I love my wife. She's an amazing mother and a very gifted "natural parenter" and teacher/supporter of natural parenting/mothering things. I was really proud to take her and Judah (the baby) to the Caroline Collective grand opening... she and Judah shone. I wish I had pictures from that night, but here are a couple from a fairly recent trip to Memorial Park.
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wife, love, mother, mothering
Please visit The Story of Stuff and watch the video and then do at least something about it, even if it's small right now.
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storyofstuff, pollution, green, environment
I need a Linux virtual machine right quick. I can download one for Parallels... sweet... no installs necessary. But they're all hosted on rapidshare.com and bigupload.com! Not one of the bigupload links worked, and rapidshare is a HUGE pain in the butt. Very uncool. There should be a Parallels-hosted, bandwidth-throttled (as needed) service to download these things. Rapidshare takes me back 15 years to when people thought the privilege of downloading something was a business model. Blech.
Time to try VMWare.
A brief but interesting read: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69022,00.html
The bottom line is that digital is no better or worse than analog, and amazing records can be and have been made with both. Digital gives you more power and control, unquestionably... and it can be used wisely... or not.
That being said, digital is very exciting for two reasons:
The most interesting part of the article is the Death Cab for Cutie guitarist's observation that the process of recording digitally is different from analog, and that the analog process is better for them. But clearly that's a problem of process, not of the recording medium itself (and their latest was done digitally and honestly sounds better than any of their previous records).
The US and UK have absolutely lost all sense in their foaming-at-the-mouth "anti-terror" policies and systems. This general rule of thumb should be applied: if some "security" policy or system prevents or impedes some useful activity, then it's bad security. In other words, it isn't worth the tradeoff. That's probably not always true, but nearly, and it's a very good gauge to start with. Is it useful to drive cars? Is it useful to fly on airplanes? Is it useful to ride subways? If it is, then those activities should be unimpeded. If it isn't, they should be done away with entirely. Somehow I think all of those are useful.
Why is it that government is in the business of looking like it's doing something, and why does the electorate value that? Or is the electorate so incredibly disconnected and unaware that they don't care and they're just gonna vote for the guy who has the best opinion on abortion or gay rights or some other inflammatory but completely useless topic? I could turn this into a rant about politics in general, but I'll try not to. We elected these people. We should start holding them accountable. We should stop trading in freedom and everything this country is supposed to be for a few wisps of "security" that makes everyday life a pain but will never protect us from anything.
I don't want to live in a country or a world where I am protected from terrorists by government. That country, that world, will be the height of totalitarian oppression and would have our founding fathers rolling over in their graves.
Some recent instances of security stupidity:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68973,00.html?tw=rss.TOP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1575532,00.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/09/hurricane_secur.html
http://www.virginiadot.org/infoservice/news/newsrelease.asp?ID=HRO-04-24
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/shoot-to-kill.html
Very important post from Bruce Schneier about the TSA's "Secure Flight" system:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/09/secure_flight_n_1.html
One of the amazing things about this part of Northern California are the redwood forests. In Felton (about 10 minutes inland from Santa Cruz) there's a railroad that takes you on a tour up through a redwood forest. The train is pulled by an old steam engine originally designed for logging (it can take 12% grades!)
The trees are just amazing. They're HUGE and they're TALL (the tallest ones in that forest are about 300 ft. tall). More amazing to me, though, is their age. One grove that the tour stops at (you get out) is made up of a ring of trees that all formed from a "mother" tree in the middle (they're all really the same tree). The "child" trees are 900 years old, and the "mother" was 2000 years old when it died (as the children grow, they starve the mother for light and water).
So those child trees were alive long before Europeans found the "New World"... they would've been "born" around the time of the crusades. So that would put the mother being "born" sometime well before the rise of ancient Rome and maybe even before ancient Greece. That's just really mind-blowing to think about. There's a pervasive sense of ancient in that forest.
Yesterday I was really down... I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but now I think it's loneliness. Not the loneliness of being totally isolated, but the loneliness of being a long, long way from "home", from "my people". Someone smart recently said "it's my safe place", referring to our church, our friends, etc. I really think that's true. It's very hard to be a long way from that, even in such a beautiful place.
But maybe being in this awesome place will convince a few of them to come visit. ;)
Wow, I haven't posted in almost a week. Work has been busy and we don't yet have DSL at home (should be Monday), so I'm using my phone still.
Santa Cruz has been GORGEOUS this week. Sunny, amazing blue skies, and seventy degrees. That's abnormally warm for this time of year, but not unheard of. At night it gets really cool, no matter how warm during the day. Our house feels a bit more like home now that it has groceries in it and Gabriel's and Iain's toys are everywhere. It's definitely not home if you can walk through the living room without kicking a toy. And most of their toys aren't even here yet!
Depending on weather (it's looking gray-ish, but that may burn off), we may try to go see Redwoods today or we may drive to San Francisco. One of the most important things to do in San Francisco is to drive in on 280 or 101 and drive through the city and then come back out headed south on Hwy 1. You're driving "up" in the city through houses and all and then all of a sudden you're not in houses and then all of a sudden you pop out high above the ocean and you're driving down this windy road with huge cliffs right under you. If you had to put a score to that, it would be the last movement of Beethoven's 9th, where it all comes down to one tiny note and then suddenly builds back into the Ode to Joy as you emerge out on top of those cliffs.
There's SO much to see and do here. I'm a little worried that we'll plan it all and never have time to just go sit by the ocean and do nothing.
West Texas gets a bum rap. From Sonora to about 50 miles east of Fort Stockton is some really beautiful country. What's amazing is the SCALE of everything. The hills have given way to this huge undulating landscape of mesas and valleys. It's like driving through really really massive ocean waves made in land. It's not the sharp/craggy range and basin stuff of New Mexico and Arizona (also very cool), it's its own thing. The sky is huge, the clouds are huge, and so on.
So I had the Passion Hymns CD cranked and "How Great Thou Art" came on several times... it was very apt.
There's something amazing about an old or ancient hymn in that it is imbued with significance and weight that isn't found much in modern songs. The history of the people of God singing this one song over hundreds of years is an awesome thing. All it needed was someone to pick it up and play it with huge guitars and drums and massive energy.
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