Casualties in Iraq

Casualties in Iraq - 2004
Casualties with profiles-heartbreaking :(
A similar tribute/memorial for Iraqi civilians

I'd been looking for this information...

but it was pretty hard to find. I wanted names, dates, faces of individuals who have died in this illegal war in Iraq, not just toy soldier faceless numbers that a lot of the media wants us to see, so we somehow feel better about this oil war. I was extremely surprised to find this at CNN.com Specials.

Guitars

I've been thinking that I want a guitar. I took lessons for a while when I was a teenager, but then teenager things interfered. But, I'm bitten by this bug to take it up again. First, I need to find a guitar, and I know very little about choosing one. It sounds like a Jasmine S-35 Acoustic Guitar would be a good one. It's certainly not as expensive as I feared a guitar would be.

Something for the To Do List

Write a letter to Dr. Iyad ‘Allawi, the Prime Minister of Interim Government of Iraq, to tell him to change the fact that that thousands of people in his country are being held in prison without even being told why.

Paper

A great resource list of recycled and tree free papers.

peopleandplanet.net - population and environment issues

I have been researching how we, as citizens of this planet, can use our dollars to "vote" for a world that we want to live in. It's why my business only sells treefree or recycled papers, and why we sell only non-environmentally hazardous art supplies. One person doing what they can hopefully can make a little bit of a dent in the abuse we're giving our planet. I don't own a car, and am happy about that. I use Flexcar when I need wheels. I walk to work and take the bus to most places I want to go. I know that because I live in a city with good public transportation, I'm very lucky, and that someone living somewhere else might not have the same luxuries. Sheesh, when I lived in New Jersey, if you were caught walking along the so-called sidewalk (if there WAS a sidewalk!) people thought you must be some kind of a freak!

Almost everyone recycles these days, thank goodness. And most people won't purposefully pour gasoline down the drain or toxic chemicals in the stream near their home. But I'm on a quest to find out more ways to do good for the earth. I found this web site, and it looks like a good start for some basic research: peopleandplanet.net

ROWBOAT VETERANS FOR TRUTH

ROWBOAT VETERANS FOR TRUTH - Intro is a sight to be seen. Just because.

9-11

This is from my altered book, The Wall Book. Of course I'm posting this because it is about 9-11. I was trying to sort out my feelings about the politics and patriotism that have been tangled up into the emotions of 9-11. I don't have my feelings about this figured out yet, and I probably never will.

Iraq Coalition Casualties

Heartbreaking.

Iraq Coalition Casualties

Born Before 1986

Yes, that's me. A list of things you don't know if you were born after 1986.

One thing that I do think about quite a bit, is how scared we were when we were sure that Russia and the USA were going to blow each other up with nuclear bombs. Remember War Games, Red Dawn and The Morning After? I wasn't allowed to watch The Morning After when it was on TV, because my mom was sure it would give me nightmares.

But she shouldn't have worried about that specifically, I was having mushroom-cloud nightmares anyway. When I told my grandfather, he was no help. "Honey," he said, "if there are nuclear wars, we don't have to worry about it, because we'll be vaporized immediately. Don't you think they'll bomb Boeing first?" That cheered my little baby-teen self up quite a bit. I went home and packed a backpack, ready to go, so if the alerts were sounded (I was sure there'd have to be alerts, that's the way it happened in the movies, after all!) I'd be ready to grab my backpack and head for the hills! Two steps ahead of nuclear holocaust, that's where I'd be!

I was born 11 years before my little sister, and she doesn't know what it's like to live worried about the communists blowing us all into vapor. For her, the big worries are whether she's being overly commercialistic in her purchases and as a result is supporting child labor in Indonesia.

Which I worry about too. Maybe I just worry too much.

Weekends

For something like five years, I've worked for six days a week, 8-10 hours a day in the store, and then a couple of hours at night on paperwork, bookkeeping, the magazine, etc. In August, we decided to close the store on Mondays, and gave ourselves the much coveted:

TWO DAY WEEKEND

I'm actually starting to feel a little like a real person again. I can do things on our second day off, I don't have to do ALL of my chores on Sunday, and every once in a while I actually have been thinking about making art, reading, writing, knitting... all of that stuff that somehow I never have time for anymore. Mind, it's not exactly happening yet, but I'm starting to THINK about it, so my brain might be feeling a little tiny bit rested from our two day weekends.

However, there is the money issue. It's tough for a tiny business like ours to be closed for business for two days a week. So the jury is out as to what we'll do.

hummingbirds

We saw a hummingbird in our back yard! It chased away a starling, amazingly enough.