubt that any of them ever wore the dresses again. Hopefully they sold them, too! I think that I would be less picky about the dresses now. Perhaps they'd wear something they already had? Or we'd find something they'd wear again?

The other thing I'd change is the flowers. I learned only recently that so many of the cut flowers that we get are actually grown a) in another country..., b) often in a poor country, and c) on land that probably should be used to supply food to people in said poor country. With this new knowledge, if I got married now, I would feel like I should use locally sourced flowers and greenery that was in season. This might have involved me being less picky again, but I would be happy to feel like I was doing something good for the earth and not supporting big farmers that are making it hard for people to grow food in their own countries!

I'm sure that other decisions would have been made slightly differently along the way, but these are just things that come to mind. I'm not exactly itching to get married again soon, so if you are ever interested in talking about what you can do to make your wedding fun, friendly for the earth and the people on it, inexpensive but beautiful, etc., let me know! :)

I don't mean to make you jealous...

2011-08-31T21:51:00.000-07:00

... but my kitchen contains perfection. Each time I've walked into the kitchen this evening, the perfection has caught my eye, and I just stand there goggling ridiculously. See that? It's an heirloom tomato from the Farmers' Market making friends with some basil from my own basil plants. In the not so far future, they shall be eaten together in a tomato, basil, mozzarella sandwich. And it will be amazing. To be clear, there are other players in this scene of perfection. There is a large jar of wheat flour ready to be made into bread at a moment's notice. Additionally, the bamboo cutting board and knife are just chilling after being utilized to chop up some basil for tonight's dinner. Finally, there are some beautiful mugs dangling from a mug tree while waiting until the next time they are filled with a hot, delicious cup of tea. See? Perfection.

Mawwiage is what bwings us togethew...

2011-08-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

And wuv, twue wuv, wiww fowwow you fowevah... Like an adorable puppy, one would presume, because that's exactly how love works! :)

On the eve of our third anniversary, I am here re-contemplating the vexing passage of the Bible where Paul suggests to the Ephesian wives that they should submit to/obey/support/be subject to (or whatever verb your translation uses) their husbands. Here I stand as a woman in the 21st century still trying to decide what exactly this verse means to my marriage. I am wary of Paul's writings about women because I think that they have been used widely to crush women. I think the writings have been used to keep women from being as productive, contributive members of society as possible. I don't mean to necessarily blame Paul; I'm sure that I can hardly understand the culture and society of his day. I also can't easily fathom what it would be like in a society where women were not educated and were generally not valued as much as a man. (I pause to acknowledge that some women still suffer from this condition, but I feel like we have at least progressed greatly as a whole.) Perhaps he was just helping his followers find order in the society they lived in. Or perhaps we still don't quite understand Paul's intent.

I think that from my conservative Christian background, I had the impression that submission to my husband would mean giving in and letting him have his way whenever we disagree. Fortunately, I did not come from a tradition where submitting meant obeying as a child would (even being subjected to physical punishment), although I have read writings written by people from that tradition. I remember that when Matthew and I were engaged, my dad was concerned about using the traditional phrase, "to honor and obey." Since these vows were the promises we were making to each other for life, it was a fair concern. If I made that promise, I would be promising to follow Matthew and go along with what he chose for us without a fight... even if I knew it to be wrong. ("Why yes, honey! Let's have our children get married at the age of six years old so that we can make sure we get to choose their spouse! I'm your wife, and it's your idea, so it must be a good idea because I don't want to get spanked!" We didn't ever use that phrase in our vows, for the record.)

My dad was even concerned with the word "submit" (which we also didn't end up using), and this I remember discussing with him at length. At that point in life, I believed that the Bible was the Word of God that was to be taken literally at face value. My translation told me that I was supposed to submit, so I was supposed to submit, of course! Looking back now, I can recognize that in my conversations with my dad I didn't really know what it meant practically to submit to a husband in the first place!

I have shocked and appalled some people by now. I say that because old-Karen would have been shocked and appalled! I want to say that I absolutely care about how Matthew and I relate in marriage. I want the peace and joy between us that comes from loving each other sincerely and a deep faith in God.

I just don't want to do it blindly, and I want it to be as true and healthy a relationship as possible.

Here is what I've been thinking about how we relate to each other recently. We both consider each other's opinions and needs when making decisions. Instead of doing whatever is best for ourselves, we work together as a team to live a fulfilling life that makes both of us happy. For example, if I was single I would not be considering moving to Beaverton right now! I think that I'd stay in Corvallis and work at LBCC or OSU. However, we work as a team, and I will happily follow him where he goes because it benefits both of us in the long run. Additionally, neither of us always wins. Matthew, being the bigger introvert, prefers staying at home almost all the time. I, being the lesser introvert, merely want to stay at home much of the time! Sometimes we go out when he wants to stay in, and sometimes we stay in when I want to go out. We both make sacrifices since we cannot change these inherent parts of our personalities. We don't always agree on everything, but we listen to each other and try to understand each other and respect the other person's conclusion. We both try to maintain peace by putting the other person's needs before our own. Matthew washes the dishes sometimes even when it's my turn because sometimes I'm just tired or grumpy. Now that's love.

Once again, disclaimer: I'm not saying that our marriage is perfect. However, it in general feels very balanced, sustainable, and peaceful. We do have our own set of personalities, so our marriage probably looks very different than other marriages that are 'equally successful'!

Perhaps the point is that regardless the time and age, husbands and wives need to do what they need to do to cooperate and get along in a manner that promotes love, peace and a happy household. However, I don't know if I've ever heard a sermon or even many discussions about the idea about how husbands and wives relate that really get into the actual nitty gritty, day-to-day understandings of how husbands and wives relate to other in this day and age. I feel like there is often a fear of dishonoring God or being blasphemous if we don't stick to the well-worn words about how women are supposed to be submissive (and subservient...) to their husbands. I tend think that God can handle a sincere and thoughtful questioner, and I believe that He'd just love for us to search for a meaningful understanding of the bigger truth about marriage that can't even begin to be contained in a book. So I think that we're free to discuss, be thoughtful, ask God, and look for some applicable truth in the matter!

On the vows note, here are our vows from three years ago:

"Today, Karen/Matthew, I take you to be my wife/husband.
I make a commitment to you today:
With God's help I will love and serve,
Honor, and protect you.
I'm choosing today
to spend the rest of my life with you.
I will walk with you when life is good,
and thru every storm.
Karen/Matthew, you are a gift to me from God.
I hope others see His heart and love,
in the way I care for you.
Today, I pledge my love to you."

And I still mean every word! I love you, Matthew!

Sometimes I just fail

2011-08-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

That's what I decided today. But for some reason I feel like I'm supposed to be good at everything that I do and to never give up at anything.

I did some tutoring online yesterday, and it just was awful. It was partly because the online classroom stopped working properly during one session, a student disappeared in the middle of another, and I was helping a calculus student who still didn't know how subtract fractions with different denominators in another (admittedly, the denominators had variables in them, but still!). All in all, the communication through typing was slow and painful, and drawing on the whiteboard with my mouse was sloppy and tedious. I felt like nobody had any clue what I was saying, and I was struggling to be more clear as I was unable to point at something and talk simultaneously. At the end of two and a half hours, I just felt horrible and like I had helped absolutely nobody.

I went to sleep last night still stressed out, and I woke up with this feeling of dread because I had another hour of tutoring scheduled for today. I finally just burst into tears as I was bringing in the laundry from the line.

That fact is, I felt like a failure. And at something I am 'supposed' to be good at!

After crying at Matthew for awhile and letting him know how horrible and pathetic of a person I am, I decided once and for all to quit tutoring online. It has just made me become extremely stressed out and feel like an inadequate human being. And why should I do this if it makes me a completely miserable human being?

Yet, I feel like I have failed (or just hated) just about every job I've had. My boss horrified me when I was a lifeguard, plus it was fairly boring staring at a pool for eight hours at a time. As a busser, I felt like I could never go fast enough, and one of the managers made me want to die when she hissed, "We serve ice water here," at me after I failed to get an ice cube from the pitcher into the glass at one table. I was kind of bad at getting enough ice to go into the glasses without splashing water everywhere, so I tended to be cautious and I sometimes didn't get ice into the glass. I enjoyed landscaping at OSU except for the fact that half of the days I felt like I was going to die from heatstroke. That was my first summer away from the always-60-degrees Oregon coast. My next summer I learned that I didn't enjoy wrestling with MATLAB daily. That following year, I did my student teaching and woke up daily feeling like I was going to throw up. That summer, I started tutoring some rising 5th graders which was way outside of my comfort zone as a human being who had been trained to work with high school students as who grew up managing to mostly avoid dealing with children (not intentionally... I just never had much of an opportunity.)

However, I quickly figured out how to tutor those kids adequately, and I have been with them for three summers now, and I'm really loving it this summer. I also started as a teaching assistant at OSU in the fall, and while I was nervous for the few classes, I quickly learned to be confident and happy, and most of my students really liked me.

So I'm not a complete failure! I just feel really bad about how badly I've done at so many things... I feel dread when I consider doing most jobs. I hate the idea of working a full-time job. I feel like either private tutoring or teaching part-time at a community college might be the only places I could work without living with constant panic and adrenaline surges.

This makes me feel kind of bad at this point in life though. I feel kind of like there's a lot of pressure to work a bunch. But I don't really want to, and Matthew wants to, so what's wrong with that?

It's not that I'm lazy either. I promise I'm not. I like staying busy, and I enjoy cooking, cleaning (although I'm not a huge fan of doing dishes for some reason, I'm not going to lie), and doing other jobs. I also have never minded volunteering. For some reason, doing the same job while volunteering makes me feel less stressed out. I feel like fewer eyes are on me and I'm being judged less. My last term in college, I volunteered in one classroom where I had done student teaching, and I was happy as a clam doing that.

I just feel weird when I realize that my aspirations for life are to cook, clean, grow a garden, make things, raise kids, and volunteer. Not that I think that those are bad aspirations. I just feel like people don't really respect them. I think that's why I tell people that my goal is to teach community college or tutor when they ask. I think I do want to do these things, but they're not really my greatest aspirations. When you've gotten a Master's degree in mathematics, it just is hard to expect good reactions from people when you say you want to be a "housewife" or "stay-at-home mom".

This makes me think about my brother. I think he's right when he talks about how our education shouldn't be thought of as just a means to an end where the end is a career. My education has changed how I think, how I understand and view people, and really my life in general. I have no regrets about the six-years of hard work, tears, confusion, and challenges that I faced at OSU. Even if I barely use the particular bits of information that I have gleaned, the changes in my brain will stay with me.

So there you have it. I kind of suck at jobs. However, I bake a mean loaf of bread, I keep a home clean, warm and cozy feeling, I love to make things grow, and I like picking my food and "putting it up". I look forward to pouring my life into my kids when I have some someday (hopefully not too many years from now), and as I pour, I will be sharing my six-years of college experience through how and what I teach my children.

I apologize if my recent posts have seemed different and less appealing to some of you! I feel like a lot of my blog has been created as we move forward in life, and as we spend this time waiting for our next assignment in life, it has been more challenging to move forward because some things may have to change based on where we live next. However, I think this time has been good for me as I learn about myself, figure out what's important to me, and learn to wait patiently (or at least try/pretend). I'm sure we'll be moving forward in the next few years as we learn what it really looks like to not be in college, hold a job, have kids (hopefully), etc. And hopefully that forward motion will start soon. :)

Knitted quilt... Part II

2011-08-20T21:21:00.000-07:00

Remember this guy? I knitted him, and sewed him together... and he lasted about a week. I just wasn't happy with how the colors blended when they were in blocks like that! So, I untied all of the knots, unraveled all of the squares...

... and made this guy! Granny squares to the rescue! It took some extra effort, but I'm glad I did it. I am much happier with the results.

The colors still look a little funny in the picture... the red really isn't that weird looking, I promise. :)

Here's where I got the tutorial for the granny squares in case you're interested! I used a pretty big crochet hook because I wanted big squares, and I wasn't worried about having a bunch of big spaces in the blanket.

Cooking without plastic

2011-08-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

I recently decided to ditch our nonstick pans. Teflon, which is the coating that makes the pan nonstick, is a plastic. While it is generally considered safe to use these pans at a medium heat, I decided to just go ahead and get rid of them before they figure out how unsafe they are. It just seems like plastic and food don't go together, and especially as I consider having kids in the next few years, I figure I might as well do my best to play it safe. Fortunately, many people do want nonstick pans, so ours sold quickly on Craigslist. I found some used Revere pots on ebay, I already had a big stainless steel skillet, and I borrowed (stole?) a couple of cast iron skillets from my mom since she said she didn't really use them anyway.

If you have nonstick pans, you can't use metal utensils on them! As such, we also had a set of plastic cooking utensils that we put up on Craigslist yesterday. We found the replacements for the essentials at Goodwill for a couple dollars each, and we already had some of what we needed in bamboo that we didn't have to replace.

Our old set came with a plastic bucket thing to hold the utensils. When I knew I was going to make the switch, I got a coffee can from my mom so that it could hold our utensils. Of course, an added benefit of this was that I could decorate it however I chose! Today I got around to painting some adorable little birds onto my can. I'm very pleased by how it turned out! What a cheerful container of utensils!

So there you have it, we've made the switch!

You can't have too many sundresses...

2011-08-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

Especially ones made out of used sheets. This particular dress was made out of a sheet I found as we cleaned out a closet at my mom's house. Can you guess what era the sheet is from?!?! I can't quite read the tag since it's fraying, but the copyright is definitely 1970-something. Apparently it was my grandma's, and she ripped a corner off for some reason. I looked at it and thought: Sundress. Here it is!

I found that sewing this dress went a lot better than my last sundress. It is also better sewn with a more finished interior. Each time I sew one of these, I do something a little silly, and I make it better the next time. I'm really close to having it just right, though. Fortunately, a well-placed sash hides the problem area: Where the skirt join the top.

The v-neck was a last minute addition. I had a flat cut across, but I realize that it really needed to be a 'v'.

I'm loving the criss-cross straps, too! I wanted something a little different this time.

The theology of unemployment

2011-08-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

Matthew has been job hunting since the end or April or the beginning of May. In case you haven't heard, our economy is kind of sad right now, so my dear husband (who did three internships for a total of 1.25 years of experience and had an undergrad GPA of 3.89 and a graduate GPA of 3.98!) still hasn't gotten any job offers. In fact, he hasn't even found very many jobs to apply to.

Admittedly, we're currently being picky. That is, we are only looking in western Oregon. Portland, Salem, Corvallis, Eugene... You know. All those little cities in Oregon.

Matthew has had two interviews so far, and one company preferred someone who had more experience (and more enthusiasm about working at least 50 hours a week!) The other company was a small company whose board decided that they could only afford to hire an electrical engineer (EE) when push came to shove.

Matthew now has an application in at a company where he was an intern a few years ago. He emailed his boss (the one that liked him enough to tell him to take home a large computer monitor on his last day of work...), and his boss put in good words at HR and the department hiring. So we wait... hoping they call to schedule an interview...

There has been a lot of waiting these last months. It's a challenging balance to make plans for the future and to continue living life while knowing that at any time Matthew might get a job, and we might move to a different city within just a few weeks. I'm not very good at having my future be so nebulous. It honestly kind of stresses me out.

Actually, a lot about this ridiculous period of life stresses me out a bit. It also makes me realize that I certainly am not sure how God works because I don't know how to properly make decisions.

Here's an example. I'm tutoring a few hours a week, and we have managed to save a fair amount of money throughout college and grad school. Given this fact, I think that (barring unseen disaster) we should be able to go at least another ten months before really needing to start being concerned about the last of our money disappearing. Since we have this extra time, we have struggled with figuring out how picky Matthew should be in applying and (if given the chance) accepting a position. The type of position that Matthew would feel incredibly good about working in is a renewable energy or an energy-efficient building type position. We also ideally would love to stay in Corvallis where we have friends and our families are not terribly far away. The company that hired an EE instead of a mechanical engineer (ME) was in Corvallis, and the company designs things that use wasted heat to power things instead of using batteries. This was a job Matthew really wanted (and still wants). To top it off, in the email the company sent explaining that they hired an EE, they said that they hoped to contact Matthew about the ME position in the "very near future." Of course, that was over a month ago, and who knows what the "very near future" is.

I believe that God wants to give us good things in our life, and I think that He wants us to believe that He'll provide amazing things. However, I also believe that we don't necessarily understand what the good things are that God has for us. Since this job in Corvallis seems perfect for Matthew, and it seems like he still might get it, do we wait for it even if he gets offered another job? That doesn't seem to make sense given the economy, and would God really :play games" with us like that? Would we be showing a lack of faith by accepting a job that's not ideal in our eyes? Or would we be faithfully taking the door that God opened for us even though it did not seem like what was best to us?

Here's another example. You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned applying to positions. This is because I've strongly felt like I should let Matthew find a position first because I am pretty sure that I can get part-time work at a community college (or tutoring) wherever he finds work. We both feel very strongly against having both of us working full-time, and this seems to make sense. However, recently a couple people brought to my attention a full-time teaching position at a private school in Corvallis. These people both worked at the school, and although they don't know me terribly well, I think that they would have been able to say that I'd be a good candidate. In other words, I think that this would be a job that I could have had a reasonable shot at getting. However, the very idea of doing my first year of high school teaching this coming year made me nauseous. After a very stressful student teaching experience and a very happy teaching assistant experience, I'm not even sure I ever want to teach high school. Plus, what would we do if Matthew found a job elsewhere during the school year? In short, I didn't even apply to the job.

This job would have kept us in Corvallis though and eased the burden of finances. Did I close a door God opened? Or did I successfully say no to a tempting way out of financial uncertainty? Should I be applying to teaching positions (in particular, at the local community college) and not waiting for Matthew to find a job? Am I letting what I believe to be the best for our future get in the way with the actuality of our future?

So I wrestle with the ideas of having too little faith. (I should wait for God to give us this great gift that He wants to give us!) Or perhaps having unreasonable faith in God doing something that He doesn't do. (I shouldn't wait! Whatever door we end up being able to walk through will be a great gift!) I also don't know if there is one correct path we are supposed to take or if any reasonable job situation is equally good. Hence, you can see that I am not very good at making decisions because it sometimes feels like whatever decision I make is either really right or really wrong, and I just am not quite sure which it is.

Aren't these just such basic questions about how God works in our lives? So, pardon me while I walk through it all confused, a bit stressed out, and incapacitated!

In case you are curious, we are thinking that most any job is a good job, and we'll be grateful for anything that Matthew is offered. I also still don't think that I am going to do any more than tutor until Matthew finds a position so that I can remain flexible. So, we "lowered standards" when it comes to jobs Matthew will take, but we remained firm on me staying flexible so that we can easily move when Matthew gets a job. I'm not positive we're doing the right thing, but we're trying, and this is what we came up with!

How to make vegetable broth...

2011-08-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

... because it's really ridiculously simple.

1) Save vegetable scraps. Freeze them if you need to! (I did...) I used bits of potato, carrot tops, onion skins, zucchini tops, bits of brocolli stalks, garlic tops and skins, and probably some other things that I'm not remembering. I also tossed in some fresh oregano that I have growing, and I added some pepper and a couple of bay leaves. You can look up other vegetables to see if they go in broth if you are uncertain. The only thing that I know you don't want to add is leafy greens like lettuce, spinach, and kale.

2) When your bag is full, get ready for broth time! Defrost your veggies and throw them in a stock pot then add some cold water. (Apparently, it's somehow better if you start with cold water. Vegetable magic, I'm sure.) Theoretically you are supposed to have about one parts water to one part vegetable matter. I'm pretty sure you'll be OK as long as you have a decent amount of vegetable matter.

Nom nom nom... Looks delish!

3) Now turn up the heat, and get this pot of goodness simmering! You don't really want it to boil, but you do want it to simmer. Once it's simmering, put it on a heat that will keep it simmering, and let it go for at least an hour! I stirred mine every once in awhile, but that might not be totally necessary... I might have just wanted to admire my broth.

4) After around an hour, your kitchen probably smells great, and your broth is also probably done. It's time to strain out the squishy plant matter and save the broth. Remember, this isn't pasta... you want to save the liquid and get rid of the solid stuff! (I only say this because this part of the process felt incredibly backward to the pasta-eater in me.) Set your strainer in a bowl or another pot, and pour your liquid in.

It looks delicious and nutritious!

5) Let your broth cool off, and then store it in containers to freeze or use. I used some cottage cheese containers that I've collected over the year.

My almost full gallon bag of veggies gave me about 12 cups of broth, I think. I already used two cups when making rice yesterday, and it added a nice flavor (and probably some nutrients!).

So there you have it! A very inexpensive, resourceful way to have some broth around. Enjoy!

Matthew and Karen on dating, engagement, and marriage

2011-08-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Recently I stumbled onto a website that was created because the creator thought that the internet was abundant in advice for finding the right guy to date but not for figuring out who to marry. The website seemed to focus on becoming a good woman that would be able to have a good marriage. I think that this is an admirable goal, and I think that men and women should both think about what kind of person he/she wants to commit to and what kind of person he/she can be to nurture a healthy marriage. As our third anniversary comes up, I figure that maybe we have something to say on the subject. I don't claim to have the answers to everything, but I can talk about what we have learned. In fact, I can also rope my husband into talking about what he has learned too! While we're not perfect, I'd have to say that we are stable, happy, and loving, and that's a good place to be. Matthew and I answered some questions that I would have been interested in reading about especially before marriage, and I recorded our answers in the rest of this blog. We were typing our answers simultaneously which is the cause of the overlap in our answers. If you have other questions that you want to have answered, please leave a comment, and I'll make sure that we both answer your questions! :)

Q: In the beginning, how did you decide to date each other?
Karen: Honestly, I almost didn't. I was just finishing getting over a break-up, and Matthew's first impression on me was actually a bit overwhelming! Not that I should judge people based on fashion, but a man speaking in weird accents while wearing a t-shirt tucked into pleated khakis with a belt holding a cell phone was not the type of person that I ever imagined dating. Fortunately, I am not as picky when it comes to friends! Once I got to know him (and perhaps helped him shop for a pair of jeans...), I eventually realized that he was actually a pretty interesting, and very nice, guy. It still took me awhile to feel comfortable with the idea of dating because I wasn't in a hurry to get my heart broken again, but in the end I decided to take the risk because he seemed to be worth it.
Matthew: We started out being friends, which let us get to know each other before dating. When we realized that we both liked each other and wanted to consider moving the relationship to the level of dating, we both took time to think and pray about whether we should do so or not. We both wanted to get into a romantic relationship only if we thought it had the potential to move beyond dating. After thinking and praying for a few weeks, we felt that this relationship did have that potential, so we decided to start dating.

Q: When did you start to be "serious"?
Matthew: We started talking about "serious" relationship issues right from the beginning of our dating relationship, and we went into dating with the understanding that the relationship had the potential to lead to marriage, so I would say we were "serious" from the very beginning of our dating.
Karen: Almost immediately. I didn't want to date if I wasn't serious because broken attachments are lame. I didn't want to get married right away, but I wanted to date only someone I could marry.

Q: What did you discuss before you got engaged?
Karen: Pretty much anything we considered important to us and some things that weren't. Faith, practice of faith, family, friends, how to split work/household/child rearing duties, money, use of time. We also probably made fun of physics (because it's so laughable).
Matthew: We talked about everything we could think of that would potentially affect our relationship before getting engaged. We talked about our faith, kids (how many, etc.), various life goals (careers, etc.), money, splitting up chores/work/etc.

Q: Did you agree on everything?
Karen: Pretty much on these really important matters.
Matthew: Yes, or at least I don't remember anything that we disagreed on that was important.

Q: Was there anything you didn't agree about? Or anything that bothered you about each other?
Karen: One thing that bothered me about Matthew sometimes was the fact that he wouldn't want to try anything new. I'd want to go running in the snow, go dancing, or do something social, and he'd rather stay home.
Matthew: Of course we had things that bothered each other or points where we disagreed. For example, Karen really didn't like my clothing and facial hair choices, and I found her mild OCD annoying at times.

Q: Did anybody change as a result of these disagreements?
Karen: Matthew made a few clothing (and facial hair...) changes at my request near the beginning of our relationship. I'd have to say that we certainly didn't change our personalities though!

Q: How did you decide to get engaged?
Karen: It really was just the next step in the relationship. We were getting to the point where we felt old enough and responsible enough to start a life together. We talked about it thoroughly beforehand, but after sharing a couple of years together, I felt confident that we could continue to share years until death do us part. Matthew was an important part of my life, I loved him, and I could see us spurring each other to be better people for the rest of our lives.
Matthew: We actually might as well have been engaged before we actually got engaged. As our relationship matured, we talked about marriage and got to know and love each other more. Eventually we got to a point where we had decided that we wanted to get married, but just not when. Our decision as to when to get engaged was based on when we thought it would be a good idea to get married as far as life events went, balanced out by our impatience to BE married already ;).

Q: Did you ever live together during this time? Why or why not?
Matthew: No.
Karen: No, we didn't. We both had strong beliefs about saving sex for marriage which certainly is easier if you're not living together.
Matthew: What she said.

Q: Do you think that living together would have made your marriage any easier/better? Was it a shock to move in together when you got married?
Karen: Honestly, it was a fairly natural transition from engagement to marriage. We spent most of our days together anyway, so the difference was that Matthew didn't leave when I went to bed. We had already seen most of each other's quirks, and we had committed to love each other regardless of quirks.
Matthew: Though obviously I can't say this for certain, since we didn't live together, I think that it was actually better that we did not. It made getting married that much more of a significant step in our lives, and the merging of our things and such that we had to do when we moved in together in some ways symbolized our new lives beginning.
Karen: Of course, it's the couple's choice, but as far as we're concerned, not living together probably made things better and not worse.

Q: Was marriage what you expected it to be at the beginning?
Karen: In a lot of ways, yes. It was a really sweet time of celebration, and we were ecstatic to be a married couple. One thing that was weird for me was that I went through a brief period of depression on our honeymoon for some reason. Post-wedding letdown and exhaustion, perhaps? For the most part, it was just a happy time to adjust to having each other, and we quickly began a continuing tradition of snuggles at bedtime and snuggles first thing in the morning. It's still a marriage favorite.

Q: How has marriage changed in the last three years?
Karen: It has changed from an exciting new relationship to a welcome, well-worn relationship. We have also started to figure out how to better communicate and have a routine that makes us both generally happy. Where excitement has faded, stability and general well-being has come to stay.
Matthew: Well, the newness has worn off, but that's not really a bad thing, just moving into another stage of life. We have learned to talk out any problems or issues we have better. Our relationship has gotten more stable, roots digging deeper over time.

Q: Are things as lovey-dovey as they used to be? And what about grumpiness and anger? What about fighting? Is there more of that?
Matthew: Things are not as lovey-dovey as they used to be. We do tend to get grumpy/angry a little more often, since we've gotten to the stage where our guards are completely down and we're not trying to impress the other person as much, but getting things out in the open allows us to deal with them better. There is some fighting, but not very much, and again it is good to get things out into the open.
Karen: No, we're not as lovey-dovey. We still are very affectionate and we tell each other we love each other, but we just aren't riding the emotional high anymore. Yes, grumpiness happens in the Smith household. I tend to get grumpy when I'm stressed out, and I can be fairly obnoxious. I think that serious anger and fighting have rarely showed up. Perhaps our fighting is really more arguing? Despite these times, I think that we just give each other grace in the end because we're human, and humans become grouchy sometimes. Apologies and forgiveness are key though.

Q: What advice would you give to people considering marriage?
Karen: Oh so many things... First, love is a choice and an action, not an emotion. Also, loving your husband should involve putting his needs first, and ideally he'll be doing the same thing. Finding pleasure in the other person's happiness helps the relationship stay flexible, cooperative, and healthy.
Matthew: Talk about it. And talk about everything you can think of that would pertain to getting/being married. Let the other person know what your expectations are for marriage and listen to theirs. Remember that the other person is not the same as you and may act in ways you would consider irrational or strange, and learn to deal with that (and forgive, when necessary). Make a choice to love the other person, even when they are being irrational/strange/annoying/grumpy/infuriating/etc. Also, talk to people you trust about how they see the relationship, as outsiders can sometimes see things that you cannot.
Karen: Speak gently. Try not to be mean, and apologize when that plan fails. Remember why you love your husband even when he's doing something ridiculous (like playing an online game WAY too much of the time!). Communicate about everything. Expect your partner to change, and either make the change with him or allow him to be himself. However, don't expect your husband to change his personality or fundamental self. Listen, listen, listen!

It's hard to argue with the "evil" card...

2011-08-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading Why do People Hate America? by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies. The book was born out of the discussion about the question 'Why do people hate America?' which was asked often after the 9-11 attacks in 2001. I'm about a quarter of the way into the book, and it has been thought-provoking so far. A favorite quotation of mine is: "The trouble is, thought without information does not advance understanding. It is the quality and accuracy of information, coupled with original thought, that produces understanding, unlocks meaning and provides potential answers to difficult problems." I enjoyed this quote because I think that it gives light to a great deal of what is wrong in our political system right now, and it also describes the sheep-like mentality that many people follow when they make up their minds about things. To pick on my own religion, I think that many people use the cop-out 'I believe it because it says so in the Bible,' and they will have a verse or two to back their beliefs up. However, people might not take the time to consider context, perception, author's intention and style, definitions of words, translation of words, how the verse fits in with the rest of the book, etc., and without this type of open consideration of the meaning of scriptures, it is easy to reach an easy but perhaps irrational (and harmful) conclusion. As interesting as this is to me, this is not what I want to discuss today, but I just wanted to mention it since it stood out strongly in my mind. Let's continue to our main attraction.

Here is a passage from the book:

"The question 'Why do people hate America?' itself turns on the nature of evil. Pure evil has no solution. It can only be eradicated, and attempts to eradicate evil generate as many problems as they solve, if not more. All religions teach that the history of human existence is the struggle with evil. Describing people in terms of pure evil is seductive because it requires no self-reflection, no assessment of any context and contributory circumstances. The transition to evil as an explanation resolves all of the ambiguities that attach to hatred, and much more. As British journalist Barbara Gunnell noted in the New Statesman, it becomes an invitation to 'identify an enemy'. Both the American administration and the Taliban leadership describe each other in the terminology of evil. While President Bush declared that 'our war is war against terrorism and evil', Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban regime, reacted by saying that he would never accept the government that the US, with UN support, put together in Afghanistan because it was made up of 'evil doers'. Mullah Omar also declared that 'America has created the evil that is attacking it'. Such summary judgements are not very enlightening. 'The "axis of evil" tells us nothing about, for example, the actions of the citizens of Iraq or Iran or North Korea(far less their relations with each other', writes Gunnell. 'It is merely an invitation to identify our enemies. By talking of them as "evil", we do not need to ask why they act as they do, feel outraged or oppressed, opt for suicidal terror rather than protest or political engagement. The questions to which we all need answers since 11 September fall off the agenda in the face of the description "evil". Evil simply demands opposition rather than analysis or understanding.'"

There is a lot in there! I posted all of it because I think the whole paragraph is worth thinking about. However, I just want to focus on the last sentence, 'Evil simply demands opposition rather than analysis or understanding.' In regards to war, it seems dangerous to justify a war by saying that we are fighting "evil." The people on both sides of the war might be justifying their actions in the same way which should in and of itself make us wary. History often shows that those who consider themselves righteous often turn out to be viewed as fairly evil themselves in retrospect. (Think about the Salem Witch Trials, slave owners, etc.) As such, I think that the reasons given for war must be more extensive and should include an impartial analysis of why there is tension in the first place. We also certainly should spend time considering other methods to relieve the tension realizing that our own policies might be part of the cause. While there is no excuse for something like the 9-11 attacks, we certainly should rationally consider our best options to prevent further attacks and to react in a way that moves us in a positive direction. For example, perhaps hunting down bin Ladin made sense but invading Iraq did not. Perhaps invading Iraq continued to harm our relationships with the middle east. Perhaps part of what led up to the 9-11 attacks was our history of intrusion in the middle east. I am no expert, but these things should have been a large part of our public conversation, but I don't think that they were. It was far easier to just fight "terrorism" and "evil". As a related note, I'd like to encourage people to consider our oil dependency and how that affects our relationship with the middle east. How should that change our individual actions? Political actions? Political policies?

Beyond the connection between "evil" and war, the connection between "evil" and religion came to mind. In particular, since this is the area I feel I know most about, I think that Christians often forget that people are not inherently evil. In particular, people that disagree with us are not inherently evil. I mean, we are certainly all imperfect and prone to screw up, but I think that if we believe that we are made in the image of God and that God loves every human being that should mean something to us. One time where I see failure in this area is when I hear people talking about certain groups of people. For some reason, when talking about homosexuals, there is this sense of disgust and it is made clear that this is "evil." While if you believe that homosexuality is wrong, that is of course your prerogative; however, if you let yourself get carried away it can make it challenging to view a homosexual person as a 'person' rather than as a 'homosexual'. Again, the focus on evil demands opposition instead of analysis and understanding.

Another connection that came to me was the connection between "evil" and politics. Since our political system is so polarized, and since there is a fair amount of ridiculousness and unfairness that occurs in our system, I think it makes it easy to label those of opposing views as evil. I struggle with this one too because I feel like a lot of horrible things are happening that can be prevented, and I tend to want someone to blame. Additionally, if I allow myself to call the people evil, I can continue to justify a little hatred. After all, we should hate evil! However, while this may be emotionally satisfying in the short term (because I've figured out who to hate for our problems!), it certainly doesn't help anything. It also doesn't focus on the real problems that we need to understand to fix our system.

As I wrote these three paragraphs, I realized that not only is it just plain wrong (at least in my eyes...) to throw the label "evil" wherever it is convenient, it is also very counterproductive because it turns attention from dealing with things to allowing negative emotion to fester and grow. In the case of war, it allows us to continue to destroy without considering causes and ways we can change to peacefully prevent fighting. In the case of the Christian religion, it allows us to puff ourselves up and feel like we are fighting God's fight without ever actually bothering to do all we are asked to do... love. (It is a lot easier to hate evil than to love some people!!) In the case of politics, it allows us to blame others and feel justified in what we are doing without ever working to create a better political system through our own actions and interactions with people. Perhaps the next time I feel the emotions of frustration, anger, and hate as something that is probably "evil" in my mind is occurring, I will remember to step back and approach the situation more complexly. Perhaps.

Sunny Side Upcycle - July

2011-08-02T14:12:00.000-07:00

It has been a slow month of crafting here. I recently completed a project that will be a wedding gift which I will share after the wedding! I also have been recreating a blanket for our living room that I will hopefully finish this summer. I completed the two projects that you see here. One is a bright and chunky baby hat, and the other is an adorable pair of what-nots in love. I have a pink lace knit scarf in the works, and it has been a fun challenge. I have never done knitting quite this complicated, and it's fun to see something so pretty unfold from the needles. Hopefully that will be done by September as well!

I hope that you enjoy looking at my happy crafties! Feel free to visit my Etsy shop to see more!

The world of dreams...

2011-08-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been remembering a lot of my dreams, and most of them have been very emotion-filled. As I wake up with the intensity of the dream still with me, it can follow me through much of my day. Since this has been happening, I have been thinking about how I dream and how I have dreamed in the past. I've been interested in dreams since middle school, and I figured I'd share some of my history of dreams.

One of the first dreams that I remember specifically was from when I was around eight years old, I think. It was a recurring bad dream that I had where I was a dog, and I needed to escape along with another animal companion that I had. I was in a dark area that was fenced in. There were plants everywhere, and it felt like an impossible maze. The presence of someone/something evil was clear in my mind, although I don't know what/who it was. I just wanted out of there!

In middle school and high school, my bad dreams turned into those where my vision was dark and/or blurry, and I couldn't get to where I needed to go because I couldn't see! I also started having dreams about having loose teeth or losing teeth.

As I progressed through college and grad school, my bad dream of choice involved (and still involves) a tsunami. The way the tsunami occurs changes each time, but I'm always there, and I always see the formidable force of destruction coming onto the land. I also occasionally have dreams about people I care about, Matthew in particular, dying. Those are the ones where I wake up panicked, and I have to reach over to see if Matthew is still there and alive.

I have also had a recurring dream the last few years that involve the young men I have cared about in the past. I had a couple of guys leave me heartbroken during high school, and in my dreams, one of these guys will realize that he actually still loves me and he regrets leaving me. I always realize that I'm married to Matthew in these dreams, so I always feel a mixture of elation (because I suddenly feel valuable), romantic joy (like at the beginning of each dating relationship I've had), and guilt (because I'm genuinely emotionally torn between past love and my marriage with Matthew.) The dreams vary, but what I think it interesting is that the guy always wants to kiss, but I never let him because I don't want to hurt Matthew or our marriage. These dreams about my past relationships always leave me addled as I wake up. The emotion doesn't fade when I regain consciousness, and I feel like I'm in high school again and on an emotional roller coaster. The "future that would have been" is strangely imprinted in my mind, and it's challenging to sort out reality and fantasy.

I think I tend to dream more intensely when I am under stress. It is no surprise that during college I had many a bad dream. Recently, although I usually have no particular stressful events occurring, I find that just the complete uncertainty of my future is messing with my mind. I don't know if it's my personality or what, but I really struggle with being unable to see more than a blank slate a week or two into my future. While I understand that I can never see what my future will hold, I think that it is fairly human to construct a reasonable prediction of the future based on the current status. It is unnerving to not be able to do this.

I find it interesting that two of the most stressful events of my life (having a couple of my relationships severed) come to me in my dreams where my mind fixes them by having people decide that they love me. In real life, I've never felt settled by the ends of these two relationships. I've never quite understood what exactly ended them, and since I was not the one who ended them, I was left feeling very weak, ugly, and worthless as a woman. It took awhile to get over these insecurities, and I suppose that I'm probably still not through with them. I guess it's no surprise that my mind tries to mend me as I sleep.

At any rate, I'm fairly fascinated by what my mind does when I have no control over my thoughts. Do you have any interesting dream stories?

*Added 8/1/2011* My brain apparently wanted to remind me of another common dream that I have when I'm stressed, because I had it last night! A common stressful dream that I have is one where I have a bunch of stuff strewn around and mixed in with other peoples' things, and I am trying to collect my things. It ends up being an unending process where I have lost specific things, or my pile repeatedly get strewn out again, or I just have a seemingly endless amount of stuff to collect. Last night, in addition to the usual chaos of collecting things, my dream also involved me collecting balls of yarn that had rolled around, so I had to find untangle the yarn strands from the mess around them. Yeah, yeah, brain. I hear you! I've been knitting and crocheting too much!

Today's produce is brought to you by the color GREEN!

2011-07-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

We went to the Farmer's Market this morning, but we didn't have a ton to get since we just went on Wednesday. However, what we did get was so pretty that I thought you might want to see it! See? Pretty greens!

If you are thinking that that is a lot of zucchini, then you are right! Those are ten large organic zucchinis that we got for 75 cents each. After a little bit of time in the kitchen, I have 24 cups of grated zucchini stored in a bunch of cottage cheese containers that we are reusing. I will use two in a pasta salad, and the rest will go into the freezer to be made into zucchini bread and zucchini brownies this winter when local produce is not as abundant. YUM!

Spirituality, Peace, and Our Relationship with the World

2011-07-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Here is a blog post from the Christian Simple Living Blog that I think is well-written, speaks to my soul, and is something I think is worth reading. Enjoy!

More on Food

2011-07-28T18:07:00.000-07:00

This year I have read a few books about the agricultural and food system in our country including Fast Food Nation, Food Inc., and Recipe for America. With every book I read, I become more passionate about our country's food system. Here are some of the ideas in my head after absorbing all of this information:

The food people eat is causing them to be sick instead of healthy.
The method that food is grown and produced is harmful to people, animals and the planet in general.

The chemicals used as fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides are not good for human consumption.
Conventional (as opposed to traditional/organic) farming methods deplete the soil of nutrients which causes food to have fewer nutrients.
Cow are not being fed the right types of food for their digestive system which makes them live their whole lives in pain and battling sickness.
Animals are generally kept in small cages that literally drives them insane. Chickens are debeaked to keep them from attacking themselves or other chickens.
Animals are slaughtered in a brutal method. Many cows are skinned alive. Many chickens are scalded while still alive. This also endangers the humans who are skinning a cow that is kicking at them. Plus, it seems like this would be a mentally damaging incident as well.
Factory and farm safety conditions are not well-regulated, and if they are regulated, there is often little accountability.
Animal waste from factory farms is not managed, and it winds up in the water supply which can cause issues.
All of the dangerous chemicals used on plants can (and do) end up in the waterways.
The methods used to grow food (like chemicals), raise animals (like feeding cattle corn-based diets which increases E. coli risks greatly), and prepare food (like in the slaughter house where workers work at a feverish pace which increases the chances of contaminating meat with fecal matter and therefore E. coli) are creating health risks and problems.
Not the fisherman's fault, but many fish are high in bad stuff like mercury. I used to think that this was just normal for fish composition, but I just recently learned that it is because of human waste that has caused mercury to end up in the waterways and thus the water animals. Additionally, though, we are overfishing which is kind of bad news.
Many farms and meat packers hire illegal immigrants which makes for cheap, abusive labor situations sometimes to the point of slavery.

Our system is not making is easier for people to eat well.

Subsidies are poorly distributed, and so there is overproduction of many grains.
The most cost-effective thing for people to eat is generally processed corn or wheat.
Fresh foods are not available in many neighborhoods... especially in non-wealthy neighborhoods.

Our system is making it difficult for small farms to remain viable.

Big business (*cough* Monsanto *cough*) is making it hard for some small, local farmers to continue to exist. Monsanto has been known to sue the bejeebers out of a farm that has Monsanto GMOs (genetically modified organisms) on their farm without buying the seeds from Monsanto. The problem is that the farmers don't even want the GMOs. Rather, the seeds are blowing onto their land from nearby farms.
Certain laws can make it challenging for a small farm to afford to exist. For example, if tracking cows becomes required (to be able to trace E. coli outbreaks), some small farms will not be able to afford to satisfy this requirement. Unfortunately, it is not generally the small farms that cause E. coli outbreaks.

I described last September how Matthew and I have changed our eating habits for our health, the health, safety and fair treatment of workers, the planet's health, and many other reasons. We have continued on a $300 per month budget throughout the year, and we've had success. We've also made some positive changes, I think. We no longer buy any produce from Fred Meyer, and we now buy all of our produce from the co-op and the Farmer's Market or directly from the farm! Our meat consumption has dwindled down to next to nothing since we buy maybe a pound of meat every 3 months. We did this in part because good meat is fairly expensive but also because we found that we were enjoying the vegetarian meals greatly. I have made yogurt all year which is less expensive and uses less plastic. As an added benefit to all of these changes (plus biking/walking more and driving less), I, without even trying, lost about ten pounds and got down to the weight that I was when I graduated from high school six years ago. Not too bad for an almost 24-year-old woman! ;)

If you find that you are also upset by the food most stores have to offer, you are welcome to do something too! I've worked my way up to being fairly "extreme", and I understand that. There are a lot of different things you can do to change what you eat and help build a healthy food system. Here are some ideas, if you are interested:

Make one change at a time as you feel moved to do so.
Create a food budget, and budget some of that money specifically to organic food, a co-op, or a farmer's market.
Consider going to a farm and u-picking and preserving (freezing, canning, drying...) food!
Consider eating less or no meat and buying any meat from a local provider or a provider that you know uses good methods.
Know what you are eating. Where did it come from? What state? What farm? What practices are they using? Is a big business involved? (Sorry, Big Business, but you are often unethical...)
Consider preparing more of your own food instead of buying convenience foods. It will save money so that you can afford to buy better foods. Plus, you are more likely to know what's going into your meal which is always a good thing.
Buy BULK! It's so much cheaper than buying packaged food! Spices are phenomenally cheaper, and most other food prices can't be beat either. This will again save you money for some good quality food!
Don't be tricked by cheap food prices.... Remember that there is a reason that it is cheap. It's either probably not really healthy and/or someone or something was damaged or abused to make your food cheap.
Really, make one change at a time as you feel moved to do so. This process was really enjoyable for us, and it can be for you too. It has been a relief to finally react to the facts that I had tucked in the darkest corners of my mind. Let yourself be moved by the facts that you find, and just do the best that you can! :)

There are places to go to get involved politically like the Organic Consumer's Association, Food and Water Watch, Consumers Union, and Food Democracy Now. Also, some food blogs include La Vida Locavore, Food Politics, and U.S. Food Policy. These are some of the resources given by Jill Richardson in Recipe for America, and I have not had a chance to look through all of them yet, so I am not quite sure what they all involve!

Thanks for letting me ramble a little bit more about food! Feel free to leave comments if you have something to say or any questions!

Silly Sun Hat

2011-07-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

It's summer. It's Corvallis. Thus, the sun occasionally makes an appearance! Last year I learned that most sunscreens on the market contain ingredients that scientists believe cause melanoma (!!!). This made me not want to put on sunscreen so often anymore. I try not to spend too much time in direct sunlight, but it does happen on occasion. This summer we gave away our collection of old sunscreens on Craigslist (if they're going to buy the same stuff anyway...), and we got a tube of Badger sunscreen which uses zinc oxide (but NOT nano-particle!) as the active ingredient. This stuff seems to work well, and non-nano zinc oxide is believed to be safe, from what I've read. Plus, the sunscreen has some cocoa in it, so it has the added benefit of smelling kind of chocolate-y.

Despite finding a decent sunscreen, it's still fairly expensive and it comes in a plastic tube. Clearly I needed a HAT! Not just any hat, but a slightly silly looking sun hat! I found instructions here, and I made this super simple hat using leftover fabric from an apron and from a dress that I made.

The hat is reversible, which is kind of cool.

You can add a bow for ornament...

And there's nothing like making silly faces while wearing a silly hat!

Wants, Needs, and "Poor People"

2011-07-23T20:55:00.000-07:00

I'd like to think that a number of my blog posts have defended the idea of helping "the poor." However, in a recent conversation that I had with my family, I realized that I have never defined what I mean when I talk about "the poor." Let's try to remedy that.

In some ways, we can probably all agree what it mean to be poor. Being poor means that one is unable to supply the needs for the self or the family. However, I'd say that many people that we consider poor are not. The first instance of this are people in other countries that we consider poor because they do not have access to the same technology, amenities, and "stuff" that we have. While sometimes this lack of access might come along with being poor, I do not think that being unable to access all the "stuff" of the western world is a prerequisite for being well-off. I'm pretty sure that there are families that have basic needs met, are healthy and enjoy themselves without having extra things. I do not consider any of these people poor, and, in fact, I think that they might perhaps be richer than many people in the US.

I also do not consider people "poor" if they have the resources to subsist but waste their resources. This comes to the ideas of wants and needs. I think that our country has these ideas very confused. For example, people that we consider poor often have cable television, use air conditioning, and have expensive cell phone plans. When it comes down to it, I can understand why even the wealthiest taxpayers might not want to pay for these luxuries for all people.

Then what does a person need to be lacking (and unable to attain) to be poor? In my opinion, I think that ideally all people should have access to clean water, healthy food, shelter at a location from which they can get to work or subsist off of the land, clothing, some amount of health care, education (in our culture, that would include access to the Internet so that a person could stay up-to-date), the ability to save for rainy day/"retirement", and the ability to raise children in an appropriate manner (I'd like parents to have a chance to raise a family on one income). Additionally, in our culture access to a phone line is also probably necessary, but it doesn't necessarily need to be a cell phone, and it certainly does not need to have texting/data plans. That would mean a family should be able to afford a small apartment, but they might not be able to afford a house, and that's alright. A family should be able to have enough clothes to maybe last a week, but they do not need a closet full of clothing.

I think that some families in the US make themselves poor by striving to have all of the comforts and conveniences that the middle and upper classes enjoy, and I honestly do not think that that is the fault of the middle and upper classes. I don't think that the values of our society are helping these people out, but ultimately it is the responsibility of each of us to use our resources as wisely as possible to provide for our families and, ideally, to reach out to those with legitimate need.

That all being said, I do not want to sound like I think it's alright to pay the low wages that are paid for certain jobs while CEOs and others are raking in profits at the expense of their workers. If nothing else, this is a matter of justice. I am mostly making the point that I believe that we should think about what we want everybody to be able to access. However, I don't know how well this will all work while our society is constantly shouting messages about how inferior a person is if he/she doesn't have the right "stuff." Nothing is simple, but I think that it's worth thinking about these things!

Please leave a comment if you have more ideas about needs, wants, and what it means to be poor! Also please let me know if I forgot any of the basic physical needs that people should have!

Family Life Update - Jobs?

2011-07-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, Matthew and I graduated! (Yet again!) We went to commencement this time, and it was nice to be able to attend a final celebration as we moved on in life.

Move on indeed! In May, Matthew found a job opening at a company in Corvallis that was looking for a mechanical engineer. Not only was the company in our beloved town of Corvallis, but it was also dealing with energy sources in a variety of settings which is one area that really interests Matthew. Matthew had a phone interview in May and an in-person interview June 6th. Seven weeks into the process, we finally get an email saying that the company chose to only hire an electrical engineer now. They are trying to strategically hire to avoid lay-offs later, and they hope to hire a mechanical engineer in the "very near future." They said that they'd contact Matthew when they are able to hire a mechanical engineer, so we still have a sliver of hope.

However, life doesn't always work out how you dream it any given moment, so we are remaining open to other paths.

The problem is that paths do not seem to be appearing! As such, we exist in a perpetual state of "summer vacation." While I am happy, especially for Matthew, that this can be a time of reading, rest, and fun, it leaves us in a very odd position in our lives. At any moment, Matthew could be called in for an interview (to the one position that he has found to apply to...), and within a matter of weeks, we could move to far-off, foreign places like Eugene, Salem or Portland! It makes commitments challenging whether it be to commit to work with people on something or to commit to growing some food on the balcony.

I did decide to tutor for the family that I've worked with the last two years. If I have to leave in the middle of summer, I have a replacement lined up, so I felt like this commitment is alright. I like seeing the kids grow up, and it's fun to work with them now that they are going into the murky waters of adolescence. (They are going into 7th grade this next year.) They ready to learn, and I'm doing my best to help them have a solid understanding of math while maintaining a fun, pressure-free environment. I say ridiculous things and they laugh at me, so I think we're OK.

Another thing that I did was apply to an online tutoring service. Matthew's uncle suggested considering it since he knew someone that seemed to really enjoy it as a job. As I started the process, I went in calm and collected, and as I come near the end, I emerge frantic and frazzled. I have easily spent 12-24 hours filling out forms, taking subject tests, writing essays, reading procedure manuals, and watching videos. As each of those hours went by, my anxiety increased. When I did my "mock session" where an employee pretended to be a student and I played the role of the tutor, my heart almost leaped out of my chest onto the keyboard when the problem was something I had never seen before. (Seriously. Who learns how to find the equation of a parabola using the vertex and the focus? Anybody???) I looked it up online quickly, and I figured out how to do it once I calmed my heart down to a mere 150 bpm, but it was a panicked 30 seconds. For the record, I think I did OK in the mock session. If they don't choose to take me on as a tutor, I think that their main reason would be that I maybe go at a slower pace than they want in an online environment. I tend to try to get to a hard-core understanding when I tutor so that people learn math and not a process, so if that's what they want, that's what they'll get. If not, I totally understand.

Doing this has led me to feeling some overwhelming negative emotions that I've dealt with since I was a teenager (if not before... I just know that I dealt with them as a teenager because I've been reading through my old diaries with Matthew):

Pride. I haven't even told more than a few people that I am applying to tutor online. Why? Because I don't want to be embarrassed if they decline me. I'm a licensed teacher for goodness sake! This is supposed to be what I'm good at! If I fail at things that I care about, I feel horrible and embarrassed. This is why I avoided working with kids for years. I really want to be good with kids, and I was horrified that people would think that I wasn't adequate.
Feelings of complete inadequacy. I always feel like I'm going to fail at things. That's why I always work so hard. (That and I'm prideful. See the above bullet.) Yes, dear Christian Friends, I know that God makes me strong and brings me through everything I do in life. However, that doesn't change my gut emotions. I'm not proud of how I feel. (Though I am proud of plenty of other things! Really, see the above bullet.) I'm just getting it out there.
Fear of new things/commitments. Unless things/commitments seem like they are clearly right/fun/happiness-causing, they often horrify me. Some of them I get used to like when I transitioned from middle school to high school. Some of them continue to horrify me the entire duration like my busing job one summer. However, in general, they all horrify me at the beginning. I feel like I will fail (see bullet two), or that I will be miserable doing whatever it is that I'm considering doing. Often I find that I am just fine or even very happy when I push myself to do things, but sometimes I'm not. Online tutoring frightens me because it feels very sanitized and lacks the emotion, laughter, personal connection, and relationship that I enjoy when tutoring students in person. Perhaps I will find other things to enjoy about online tutoring, but it's scary until I adjust. I also am afraid that people will find me to be lacking at online tutoring skills (see bullet two.)

So, this process has left me in a funk where I have to snuggle Matthew to fall asleep because when I'm nervous I need to snuggle. This can only continue so long because Matthew likes to roll over at night, and it's challenging when the wife never left his side of the bed like she usually does before settling in to sleep.

Speaking of Matthew, I guess this was supposed to be a family update. He's his usual self. He's a great reader of books whose only vice is playing too much DDO. Alright, alright. You win. He has other quirks and issues! He's very stable though, and he's not easily ruffled. While it takes me a page to vomit my emotions, he answers, "Not much?" when I spontaneously ask him, "Do you have anxiety?" Well, good for him.

Anyway, I haven't quite hit on everything that is happening in our world, but I did talk about jobs as promised in the title!

History

2011-07-09T18:08:00.000-07:00

Usually I avoid waxing philosophical and stuff, and I leave all of that to my brother at his blog, but I've had a couple thoughts about history rattling around in my head for a couple of weeks, so I decided to toss it onto e-paper with some e-ink. Kenny might also be able to inform me that this post is, in fact, not philosophy. Feel free to do so, Brother!

I was thinking a couple of weeks ago, and I came up with the startling realization that history and religion are not too different. My inspiration for these thoughts comes from this video here where Hank talks about beliefs and religion. (A response from Hank's brother, John, is here, and I found it well worth watching.) Hank's video made me think about the difference between faith and knowledge. A good definition for faith for us today is "firm belief in something for which there is no proof." As for knowledge, I'll be talking about "information and skills acquired through experience or education."

I would think that most would agree that religion is generally based on faith. Those who believe in God generally have their reasons to do so as do those who don't believe in God. In the Bible (Hebrews 11:6, for those who care), it says "And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." To me, this sounds like God understands that sometimes humans won't "know" but will instead "believe."

What does this have to do with history? I think that history may be more like religion in regards to being faith-filled. It seems to me that much of our historical knowledge is hardly knowledge. Certainly, there is probably not too much false about birth records, death records, and other official records. But all of us who dutifully went through K-12 education are grateful that our history books were not simply filled with records. There was an awful lot of humanity in those books which must have come from more than official recorded documents! (Correct me if I'm wrong. I majored in math, not history, but from what I've looked up online, and it looks to me like many primary and secondary resources are used to shape our understanding of history.) What we receive from peoples' writings is hardly an impartial, complete view of what has happened in our past. People tend to leave out details and exaggerate. We write through a filter of our own understandings and beliefs. Even as we read the newspapers today, we don't believe what's coming out of them. Yet perhaps in 500 years, people will be flipping through yellowed papers from today to decide what is and is not true about the people of 2011.

Thus, my knowledge of history becomes faith. I'm not trying to challenge the ideas of the existence of The Boston Tea Party, the Civil War or Auschwitz. However, I am acknowledging that my knowledge (Nay! Beliefs!) might not be spot on.

I have thought of a few interesting applications of this new view of a faith-filled history. First of all, it explains part of why we romanticize. Whether it be die-hard conservatives giving their all to return us to the splendor of the revolution (ignoring the existence of slavery), hopeless romantics who dream of the wonderful world of Jane Austen (despite the fact that during this time marriage was a business matter for the "haves" and do you really want to be a "have-not" during the early 1800s?), and people like me who perhaps dream of the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder when people had less and grew food (although they were riddled by illnesses curable today, and not all people lived in a small log cabin like the Wilders). We take our "knowledge" and turn it into support for our firm beliefs that those days were "the good old days." And perhaps it leaves us yearning for a nonexistent past instead of dealing with the reality of the future.

Another interesting application is of course the fact that we may gather only facts that we wish to believe from the past to form our historical repertoire. No wonder there is such a fuss about who gets to write the textbooks for out K-12 schools! It is so easy to take texts out of context or establish beliefs about history without any reliable source or reasoning. It is also very easy to brush aside the ugly stuff about people or an era so that we can use those people or that era to support our ideas. Politics these days, anybody? I highly doubt that we'll make real ground on a some issues (like the optimal size of government) for awhile because we all just have different historical faiths.

Of course, faith in history can go to the extremes just like in religion. How about the Birthers' beliefs that Obama was not born in the U.S.? How about the idea that President George W. Bush was in on the plan to attack our country on 9/11? Or how about Palin's recent recounting of Paul Revere's ride that strongly seems to indicate that the ride was, in fact, a lot about the second amendment (despite its nonexistence at the time)? (I'm sorry to bring Sarah Palin into my blog. I think she gets enough attention as it is, but her fantastic faith in our history struck me, and I couldn't imagine not fitting it into this post.)

Perhaps all of this was always obvious to you, but it really clicked with me in the past couple of weeks how history adds to the mess of humanity. Mind you, I think that history is important and worthwhile. (The mess of religion hasn't seemed to stop me from partaking, no?) However, I can understand better why we fight so much politically. History seems to be a lot of faith. It seems that it is very easy to not get along when faith is involved.

The Virtuous Consumer

2011-07-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

I just finished The Virtuous Consumer by Leslie Garrett, and I think that it is a book worth reading if you are interested in reconsidering some or all of your consumer decisions. Garrett does a good job of laying out all sorts of options for dealing with decisions about clothing, kids, houses, decorating, celebrating holidays, food, beauty products, and more. If you are looking for someone who offers fairly moderate ways to change, I'd highly recommend this book!

I don't blow my nose on trees anymore...

2011-07-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

Why? Maybe because I like hugging them.

Actually, that's not the reason. Although, hugging that tree would have been a lot more gross if someone had blown their nose on it.

Honestly, I can't keep up with the politics of tissue making. I know that Kimberly-Clark (the makers of Kleenex) has gotten a lot of flack about their practices. I think they were chopping trees down in an unsustainable manner and in a way that was harming habitats and such. Regardless, even if we find a good way to source the trees, there is still a water-wasting, energy-intensive, chemical-filled process that turns a chunk of brown wood into a fluffy, bright white cloud for your nose.

I avoid keeping up with the politics and the chemicals by avoiding tissues altogether. I have been struck down by a ridiculous head cold these last few days (the kid who gave it to me might have gotten extra homework when I tutored him yesterday...), and I have been blowing my nose on cloth. I have used a few handkerchiefs that I used to use to pull my hair back during middle school when it was still fashionable (I think?). I also made a stack of handkerchiefs out of the scraps of the sheet that I used to make drawstring bags. Finally, I have even been using a small stack of real, bona fide frilly hankies that I got my hands out. Nothing is too good for my nose goo. Except maybe trees.

To rinse them out, I leave them in the sink for a while and we wash our hands over them. Then they are ready to go in the laundry, get cleaned, dry in the sun, and then be used again!

Hooray for being sick! No... I don't think I mean that. I mean, hooray for avoiding disposables even when being sick!

Sunny Side Upcycle - June

2011-07-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

Here is this month's Etsy creations. All except for the whale and the bunny still remain for sale at sunnysideupcycle.etsy.com! :)

Dress Shirt Shirt Dress

2011-06-30T19:57:00.000-07:00

It's a shirt dress! Made out of a dress shirt! The dress shirt was a large long sleeve men's shirt on its last legs at Goodwill (its tag color was the 50% off color this week), so I made this for $4. It's hard to see it, but it has little white, dark blue, and light blue stripes. I got the idea from here; however, I pretty much just changed things around to suit me. I wanted a tie in the back and thicker straps/sleeves, so I did that. I also found that adding darts in the back added a nice touch and kept it from poofing too much. FUN!

I Heart Produce Bags

2011-06-27T21:58:00.000-07:00

This is my latest, greatest version of a reusable produce bag. While I have made a number of drawstring bags, I like this style because it is easier to see the produce inside of the bag. It is also very fast to make thanks to the fabulous properties of knit shirts. I made this out of scraps of a shirt, and it took about 10-15 minutes.

Here are the instructions. It's a very forgiving process. Enjoy upcycling your worn out shirts into produce bags! :)