More Courage Than Most

In Flanders Fields In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

Patriotism

Love

Last time I went overseas was in 1999.  I decided to take a vacation, against my graduate advisor’s wishes, to visit my grandmother and my great-grandmother.  I’m glad I went, because a few years after my last visit, my grandmother and my great-grandmother died.

Everytime I go overseas, I am always appreciative of coming back to the United States.  Invariably, whenever I return home, I spend a few weeks pooping out roundworms, and then the diarrhea resolves.  I’ve yet to acquire malaria when going there, but part of that luck may be that my relatives were smart enough to keep me from going to the heavily wooded rural areas.

I now live in the same state as a supposedly-American “country” singer.  Differences between us include the following:

• She is white.  I am not white.
• If she were to go to China, she would be treated royally.  When I visited China, my Hong Kong-born friends were harrassed.  They even had to bribe train station guards to let them leave the country, despite the fact that they had legal passports to travel freely.
• She is famous.  I am not famous.
• She hates the way she is treated in America.  I love where I live.

I suspect North Koreans love where they live too. The following excerpt from a photoblog of North Korea demonstrates this intense, unwavering love for a leader.

“. . . Me and the Great Leader. You have to make sure photos are taken of the front of the statue only and that the full body is in the shot to avoid causing offence. Our guide actually checked my digital camera after the shot was taken to make sure. . . .” (from http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=200578)

Many people are ragging on a new country song.  I think it’s an okay song.  I’m a little surprised at how it seems to support some of the things she appears to be against.   I post it below so that you can read the lyrics and decide for yourself.

Let me guess. . . . Natalie Maines feels persecuted. Feelings of persecution are listed in the DSM-IV as one of the criteria for schizophrenia.

I guess I’m supposed to feel sorry for her.

Well, Ms. Maines, “Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should.”

Crash and Burn

Emeryville is where I fell in love with the idea of owning a sailboat. All those empty dangerous lots, great for setting up a meth lab in. That’s where my ex-boyfriend’s mom housed the all-wood sailboat she was rennovating.  I associate another thing with Emeryville — Pixar.

I had planned to study tonight, but Matt convinced me to go to the movies and see “Cars.”  I don’t normally review movies. But this one. . . I feel I must. review. this. movie.

1. I was a little surprised and hurt when the main character yells, “Hillybilly Hell!” Not to mention that this is a children’s movie. It was the only inappropriate word in the movie. I’m a hillbilly. My dad is a hillbilly. And although Southern Thailand is socially and politically corrupt and I wouldn’t want to live there, I hardly consider it hell. 2. I really did not think it was appropriate to show someone racing to beat a train at a railroad intersection. If it were a Bugs Bunny cartoon, you know he wouldn’t have won. 3. I really could have done without the main female character giving a lecture about how awful it is that people built an Interstate to get from Point A to Point B quicker. The truth about Route 66 is that it helped truckers to get their loads from one place to another. The Interstate allowed them to make their deadlines quicker and come home and be with their families sooner. Sorry to disappoint all those who feel that truckers should be forced to drive Route 66 so that they could make stops at all the tourist attractions along the way because people are nostalgic about the danger of passing slow drivers on a two-lane highway. . . . 4. I lived in the country all of 18 years before I went to college. And I never saw anyone cow-tipping. MUDDING, yes. Cow-tipping, no. I was very disappointed when they did not go mudding. 5. I adored the visuals. They captured the vistas so well, certainly it wasn’t animation. But if it was, wow!

Another thing that peeved me was a trailer for a movie that seemed to want me to feel sympathetic for ants.

Sail Fit

I honestly believe that people with even a drop of creativity and an ounce of motivation can find a niche in the world, and from that make a life that they’ve been dreaming of living.  Thanks to my alma mater, I discovered a website of a couple who did just that.  It’s marvelous to be your own boss.  In addition, he has made his own exercise equipment, specifically for competitive sailors.

His wife Meka Taulbee wrote a nice article about being mentally fit to sail.  But really, she is describing being mentally fit for living life.

Screenings

Part of the joy of having a waiting room is screening kids’ books and toys for it. So, I have an excuse to wade into the children’s section of the bookstore! I haven’t found really engrossing children’s books for a long time, but a few weeks ago, I found one that actually wasn’t half bad!

The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Sid Fleischman

I’m a sucker for a sailboat. Unfortunately, this book (although it has a ship on the cover) has hardly anything about sailing. And although the title contains Sumatra, the story doesn’t take place anywhere near Sumatra.

It’s still a nice book. It will go nicely in my waiting room.

Pirates of the Caribbean Revisited

I rescind my comment
about yet another Pirates of the Caribbean movie, as it be possible
there is a junk sailboat in the second
sequel.

And speaking of boat building. . .
I am truly impressed with the work on the set.

Okay, so I completely
and utterly retract my comment about the series.  I am amazed
that people would go through the trouble (in this day and age of
computer animation) to actually build a seaworthy ship-set for the
movie.

I’m laughing because the people who made this
wonderful website of pictures are asking me to donate money for seeing
pictures of actors and actresses. . . . Golly, I don’t need that
encouragement.  I came to their website for the ships.  However, the
donations go to the children who live at the site in which
they are filming (in the Bahamas).  A noble cause.

A snippet from their website. . .

Every Now And Then. . . .

Sometimes I do a little bit of housecleaning. This site is really meant to keep track of all the wonderful sites I find about sailboats and boat-building in general. So, just as a reminder. . . if you see a post go missing, it was probably because I deleted it, in order to conserve space for what I consider to be the truly important items in my life.

I enjoy posting only about sailing and sailboat topics, online.  I hold no delusions that Xanga, Blogspot, LiveJournal, MySpace, or even Google (working with all of the above) care about my day to day life in online articles.  Neither do the people I love and care about (cuz they talk to me every day and have no need to read about me online).

I do know, however, that my bits and pieces of text are very interesting to trackers that want to sell me crap.  It’s sad to me, though, that spiders and such don’t really care about my actual viewpoints about the sailing-related things they are trying to sell me so much as the words I use.

If they actually bothered to read opinions, they’d know that I don’t think Johnny Depp is cute.  I could do without another “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.  I think Danielle Steele’s book with the sailboat on the cover is a lame excuse for a sailing novel.  And that I think that Jack Black should play the main character in a movie adaptation of The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float.

“. . . never underestimate the power of the eyebrow.” – Jack Black

Time is Money

Matt and I live outside of town in a canyon. The other day, someone came by to see us, and they asked, “How do you like it, living out here?” The implication is that we live pretty far out into the country.

Honestly, I timed it. I live no farther than the people in the newest suburbs on the other side of the city. It takes the same amount of time to get to work, only I have less stop lights to go through (only 3, and only once I hit town), and much less traffic.

Gas prices here have gone up, but it really doesn’t put a dent in my schedule. (It’s $2.79/gallon at most places.) In fact, someone did a nice calculation about how much one can save by buying a new “energy efficient” car.

I remember going to a Chinese restaurant with my high school boyfriend, and you know how these days, fortune cookies don’t give fortunes. They give one-liner Confucius-like advice. Well, his “fortune” said this:

He said, “This is stupid,” and threw it away.  That was 16 years ago.  He still lives in an apartment, working a minimum wage job.  He was right.  Dissatisfaction with his “fortune” didn’t make him an inventor.

One of Matt’s friends had a brilliant idea. “The government should tax gas. That will encourage people to find alternative sources of energy.”  Ahh-well. . . Sorry to burst your bubble, but gas is already taxed, in some states more than others. California, as an example, has much higher gas prices than most other states because of government taxation, which believes exactly as Matt’s dear friend believes. And yet, I don’t see an impetus for either making shorter commutes, nor for making alternative energy cars.

A good friend of mine is involved in making an electric car in Seattle. He gets no funding from the government. This is something he does in his spare time.

Taxation will not cause people to want to make cars. Government funding will not cause people to want to make cars. (How many useful things came out of my graduate school program? One patent for a gene product, in one faculty member’s lab.) Being intelligent and curious enough to make cars, plus the possibility that you might make money on them (aka “capitalism”), causes people to want to make cars.

That said, back in November of 2004, I read an ignorant person’s article about how people in Middle America use more gas to get to work than people on the Coast.

Top 100 Cities With the Longest Commute
(I’m surprised Austin is not on this list. My neighbor said to me that she loved living in Austin, but the traffic has become terrible.  We agreed that it’s due to the influx of West Coast expatriates.)

Top 100 Cities with the Shortest Commute
(Sorry, people, but I would *not* want to live in Tucumcari, New Mexico, even if I could teleport to work.)