A new photoblog: greenchili

I finally got up the courage to launch a semi-professional photoblog today.

http://greenchili.aminus3.com/

reconnecting

i just realized that i never updated y'all (or is it ya'll?) on my trip to oklahoma last weekend. it was awesome. as amazing to any trip to oklahoma can ever dream of being. it was so great to reconnect with old friends, talk about the most weather-dorkish things possible, feel validated in the sense that i think my job is probably one of the best possible things ever to happen to me, and visit possibly the only art gallery in the world dedicated to tornados. if norman was in louisiana, i'd be set. but then it wouldn't be norman.

there ARE hiking trails in louisiana!! real ones, too. the best one looks like a 20-mile loop around a lake. but it's 100mi. away. maybe we should just hike there?

speaking of outdoor summer-ish activities... with meg's newly earned bike, we set out on our first real ride together last night. it was awesome. we found THE bike trail in new orleans, and i think i might go out again this afternoon and explore further...

what an awesome place! combination fashion show/music venue. only new orleans (one point for NO vs NY - check the poll on the sidebar!).

possibly the best polling site for the election on the internet. this is what i would create if i had the time (and knowledge).

and, in celebration of the cross-town, two-ballpark double header today... go mets!

random thoughts while i'm waiting for the end of the week

Because I've been invited to speak at the REUnion this weekend in Norman, Oklahoma (on my grad school experience(s), working for climate and development, and random other things), this week my week ends on Thursday. That's today. And for this, I'm thankful.

It's been a whirlwind 10 days in New York, punctuated most notably by the first 10 minutes back in the office last monday. Neil greeted me warmly (I had been in New Orleans for 6 weeks - my longest trip yet), and promptly said - "well, I just want to put something on your radar... we might need someone to go to Malawi and Tanzania in a few weeks for some meetings... so, you might start packing your bags". So, the next day, I was in Staten Island at Dr. Scafuri's office getting a hepatitis booster. Things move quickly in New York.

Speaking of Staten Island, is there anywhere else in the world where you can ride the bus past a hindu temple, a synagogue, a mosque, a catholic church, a sri lankan grocery store, a honduran steakhouse, a place selling nigerian movies, and no fewer than 3 baseball diamonds with kids playing little league, all in 20 minutes? Yep, that's Victory Blvd.

Is New York the greatest city in the world because of that?

Do you ever catch yourself singing out loud at work (with headphones on, of course) and look up to see everyone in your office looking at you? Yeah, I'm *that* guy, apparently. I have this song in my head today.

The Democratic nominee for president of the United States just launched his first general election campaign ad today in 18 states INCLUDING Alaska, Georgia, Montana, and North Dakota. Freaking North Dakota!! What is up!! If he competes in those states, this isn't even going to be close.

And if the other guy keeps this kind of stuff up, he'll hand over the election on a Florida shaped platter.

Maybe it's just because I just moved to New Orleans (otherwise known as the big red bulls-eye below sea level), but this scares me. Not just because I'll be fearing for my life every day for the next 5 1/2 months of hurricane season, but because it shows that perhaps the government really doesn't care about us after all.

And if this is true, does it really matter anyway? Record food prices, increasing frequency of disasters, the global economy hanging in the balance... hey, at least the Yankees aren't in first place!

But, I have hope. You can reduce your impact by making small changes to your lifestyle. Here's some driving tips to help save gas (my local station - that I can see from the subway at 125th St. along Broadway - just hit 4.50 for regular unleaded).

No Day But Today! (right?!?) Live life, guys!

Save federal housing vouchers for New Orleans (WE DID IT!)

Meg and I haven't blogged in a while, but we've been hard at work. Meg just started a job with Unity of Greater New Orleans (UnityGNO.org) working on homeless advocacy.

But this post is especially important.

The US House of Representatives is voting today on whether or not to include 3000 permanent housing vouchers for New Orleans into its emergency spending bill for Iraq. Out of over $200 BILLION in the total bill, $70 million would go a long way toward the first steps at fixing the still emergency situation on the gulf coast, 2 and a half years after Hurricane Katrina.

Meg's co-worker has a letter published in today's USA Today:
New Orleans homeless deserve more than a mattress under a bridge.

Please call the House leadership and tell them, in just a few words, why you think housing for homeless in New Orleans is just as important as continuing to fund the war.

Contact Information:
The Hon. Nancy Pelosi (House Speaker): (202) 225-4965
The Hon. James Clyburn (Majority Whip): (202) 225-3315
The Hon. David Obey (chair of House Appropriations Committee): (202) 225-3365

I just called, it was much easier and quicker than I thought - 1 min and I was done.

We'll keep you updated on how the vote goes today.


UPDATE 6/19/08 (From Megan's Boss):
Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all of you! You created a mass movement across our entire country to get the House leadership to understand how critically needed rent vouchers are by the most disabled and most vulnerable victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And it worked! Last night we received word that the House leadership granted your request and placed the $73 million in funding for the vouchers in the Supplemental Appropriations Bill.

You are all heroes! Most of all, I want to thank Senator Mary Landrieu for her trail-blazing leadership of this vital cause; Valerie Keller, co-chair of the Louisiana Supportive Housing Coalition, for her amazing work these past 2 ½ years to garner support on both sides of the aisle for this; Congressman Charlie Melancon for leading the fight on the House side and for holding the leadership’s feet to the fire on behalf of Katrina victims; Governor Bobby Jindal and Paul Rainwater, head of the LRA, for their terrific support; our incredible national partners without whom we absolutely could not have achieved this; Chandra Crawford, for her amazing work these past two weeks; Melville Charitable Trust for launching the supportive housing hurricane recovery initiative; the faith-based community who made the moral case; and caring people all across the country who flooded the leadership and the White House with calls making it clear that the American people believe that the most disabled and vulnerable victims of these disasters need and deserve ongoing housing assistance – and to every single one of you for working your hearts out for this righteous cause. I know I’ve left out the names of many critical partners but I am so excited right now, please forgive me for my omissions!!!

These vouchers save lives – make no mistake.

Martha J. Kegel
Executive Director

UNITY of Greater New Orleans

Welcome to hurricane season...

Major New Orleans levee is leaking

Forecasters predict 60-70% chance of above normal hurricane season


Crude Oil prices hit $135 a barrel, Gas at $3.83/gal

Oh, and... we're getting married exactly a year from today!! More to come on this subject from Miss Megster herself!

A new (new) house

Thanks Mom, Dad, and Kevin for all your work and dedication to us this week!

After 9 (or so) trips to Home Depot, and 5 days of long hours, we have a nearly new (new) house. As you can see by the pictures, a lot happened in the past few days - from re-enforcing termite destroyed wood, to installing cabinets, to caulking gutters - our house is much more safe and livable thanks to the dedicated people that helped Meg and I fix it up this week! You guys are life savers!

Obama in Woodburn, Oregon today

Barack Obama had lunch today at Luis's Taqueria in Woodburn, Oregon (the same place I went dozens of times for their amazing burritos during my volunteer year in JVC!) Check out the pictures here! (Also, more pictures from the Oregonian and the Woodburn Independent and the Statesman-Journal.)

"¡Obama-nos!"

Update on cyclone aftermath in Myanmar/Burma

The confirmed death toll is now above 80,000. Estimates are that 40% of children in the affected area are now homeless. To make things even worse (if that is possible) the cyclone struck right at the peak of rice harvest season, making hunger a certainty for months to come.

The UN and other agencies have been having problems with delivering aid to the cyclone affected regions. The first UN relief planes were allowed to land yesterday (5 days after the storm), but the relief supplies were confiscated by the ruling military junta, and aid workers were not granted visas to administer the aid or survey the damage. No aid or personnel from the United States (or nearly any other country) are being allowed in. The UN temporarily suspended further aid flights, but today reinstated flights due to the extreme need. There is talk of the UN Security Council invoking a measure to force aid workers entry into the country (this measure was devised in the aftermath of the failed UN response to the Rwanda genocide in 1994).

For now, I would recommend continuing donations, but only to UN-affiliated organizations, like the World Food Programme, UNHCR (for refugees), and UNICEF (for children). And say a prayer. But give aid first.

Cyclone Nargis devastates Burma

In a period of 48 hours, the announced death toll of the cyclone impacting Burma this weekend has risen from 430 to 2000 to 10,000 to 22,000 - and there is now talk of possibly 50,000 or more. Suddenly, Cyclone Nargis has become the worst natural disaster in the world since the Asian tsunami of 2004. Also, it has passed Hurricane Mitch (1998, Central America, 18,000 deaths) as the worst cyclone/hurricane in at least the last 20 years, since a cyclone in Bangladesh killed over 100,000 in 1991. Surely the intense poverty and social vulnerability in Burma has increased the death toll. The ruling military junta have created a repressive, poverty-stricken state - and unimaginable, North Korea-like conditions. Protesting Buddhist monks were brutally killed last September. They didn't need this, too.

Help the victims of this disaster by donating now.

On a somewhat related note, I just finished reading Khaled Hosseini's book "A thousand splendid suns" over the weekend. It was an intimate account of two women's struggles to survive throughout the chaos that has been the last 30 years of history in Afghanistan. I was frustrated at the ending of the book, and how he glossed over the fact that even after the arrival of the Americans in 2001, things still remain desperate there. However, I thought he summed up well the sometimes irrational hope that people living in poverty sometimes possess in the following paragraph.

They would live in a small house on the edge of some town they'd never heard of, Mariam said, or in a remote village where the road was narrow and unpaved but lined with all manner of plants and shrubs. Maybe there would be a path to take, a path that led to a grass field where the children could play, or maybe a graveled road that would take them to a clear blue lake where trout swam and reeds poked through the surface. They would raise sheep and chickens, and they would make bread together and teach the children to read. They would make new lives for themselves - peaceful, solitary lives - and there the weight of all that they'd endured would lift from them, and they would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.

Maybe a few people today in Burma also have similar hope of rebuilding their lives someday.

Pray for the people in Burma. Help them to recover from this tragedy. Donate now.

Acquitted

If you're not from NY, you may not have heard about this case. Back in 2006, a group of 5 police officers confronted an unarmed (black) man as he emerged from a strip club after his bachelor party the night before his wedding. One of the officers, mistakenly thinking the man was holding a weapon, opened fire. In a matter of seconds, the man, Sean Bell, was dead - in a barrage of 50 shots. The lead officer managed to empty an entire clip, stop to reload, and empty an entire second clip.

Today, these officers were acquitted of manslaughter.

A comment posted on the NYTimes article sums up my thoughts on this matter:

I am shocked.
I don’t know in what world it would ever be appropriate to empty an entire round of bullets into a man, stop, reload, and empty an entire second round. In what world is this not excessive force? In what world is this not illegal?
Apparently, in mine.
— Posted by Mollie

I understand and appreciate that police officers are there to protect the public. But, as another poster put it, it is the police officer who has agreed to risk his life in service to protect the lives of others - not the other way around.

Pray for peace today, for an end to the violence and fear that have come to define our society.

Rent

"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation."

So, over the weekend (how about that "So", Meg!) I got to see Rent on Broadway for the second time. I'm pretty sure I'll go back for a third time before they close the doors in September. This time, my friends Becca and Nicole were in town (specifically to see Rent) and so of course I wanted to join. If you've never seen it, I highly recommend it. It's almost a religious experience. Though I do recommend buying the soundtrack first and listening to it over and over (on public buses in Africa, perhaps) so you can sing (and moo) along while you're at the show.

But I did catch myself wondering this time if it would have been such a big success without the tragic story of Jonathan Larson's death the day before opening night. What a way to give meaning to a life though - how many millions have been inspired by his vision of love, inclusion and speaking out against injustice... You can add one to that list.

To Jonathan Larson.

A Song of Peace

Here's the full words to the song after Prayers of the Faithful at Ascension:

This is my prayer, O God of all the nations,
A prayer for peace for lands a-far and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.

But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my prayer, thou God of all the nations,
A prayer of peace for their land and for mine.

Tune: Finlandia (Jean Sibelius)
Verses 1, 2, Lloyd Stone; Verse 3, Georgia Harkness

"So, did you have a nice walk today?"

Being berated with Ella statements/questions that all start with the word "so" is quite entertaining. "So, how long are you staying?" "So, this is my little brother." "So, are you going today?"

So is being able to dictate pretty much everything Jackson's going to say for the day. Take for instance the one or seventeen times we pretended that there were mean animals trying to get us from the "water" (ground). "Say be nice, alligators!" "Be nice, alligators!" "Be nice, sharks!" "Be nice, shawks!"

I had a really refreshing weekend. Unexpectedly refreshing.


Today I had a cool moment too. I was getting ready for work at the crack of dawn, and the 3 main things I wanted to get done before I left were doing a load of laundry, trimming the shower curtain (you read that right...our shower curtain is really long and I feel uncomfortable with the water molecules that spend all day sitting in the folds of its excess), and doing the dishes. Because it's been nice out (not even remembering it was earth day at that point), I wanted to walk to work, which means I'd have to leave at 10:30, as opposed to the driving ETD of 10:45.

Well, I found myself stressing about all of them not getting done at 10:23, AND I wasn't even dressed yet! My initial reaction: "Well, I can just take a few extra minutes to do the dishes and drive instead of walk." And then my reaction to that: "Au contraire, mon frere (this despite the fact that I've never had a brother, that I know of, and even if I had, I was talking to myself), this is not about you and your need of 8-minute dish time. If we want to be more friendly to our earth (i.e. driving less as one way of doing so), then there are sacrifices we need to make. And maybe today that sacrifice is simply waiting 'til tonight to do the dishes. Big deal."

And so I walked! And it was great. I got to take a different route than I've taken before, call a few of my peeps, and get a little exercise with all-inclusive fresh air. I just sometimes forget how powerful being intentional can be, so it was really refreshing to remember that, then own my decision, and realize that all the small decisions of all the 4 billion (right, E??) of us in our world in all 10 countries can make a really big difference. It was nice to remember that, and I feel good and like change is possible and that there are good people in this world. Hallelujah!

The dishes, meanwhile, are still awaiting me.

Earth Day 2008

As a tribute Earth Day (April 22) and to why we should all work together to save the planet (check your environmental footprint here), the 10 possible ways the Earth is sure to end. Also, the Wall Street Journal has a pretty good op-ed about the corporatization of the holiday - and how we should all strive to simplify our lives. But seriously, enjoy the day - be thankful for the deep breaths of air, the green trees, the blue sky. Make one commitment to change a small part of your lifestyle (seriously, you can do it.) Your children, and your planet, will thank you.



Above is a chart of the most financially efficient ways of reducing carbon emissions (from McKinsey Quarterly 2007).

Fr. Duffell to the rescue, yet again.

"God is love, and all who live in love, live in God"

That pretty much sums up my faith lately - a faith that has been tested but still hopes for the goodness of the human race to triumph - eventually. A faith that has witnessed unspeakable injustice (but what if it had happened to me!) in Africa and New Orleans, but still hopes for renewal. A faith that is inspired by all those who still have hope. A faith that hopes "love of neighbor" is enough. To me, hope is an action verb. We can't wait.

So my mixed experience seeing the new pope in person needed less than 24 hours for a resolution. On Sunday morning, sitting in the pews of Ascension, on the Upper West Side, truth was spoken. Fr. Duffell (otherwise known as a prophet) was in his true form. As the line goes from the song "Walkin' in Memphis" -

"Tell me are you a Christian child?"
And I said "Ma'am I am tonight"

Fr. Duffell has that affect on people, I think.

The theme of Fr. Duffell's homily (and the Pope's at St. Patrick's earlier in the day, he noted) was about the church being more than just the building itself - it is the people, and all the gifts, faults, talents, and brokenness any mix of people bring when they come together. But especially as a Christian community, he noted, the Church is different. "In loving the enemy, change will come about," he prophesied. "Imagine the good that can come from forgiveness and love of neighbor," he proclaimed, "especially when the neighbor is different from you. The concept of solidarity, while not included in the Bible - is a biblical idea. The church's focus on ecclesia, on bringing together rather than dividing, empowers us to love. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, hispanic, young, old, muslim, jew, straight, or gay - God calls us not to judge one another, but to love one another."

At this point, of course, I was pretty excited, as I usually am at Ascension. The nice extra touches he adds for the Profession of Faith top it off - instead of mindless repeating of the Nicene Creed which we've all had memorized since 3rd grade religious education, it's an active, question-and-answer format with the response being, "I believe Lord, help my unbelief". How true.

And to cap off the Prayers of the Faithful, we always sing a prayer of peace and thanksgiving (that includes the line "Skies everywhere are as blue as mine") - and then the prayer of St. Francis right before communion, during the sign of peace. Basically, he's pretty effective about getting across the point that inclusion is a central point of Christianity. That through our diversity we can learn more about the nature of God.

The highlight of this past Sunday though, I think, was a group of baptisms that he wove into the liturgy. Of the 7 or 8 children that were baptized, I counted probably 3 or 4 different races. I definitely want to be somewhere where THAT many different types of people feel comfortable. I'm sad that Megan and I don't get to go every week anymore - but it just makes the experience that much more precious when it does happen.

On his way out, after mentioning that his sister got to meet with the pope at Ground Zero earlier in the day (her son died on Sept. 11) - and asking us to pray for peace, Fr. Duffell said that in the run up to the Pope's visit, the NY Times did a feature story on Ascension last week. It does a good job summarizing the general feel of the place. May everyone have such a welcoming place that we can call home.