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Friday, July 24, 2009

The Fire Story

I'm too lazy to rewrite this in blog format now that I've already written it all out in an e-mail to Ben. So excuse the mild mushiness and any inaccuracies that have already filtered into my account after just a day of retelling it. Anybody who wants to add their side of what happened or who has a question, please feel free to comment!

And without further ado, the fire story:

Good morning, sweetheart,

I'm so tired. I think I got about 3 hours of sleep last night. I was so wound up that it took me a while to WANT to get ready for bed after I was settled in a room -- I picked up a book and read to settle my mind until about 2 AM -- and then I realized that while I'd packed up my toothbrush and face wash and contact stuff, I'd also left the bag they were in at the house. I was over at Bettie Lorino's for the night, because my mom wanted us all out of the house while the smoke cleared out and also in case lightning struck twice or some faulty wiring in the house struck the fire up again. And I didn't want to wake up Bettie by sneaking out of her house in the middle of the night to get my stuff and then coming back, so I just stayed up for a little while more, cleaned off my teeth with a damp rag, and tried to sleep with my contacts in. It did not work particularly well. ;) (Plus, she has a cat, and I'm allergic, and I forgot to bring my asthma medication. It was a veritable comedy of errors.)

But I bet you're full of curiosity to know what happened, so I figured I'd write a letter before I tried to get some more sleep (or not -- I'm up, I might just stay up. We'll see.)

So, yesterday was a pretty full day of errands and getting stuff done. I decided I like the hotel we looked at better than the Westin, so I went ahead and booked it for us. The area is easier to get to than the Ballston area with less of a headache for parking, and the rooms are comparable to Westin except that it's a suite with a little living & kitchen area in addition to the bedroom, which is nice. The one thing is they don't have room service, but in the morning they do have a full breakfast buffet with an omelet bar where you can get a fresh omelet cooked to order, so I figured that was good enough. Rose-Ellen and I also had fun hunting around for jewelry for the wedding and picking up honeymoon stuff.

We picked up Chinese food for dinner (I'd been telling her about your mom's cooking, so she wanted some) and then had a fairly relaxing evening of socializing and watching TV. The internet was down, but just the wireless, and so Tyler was trying to fix that while we talked. My dad decided to come back from the office early-ish (by which I mean seven) because he wanted to work in the yard. We'd just gotten a little bit of rain in the afternoon, which he was excited about -- apparently it has been a really dry month.

Well, the show we were watching wrapped up at 10, and we all started to filter slowly towards bed. There was a thunder/rainstorm going on, but nothing too drastic yet. I reminded my mom that the next day we'd need to work on the dress, so it'd be ready for pictures on Sunday, if that was still happening, and then went to try and check my e-mail. The internet was still down, so I decided I'd just play a game of solitaire to unwind my brain and then I'd get to sleep.

Well, while I was playing, I heard this enormous crack behind me and a simultaneous flash of lightning. I'm not normally freaked out by lightning storms -- we get them fairly frequently here, but this was really scary. I literally JUMPED away from my computer and ran downstairs to find my mom, like I was six years old again. Everybody gathered in the main hallway to talk about how loud and frightening that was. Dad was watching the storm from the porch and said that he saw the bolt go down right behind the neighbor's house across the street (or possibly on it.) While we were talking, several more loud, close strikes flashed and the thunder resounded through the house. It was genuinely frightening -- we all started getting skittish. We decided we definitely needed to hurry and unplug all the computers and so on and then probably gather in the basement.

So I went upstairs to unplug the computer (which I'd just jumped away from) and close that up. I then headed downstairs with the intention of helping to hunt down the flashlights. While I was on the stairs, however, I spotted a curl of smoke coming from behind one of the wall sconces -- our lighting fixtures there in the family room. I called somebody's attention to it (I think maybe Roland). Initially, I just thought that there'd been a surge of electricity that popped the light and it was just the smoke of a burned-out lightbulb, but then the smoke started getting a bit thicker and creeping in between the ceiling boards and from the corner of the skylight. Roland and Tyler hit the lights and then checked around outside -- there was an orange, flickering glow inside the gutter, and they could tell that the roof was on fire. The word spread fairly quickly through the house. Figuring that it was in the electrical system, somebody (I think mom) sent Rose-Ellen downstairs to throw the breakers and cut off electricity in the house, so everything went dark. In the chaos and mild panic of the moment and of the roof being on fire, we didn't hunt down the flashlights before doing that, so the only lighting we had was from Roland's iPod and my cell.

After Rose-Ellen threw the breakers, she pulled Natalie from her bed and brought her upstairs. Rose-Ellen and Mom started calling for someone to call 911, but neither Tyler nor Roland had theirs on them, and then landline was down, and it took me a minute before I remembered I had mine on me (even though I'd been using it for light). For some reason, even though your house being on fire is like one of the top reasons to dial 911, I felt somehow reticent to do it. I mean, how often had we had it drilled into our heads that it has to be a REALLY REAL emergency before you call 911? Nevertheless, as the smoke continued to thicken, it did seem like it qualified as time to get the fire department there, and 911's the way to get them, so I dialed and handed the phone to mom, because I knew I wouldn't know what to say. She told them that the house had been hit by lightning and the roof was on fire, that there was smoke (it was getting quite hazy and cloudy now in the family room) and that we'd seen flames.

Rose-Ellen was getting quite anxious -- and understandably so, with a baby in her arms and another in her belly and the house all smoky behind her! Normally, in a storm, we'd all go down to the room at the bottom of the stairs, which is enclosed and quite safe from wind storms and lightning strikes and is where all our 72 hour kits are. But where's a safe place in a storm when the house is on fire? The lightning was still coming very frequently, and now our nerves quite compounded the effect -- and the rain was coming down hard. It seemed frightening just to venture onto the porch, much less actually out into the storm itself, even to just get into the cars and go across the street. And so she just didn't know where she could go with Natalie to keep her safe. She started to cry a little.

Dad, Roland and Tyler were all back in the living room, trying to find the source of the flames. (Which, of course, didn't help make any of us any less nervous.) I thought briefly about all the stuff in my room -- all my clothes, all the stuff I'd bought for the wedding -- and thought just very briefly about going to try to rescue a few things, but figured that we'd caught the fire very soon and it was very localized, so it would probably (hopefully) be okay. Mom and I decided the best place for us to go right away would be just out to the car -- cars are safe from lightning, and we would be out of the rain but not in the house. Mom kept my phone in case she needed to call somebody again, and Rose-Ellen and I ran outside to her car, with Natalie in her arms. This is about when you called and I didn't answer. I noticed the time and I worried vaguely that it was about time for your evening call, but there really wasn't anything I could do about it, anyway. (Though not having my cell on me still made me quite antsy.)

We got into the car, with the rain still pouring down around us. Rose-Ellen wanted to move the car to somewhere safer -- somewhere with less trees to potentially fall on us or farther away from lightning strikes -- but without a cell phone on us and with everybody else still in the house, we couldn't go far. She came up with the very good idea to just pull across the street and back into the neighbor's driveway so that we could shine our headlights on the yard and into the house to provide some little light for the people inside, and so they'd be able to easily see where we were. She handed Natalie (who'd been silent and wide-eyed up to this point -- I'd just assumed she didn't know what was going on) over to me to hold while she moved the car. As soon as I held her, I realized why Rose-Ellen had started crying there on the porch when we were trying to figure out what to do -- just because Natalie was quiet, I'd assumed she was doing okay. But the poor baby was TERRIFIED. She was trembling and shaking in my arms, which just about broke MY heart. I can only imagine what it did to her poor mom. We said a prayer that we would be calmed and that things would be all right and everybody would be safe, and while I think it calmed me down more than anything else just to SAY it and remember that we weren't alone in the storm, I'd swear that immediately after we prayed, Natalie's shaking calmed down really significantly. And I felt a lot of comfort, myself, even though I continued to ride that adrenaline rush for much of the rest of the night.

We missed out on a good bit of the action -- I need to get the people who were in the house to fill in what happened while we were in the car. Apparently dad took an axe to the roof to try and see if he could get at the flames before they spread, but the axe was very dull and not much help. So he went upstairs to try to get to the attic to either access the roof from there or just get our fire extinguisher, but the smoke was getting thick enough that Roland worried that he'd pass out or something upstairs -- it got to the point where they had to crouch down to get a breath of air while they were working. So Roland (with his EMT certification still fresh in his mind) ordered dad back downstairs.

I have to say that the men in the house were quite, well, MANLY. They really stepped up to the plate in making decisions and taking care of things -- I guess there's nothing like a fire in the house to bring out a guy's instincts to try to fix things and protect people and save the day. I mean, my dad! Taking an axe to the roof! I need to get Roland to write down the whole story of what happened, because he told it quite well. I was very impressed.

The fire trucks showed up really soon -- and LOTS of them. Apparently another house up the street caught on fire as well, only theirs REALLY caught. The firemen later said that two rooms were totally burnt out. But I guess we called first or something, because the story goes that they tried to waive down the fire truck and it went right on past them to us, where there weren't any visible flames from the front. (But we were indeed on fire!) But firetrucks got to them very quickly thereafter, anyway. I was really impressed with the quick response -- it was probably no more than five to eight minutes from when we called. First there was one firetruck, then there were two, then an emergency response team or ambulance of some kind, just in case -- I think we ended up counting something like eight vehicles.

When the first one came, Roland ran out of the house and knocked on our neighbors across the street (the one whose driveway we were parked in), but they didn't answer. Either they were really oblivious or simply not home, because I don't think they roused the whole night. In any case, Roland spotted us and then climbed into the car and told us some of what happened (dad going at the roof with an axe, et cetera). He just reeked of smoke -- we could smell it right away when he opened car door. Next, mom came running across the street, and absolutely drenched. Apparently she'd already run my wedding dress over to a neighbor's (it was the one thing she thought to save right away -- though the tablecloths she's worked so hard on crossed her mind) and the neighbors insisted that we come over there. We have a very nice neighborhood. I got my cell off of her so I could call you and tell you our house was on fire, which STILL strikes me as pretty funny, though not quite as hilarious as it seemed at the time. As you know, my reaction to panic and stress is apparently hysterical laughter. (Seriously, though. The HOUSE was struck by LIGHTNING and caught on FIRE! It's just like when my car was stolen, and I thought that was the funniest thing in the world to happen, too.)

The neighbors were quite nice -- the mother of the house kept wanting to know if there was anything she could get for us, repeatedly wondering if we wanted any food, or to go lie down in one of their extra beds, or anything. She eventually got us to accept water. (There was a funny moment where she offered us coffee, and my mom was kind of like, "We HAVE told you that we're Mormon, right?" like kind of just to make sure that we weren't slacking in letting people know that they were, but the neighbor got suddenly worried that she'd somehow accidentally given offense by trying to plie us with caffeine. We had a good little laugh over that.) They had a little dog just like Tyler & Rose-Ellen's dog Lacey, who they left in Washington with Tyler's family for the summer, and so Natalie was instantly enchanted by the doggie. She was also enamored of a little stuffed bunny rabbit that was the dog's toy, and walked around the room with that in her arms, wrapped up like a baby in a towel. (This didn't please the dog so well.) She also tried to play the game with us where she points at various body parts -- eyes, ears, nose, et cetera -- and generally just totally charmed the neighbors.

In any case, what we really wanted to do was to sit up and talk about everything and see what was happening, which we did. Dad stayed in the house to help direct the firemen and Roland and Tyler went back and forth between some, while we visited with the neighbors and shared our various parts of the story and all expressed gratitude that we had decided NOT to have the wedding at the house, and wondering about whether all the wedding stuff would be ruined by firehoses or by the smoke, et cetera. I'm sure I'll think to add more to this later. I was still pretty high on adrenaline, and laughing and laughing about things. ("Mom, it's okay that the tablecloths will smell like smoke. We're having a barbecue! It'll be more authentic this way!") I think I was kind of stressing people out by being so giddy about things -- but that's just how I react to stress!

The firemen never did have to use the hoses, but they did need to crawl all over our roof (which they later informed is is quite a steep roof!) and cut into it. Roland says there were scorch marks all up the beams on the inside of it, and that the firemen verified that the house was indeed struck directly by lightning. There was quite a bit of water tracked through the house and it leaked through the roof a bit from the family room, but just rainwater, and not hose water, fortunately. Everything does smell like smoke -- even just a localized fire apparently creates quite a lot of it. The rooms upstairs all smell like a rustic cabin lodge, as I noted on facebook -- just smoky enough to kind of tickle at my throat. I'm sure the tablecloths will smell okay after just a bit of airing out. Apparently an appraiser is coming from the insurance company soon to figure out the true extent of the damage.

The neighbors have been really great for all this -- it really pays to cultivate good relationships with your neighbors! As I mentioned, mom wasn't comfortable with all of us sleeping over at the house, so Rose-Ellen and Tyler and Natalie went over to Linda Wardle's, Roland and I went to Bettie's and Mom and Dad went to Bud's, but it seemed like the whole neighborhood turned out to offer us rooms and food and things to drink. Somebody brought over hot orange rolls this morning for breakfast and we'll probably get dinner brought as well. (Of course, what we really need are for people to help EMPTY our fridges so we can fit wedding stuff in there, not to fill them more! But it's the thought that counts.)

Anyway, everybody is safe, there's not too much damage to the house, and it makes a GREAT story to tell at the reception, I figure -- and a fun story to tell our kids someday! And now we know that we were definitely inspired to have the wedding at the church instead of at home. We're not even doing a bridal shower here, thankfully.

I think I may win the prize for most chaotic Wood wedding ever, though! Roland or Christian would really have to pull out the stops to top THIS. :) I mean, the drama! Lightning! Fire! Pregnant women pulling babies out of cribs! Wedding dresses being dashed across the street through the rain! Tablecloths in danger! We all think the local news should have come and interviewed us (Roland tried to call dibs on being first interviewed, until I pulled the "it's MY wedding" trump card on him), but they missed out. I guess it was just a crazy night.

Anyway, I'm going to get cleaned up and straighten my room a little. I was pretty embarrassed that the firemen had to track through my messy room to open my window to let out the smoke last night! I don't want to feel embarrassed all over again when the appraiser comes. But I love you and can't wait for you to come and share in all this craziness with me!

Yours (with bonus rustic woodsmoke scent!) always,

Friday, April 24, 2009

How I Met Ben (with Ben providing addenda in italics)

So, now that news of my engagement has been officially publicized via the family blog, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and people all over the country are practically perishing from curiosity, I thought that I might write up a little post about how this engagement came to be.

Ben and I met via the Internet (I'm told it's very in vogue to do so right now -- one in 8 couples, the story goes!) on eHarmony. Yes, we're an eHarmony success story. I'll probably edit this up to send to eHarmony as well so that they can use us for advertising because, well, of COURSE they'd want to advertise with us.

Anyway. We both set up profiles right around the same time. They were doing a special around New Years where you could get a weekend free and try it out before signing up. Ben was one of the first 15 or so profiles they sent to me. We started talking and just clicked really well. There's a ton we have in common. We are allergic to all the same things (which is to say, almost everything), had a history of blacking out in grade school (me via fainting, Ben via repeated concussions), a love of reading and learning, kind of goofy senses of humor, crazy smart family members (his dad even works for the same company my grandpa did for a while!), born two months apart, attended BYU the same years, similar romantic experience -- and the list goes on and on. As soon as we took it off eHarmony and started talking via e-mail, we either e-mailed, chatted, called on the phone or Skyped basically every day.

Ben: In case you're not familiar with Skype, it's a web-based program that allows two remote users to chat via web camera, and for Sarah and I it's great because we can see one another's expressions and gestures. It's about as close to in-person as you can reasonably get in a long-distance relationship.

Moreover, right after he gave me his e-mail address, I googled around to make sure that Ben was for real (because honestly, some things seemed too good to be true!) and found his YouTube channel. Now, Ben somehow managed to find himself several very unflattering photos in his eHarmony profile, because I'd been just KIND OF interested up to that point. Once I saw his channel and discovered not only how talented and good-looking he was, but also how humble and funny and genuine and self-assured, I was sold, hook, line and sinker. I even showed my parents, because while normally I'd be a bit reluctant to pull them into my dating life, I just HAD to show off some. YEAH, parental units, THIS HOT GUY is interested in ME.

Ben: Were the pictures really THAT unflattering? Haha, maybe that's why people never responded to my ice breakers. I might add here that as soon as I read Sarah's profile answers, my interest was already piqued because of her very fluid, grammatically solid writing style. She focused on important things like family, self-improvement, religion, and she had a very sardonic approach to her dating life (or lack thereof) that I found very refreshing. Also, eHarmony allows you at one point during the Guided Communication phase to send 3 questions, either pre-loaded into the system or custom, and Sarah chose to ask about my music, day job, and family, all of which are top priorities in my mind. Definitely strong start.

So after just a few weeks of e-mailing and talking, we decided that it was expedient that we should actually meet each other. We already knew that we clicked intellectually, conversationally, and to some extent emotionally, but so much depends on being able to handle each other in person.

Ben: To give you a quantifiable idea of exactly how much we had written to each other before we met, from Jan 5 - Feb 14 we had logged 196 typed, single-spaced, 12-pt font pages in Microsoft Word from emails and online chats alone, not to mention hours of phone calls and video chats. Yeah, that much in the space of about 40 days. Thus, we had mutually concluded that what remained in our puzzle was the physical chemistry and the potential in-law dynamics.

Ben actually ended up having a business contact with a woman in my ward -- she's a very good violinist, herself, and so my dad (assuming that all violinists who have ever lived in Utah knew each other) -- asked if they were acquainted, and lo and behold, they were! Sort of. She described herself as a "fan" of him, and told my dad and me how much she was looking forward to working with him on this particular business project. Well, finding that they had an acquaintance in common (me) made it easier for them to get in touch and kind of expedite his visit down to D.C.

I finally met Ben for the first time at the end of February, though by that time I was already calling him my boyfriend. After all, we went through a few weeks there where we did something together for about an hour nearly every night, whether it was playing on yahoo games or just talking, until we realized that it was maybe interfering a little bit with things we really DID need to get done. I already knew more about him than I do about even many of my siblings!

Ben: Since my life tended to be an open book to everyone, I decided to keep my love life more hush-hush so I could focus on Sarah without others telling me what to do or think. It was my way of protecting my best interest as I determined whether Sarah was (finally) the right one or not. At this point in my life, I had become disenchanted with the idea of dating because I had completely failed to find ANY girl who interested me -- I chalk that up to my idiosyncrasies and strange sense of humor :) The black spiky hair may have also been a turn-off for girls, who knows.

It was still a bit nerve-wracking to meet in person, though. The first night, we were both pretty nervous and awkward, but we quickly got used to each other over the course of a date that began on Friday night and didn't really end (though there were interruptions for work and orchestra practice) until Tuesday night. He joined an orchestra here for the weekend and played at the temple visitors center, and I helped show him around D.C. to get some videos for the children's website he works for. Having hit it off thus far, I planned a trip to go visit him at his home five weeks later.

It was one of the longest months of my LIFE, and I have a series of whining/sappy e-mails to prove it, too. We kept up e-mailing every morning and calling for at least 15 minutes every night and skyping every weekend, which helped the time pass, and certainly provided a more thorough record of my life than I've ever had before. As you JUST MIGHT be able to tell from, like, the four blog entries behind this, I'm not very good at journaling. But letter writing in lieu of journaling has been working out great so far! I'm excited to know that when we have kids, they'll have a very thorough record of our courtship.

Ben: What Sarah said :)

In any case, my visit up to see Ben kind of sealed the deal in my mind. His family is full of fun, bright, generally delightful people, and his hometown is just the right size -- not too big and busy, not to small and away from everything. We spent conference weekend together and, even though I came down sick almost as soon as I got there (possibly something on the airplane) had a great time.

Two weeks later (there was no way on this green earth that we were going to go another five weeks again) we met up in New York City so I could see Ben perform at Carnegie Hall with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra! We took some long walks through New York and Central Park, talked about how things we going and our expectations for the future, and generally enjoyed each other's company. A documentary crew quickly noticed that Ben was one of the more engaging characters in the YTSO, so the poor guy had had cameras following him around much of the time. They did an interview the afternoon before the concert with the both of us to talk a little bit about our relationship and our expectations for the concert and so on.

Ben: I posted a few videos on detailing my experience that week, and the last one begins with me talking about my anticipation of Sarah's arrival into NYC that day. Sarah's hands are the ones that uncover that ultra greasy grilled cheese sandwich, too.

The concert was AMAZING, but this is already getting really long! So I'll fast forward a bit.

That night after the concert, I had a very vivid dream in which Ben proposed -- but with a hideously ugly ring! There were all these tiny green stones arranged in a square that sloped upward in a way that it was sure to catch on everything, besides being gaudy and bizarre. In the dream, I said yes, but then had a TON of angst about how to tell him that I couldn't stand the ring and that he needed to exchange it for a different one. My mom-in-the-dream thought that I was being really dumb and melodramatic about it, but agreed that the ring was hideous and I required a different one.

I told the story to Ben in the morning as we were walking around New York, and we had a good laugh about it. He did seem mildly concerned that I'd have such a strong reaction to a ring, and quizzed me as to what would constitute a ring I didn't like. I assured him that as long as it was not huge and lime green, I'd be okay with most things.

I'd never been in New York city, so we walked a long ways down Broadway and then cut over and walked back up on 5th Avenue. We must've gone at least 5 miles total in the morning, and all this with Ben carrying his violin over one shoulder and holding my hand on the other side. It probably totally ruined his spine, poor guy. But we enjoyed it, nonetheless. It was a gorgeous day, though quite chilly in the morning. At crosswalks, waiting for the light to turn, we hugged close to keep warm and shield each other from the wind.

As we walked back along 5th so as to be back at the hotel before checkout time, I noticed the Tiffany's store, there. Now, I don't consider myself a HUGELY girly girl, but that store is just iconic! I couldn't walk by it without going inside. I asked Ben if he would mind. I repeatedly assured him that it was no pressure -- no pressure at all -- it didn't mean I expected him to buy a ring that soon and certainly not at Tiffany's in any case. It was just a case of me being a girl and wanting to go look at sparkly things. He hesitated a little but then agreed to go inside just to take a look. We wandered by the display cases (and exclaimed over the prices) and I sought out a saleslady to double-check my ring size. She took the opportunity to unload a little literature on Ben about diamond cuts and qualities and so on, and he just nodded and acted like he was just kind of learning about it for a possible future purchase, but with nothing planned imminently.

The boy had had a ring in his pocket THE WHOLE MORNING. I had no idea.

Ben: For all of you engageds/marrieds out there, I know understand how nerve-wracking it is to carry around a ring in my pocket for an imminent proposal -- particularly walking through TIFFANY'S, of all places, where their rings are way bigger and shinier (and, of course, unrealistically priced). It's dang hard to feign ignorance about diamond cuts and sizes, too.

So after getting back into the hotel, we ran into the documentary people again, who wondered if they could get another interview to follow-up after the show. So I agreed and we chatted a little bit about the music, the whole experience about New York -- and the director started asking some leading questions about how my relationship with Ben had changed and where I thought it would be going in the future. I STILL didn't have a clue until Ben announced, "There's one more thing I need to do here," and pulled out his phone and started calling my home number.

I knew my dad wasn't home -- and neither was Roland, as it was in the middle of a school day -- and right THEN I caught on to what he was doing. I was definitely surprised. After all, it was, technically, the only third visit we've had with each other, but it also has just felt natural and right and easy from the beginning. We fit together. I still look forward every morning to his e-mail and every night to his call -- when something exciting happens in my day, I can hardly wait to tell him; when something bad happens, I look forward to commiserating. I was already planning on moving up there because dating long-distance loses its charm very quickly, which to me was already sort of a quasi-engagement, since I informed him quite seriously that I very much disliked all this moving and traveling, and so if he was going to break up with me ever it had very well better be before I moved.

Ben: I admit I fed Sarah misinformation leading up to the proposal -- I figured it would make for a much bigger shock factor when I proposed :)

So he called my home and left a message asking for my dad for my hand in marriage (my dad was his way to the airport at the time, but his permission was never in doubt. My dad is totally thrilled that I have found a guy as awesome as Ben is) and then got down on one knee and pulled out a classic, beautiful ring (not some gaudy, lime green contraption). I don't think I let him get the question out before answering yes, but it's all kind of a blur from the time he dialed my house until we left the cameras and went over to my hotel to catch my mom and give her the news. Fortunately, it was all caught on video, so I'm sure I'll see exactly how it went some day. (And no, it's not on YouTube. These guys are doing a very legit documentary. So someday you will maybe be able to rent a movie that has my engagement in it, or maybe it'll end up on the cutting room floor. Who knows! In any case, Ben is going to ask them for the footage, for our own records.)

So that's the story of how I met Ben! It's been a week since then, and it's still another week until he flies down here to spend a week here and then drive up with me to New York. It's surreal and fantastic and wonderful and a little bit stressful at times, but I feel incredibly lucky to have found this amazing guy that I click with so well, and am looking forward to the rest of my life with him.

Ben: I might add that Sarah's the best thing that's happened to me and that I'm just as eager to start our life together soon!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

I wrote this story up to share with Ben, and he thought I should post it in a journal or a blog if I hadn't yet. Which, uh, I hadn't, because I've been pretty bad about journaling since my mission. But it was already written up, so I've just copied and pasted here. For posterity. Or something.

So back in the days before my Honda Fit, I had a 1993 Honda Accord. It had previously been owned by my sister (while I was on my mission), my brother Jonathan (before he sold it to my sister), and my brother Nathan (who bought it used.) It got great gas mileage, but otherwise -- well, having been through three college students before it got to me had taken its toll. It was dented and abused and broken and repaired and then abused again. It didn't have air conditioning, because to repair the AC would have cost more than the car was really worth. It also didn't have a radio. Well, it had a radio, but it came with an anti-theft mechanism that meant you had to enter a code after it had been to a shop and they'd had to reset the electrical system or something. Unfortunately, one of the buttons stopped required to input the code was broken, so you were unable to enter it, thereby rendering the radio permanently useless.

I'd started wanting to get a Honda Fit right when they came out. They were just so little and adorable and economical! (And zippy!) I was done with school and felt that I could reasonably afford the car payments. However, in my family we're pretty debt-adverse, so I knew the responsible thing to do would be to eke out as much more life as I could out of my Accord while saving up for the Fit. This seemed pretty boring, but I was resigned to it.

Well, in November of 2006, my Grandma died and I drove up to the funeral. I let my dad drive the car around a lot, as there were a whole handful of us juggling a few cars between us. It snowed, and my dad took a corner a little too sharply and tore off my bumper. Again, I struggled. I wanted a new car (with AC and a radio and no rust) so very, very badly, and the repairs for the bumper would almost certainly be expensive. Eventually, I gave in and paid up, had it repaired, and kept slowly saving.

Then in 2007, my windshield cracked and I had to get that and a couple tires replaced in order to pass inspection. And then just the day after paying up and fees for registration, with the blue tape still around the windshield to hold it in place, I went outside to drive my car to work.

I walked to the normal parking spot. I shared at that time an apartment with three girls, but we only had one assigned parking spot. I was PRETTY SURE I'd taken it the night before, but it wasn't there. Maybe I'd parked in a different spot! Our apartment building was pretty large, and it took me quite a while to wander through it and really make sure that I didn't see my little junky Accord anywhere.

It was BAFFLING. It never even occurred to me that the car was stolen, because really, who would do that? A thought that GENUINELY OCCURRED to my mind before stolen was "abducted by aliens", because my terrible car had been parked right next to a very nice Lexus. (I'm pretty sure I didn't take that thought seriously, but I definitely had it.) I called my roommates to make sure there hadn't been some prank involving stealing my car, still in a state of very amused shock and befuddlement. (Seriously? MY CAR?)

Well, they hadn't moved it, so I looped around the parking lot once again, called into work to let them know I would be delayed, and then called the cops. I have to wonder if the dispatcher thought I was a crank caller, because I still couldn't wrap my mind around it and was kind of out of it. "Hello? I, um, think my car got stolen? Maybe? It's just gone. I don't know where it went, so -- I guess maybe stolen?"

I didn't know whether to hope for a recovery (so as to keep saving money and not have to go through the arduous process of auto loans, et cetera) or for it just to be totaled, so that I could get the shiny new car I secretly really wanted. Well, a couple days later, I got a call from the anti-gang squad. They'd located my car -- it seemed to be in one piece and not taken to a chop shop, like I'd maybe thought -- and taken it to an impound lot.

Heart sinking with disappointment and resignation, I took the bus to the lot and picked up my car. Apparently you can steal older model Honda Accords by jamming a screwdriver into the steering column! Who knew? But other than the scar of the screwdriver, it all seemed to be in order, so I made sure the fluids were topped off and then started driving home.

I had not gone a block before smoke started billowing out of the engine. It was pretty terrifying. I pulled over and hyperventilated for a little and tried to decide what to do. Well, I was just too cheap to call for a tow, and I had some extra coolant in the car, so I topped off the coolant again and drove carefully, slowly home just to get it into my parking lot. And then I called my insurance.

Well, the adjuster came over and looked it over -- whoever had stolen it had only driven about 80 miles, but they must have done some really rough driving or maybe driven the whole way in first gear! Whatever had happened, he took one look at my engine and said, "Oh, yeah. You'd need to get a whole new engine, which, considering the age of the car -- we'll just total this."

So I got a check from my insurance for the blue book value of the car, debated a little while longer about whether to get a used car that I didn't like or to take out a small auto loan and get one that I loved, and then went ahead and got the Fit. I was able (in part to the free rent gravy train I enjoyed last year) to pay it off before I'd had it for a full year, so I think I made the right choice! There was no way I'd have managed the cross country trip in the middle of winter with all my belongings in this world with the old Accord, that's for sure.

Anyway. There is my story, which can basically be summed up as "I think it's really funny that my car got stolen." I might need to work a little bit on brevity. :)

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy 2009, all! I've had a good, lazy day so far. And while I should have done this yesterday, I figure that it still counts.

So, even though my New Years resolutions generally don't last out of January, the whole point is that it's a new year, a fresh start, a clean slate. So it's time to dust off and try again. I'm even shooting for achievable so far!

In 2009, it is hereby resolved:

I will exercise more. I was much better off physically and mentally back when I was going to the gym at least 5 days a week. Though I haven't found a gym here that is sufficiently convenient that I'd want to commit to it, I can still find fun ways to exercise. I can put on some music and dance in my living room. I can pick up the pace on the way home from the metro. I can stay standing up on the metro.

I will keep up my pace on reading, and finish at least 52 books this year. However, I also will not spend more than $300 on books. That will mean getting a library card and going to the library sometimes.

I will go to more activities, strike up more conversations, and get to know at least 1 new person a month. That's 12 people over the course of the year, and excessively easy. (I don't have to be FRIENDS with them. But at least learn a name and have a good, solid conversation and be able to recognize them later on.)

I will keep in better touch with the friends I already have. I know I'm hopeless on the phone, so that will largely mean through twitter, e-mail, and blogging more. But still!

I have some other, more personal goals, but these I will be keeping track of here in this space. So! Here's to 2009 being awesome.


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SARUA Annual Report 2008

Whilst SARUA’s focus in its first year of operations was on establishing the organization in terms of its staff, its operating systems, and its relationships with its members and key regional players, the second year has been very much about building its knowledge base of Higher Education in the region.

A total of seven studies were commissioned and completed during the year, leading to the publication of the “SARUA Study Series 2008” in early 2009. Many of these studies were “groundbreaking” in the sense that no one organization had ever previously attempted to gather data, for regional comparative purposes, on such a range of regional higher education issues.

Download Report

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

A Dominican Sweet 16

16 year old me in the Dominican Republic in 1996 with neighbor kids

The best summer of my youth was in 1996. At 16 I had it all; a car, a cute boyfriend, a varsity softball letterman jacket, long, wavy hair with blond highlights. The picture of the American Teenager. And then I was canon-fired across the country to a remote village in the Dominican Republic for 6 weeks.

Although I'd been planning the trip for nearly a year, nothing could have prepared me for adapting to a new culture, speaking a different language, being away from home for the first time and the drastic changes in myself that were to come of it.

Without much thought the previous year, I signed up for a program called Amigos de las Americas, an organization that sends youth into Latin American countries to complete community service projects during the summer months. All I really thought about at that point was that it would be rad to travel to another country and that it would look great on my college applications.

Ranch de la Guardia, Dominican Republic. My summer home in '96.

I was placed with two other girls my age in a town called Rancho de la Guardia, inland from the coast, about 4 miles from the Haitian border. We lived in a little shack next to our host family and quite happily settled in washing our clothes in a bucket, bathing in a waterfall, making midnight trips together to the latrine. Our host mother fed us bread and hot chocolate for dinner almost every night. We thought this was a pretty sweet deal, planting trees and speaking Spanish, no big deal.

But like all things, it got real. Here are a few excerpts from my journal:
"I'm not sure that I'm all for organizations like Amigos. Do these people really need our help? What are we doing here?"
"I'm totally going through culture shock...Sometimes it gets so frustrating to be around a lot of noise that you can't understand."
"We all cried a lot today and pretty much isolated ourselves in our room."
"I can't believe we have two days left. It's totally crazy. I think I might just die, or it will seem like all these people have. I can't bear the thought of leaving, but I can't bear the thought of staying either."

The house we stayed in that summer.

It got real not because we had no running water or TV, but because for the first time in my life, I realized there was more. That there was more than having great hair and perfect shoes, there was a whole world of people out there that had absolutely nothing to do with me. I came out of my teenaged shell and got a glimpse of the bigger picture. After coming home I threw out all my make-up, kept my hair short, and basically hated on all things "material." It took me a long time to reconcile what I'd experienced that summer with my life back home in Oregon. It took me an even longer while to figure out that it was me who'd benefitted from the experience, not necessarily the people I'd gone to "help."

Me (in gray) with my partners Amanda and Nicole and a friend

Nostalgia for this particular summer crept over me recently. I felt the best way to commemorate these feelings was to slow-cook a pot of beans and curl up on the couch with my journal and photo album. I laughed and laughed, flipping through the pages, remembering our neighbor boys whispering "I love you," and "do you like to kiss?" through slats in our door as we fell asleep on our mosquito net covered cots. Our favorite meal was "arroz con habichuelas" or rice and beans. I hope I'm doing the recipe, and this story, justice.

Dominican Rice and Beans
Also featured on Foodie Friends Friday
serves at least 8

1 pound kidney or red beans
1 quart chicken or vegetable stock
1 yellow onion
4 cloves garlic
1 jalapeno
1 TBL cumin
1 tsp chili powder (whatever you like)
salt & pepper
water, as needed
white rice

*I remember this dish being "soupy," as the beans were served separate from the rice. There was a lot of extra liquid in the bean pot, so that's the way I wrote this recipe, just FYI.

In your slow cooker, cover your pound of beans with water and soak over night. Drain and rinse, take the time to sort through them a bit, it's likely you'll find some dirt or rocks.

Add the drained beans back to the slow cooker along with the stock. If the stock doesn't cover the beans, add more water. Remember, we are going for soupy.

Chop your onion, garlic, and jalapeno and add to the pot. Toss in the spices and give it a stir. Watch the salt though as some stocks are saltier than others. It will be pretty spicy, so omit spicy ingredients if necessary. Turn it to low and let it cook overnight, or 8-10 hours.

To serve, spoon beans over hot cooked rice. Enjoy!

  1. Great story! When you look back now, do you feel like you were useful?

    1. Yes, definitely. But not in the ways I'd expected. I think the biggest impact we made was cultural understanding. Americans are people, too!

  2. What a great post, and you justified my taste buds with the beans and rice recipe....I love beans and rice! I will be making this soon. This is a perfect share for Foodie Friends Friday. Thank you!

  3. Great story!! I love rice and beans they ate my comfort food :)

  4. Wow, Gwen. This story reminds me a similar experience I had, two actually. First, I went to volunteer in Atlanta during spring break in college. It amazed me that in the US, there was so much poverty. I thought everyone lived like me. The second is when I volunteered for Hurricane Katrina. They had one gas station left. There were two restaurants. Everything else was gone. I saw boats lodged in houses. I saw trees glittered with debris. I saw a car upside down on top of a tree. It was truly humbling. I slept on a cot in a shed with 3 other girls. I was fed half a sandwich for each meal. We worked from sun up to sun down. These people literally had nothing and it made me appreciate and almost feel guilty for what I had.

    Sorry I turned this comment into a novel, but you really touched me with this post and made me nostalgic for my own volunteer missions.

    1. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I'd love to hear more about it sometime. Upcoming blog post?

  5. Love your story and also how you benefited from the experience. I think it is important for everyone to go to a third world country and be immersed in the culture. The experience that one gains is tremendous. Although I was 40 when I first went to Togo, Africa.. and I was only there for a few weeks at a time, I gained alot from the people around me. I was fortunate enough to find my husband there and now part of our life is back in Togo. We make a rice and bean ~ although the spice is within the sauce that we put in it not in the beans. Thanks for sharing on Foodie Friends fRiday and I hope you share more recipes this week.

Aloha Saturdays with Maggy reader! Thank you for your comments, I love hearing your thoughts and feedback.

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We live in a nation founded on dreams of freedom, opportunity, and progress. The most enduring of these visions is the American dream. It’s the belief that God blesses our efforts and turns hard work into benefits for many. Your contributions of time and talents can affect many people.

American history is full of heartening “rags to riches” success stories. Each person has their own dream of success. As you complete your education and enter the workforce, you have the opportunity to write your own success story. Keep your eyes open, your ears alert, and your heart in tune for God’s plan for your life.

An interesting success story took place in 1848. The whole nation was talking about striking it rich. Everyone’s dream was to go west and cash in on the California gold rush.

A tent maker from the east coast planned to sell canvas tents to California miners. Everyone was traveling and temporary housing was a necessity. Though gold miners counted on striking it rich, some of the largest fortunes were made by suppliers for the miners.

The sturdy construction of the miner’s tents captured attention. The tent maker soon found that the canvas could be made into sturdy pants with rivets on seams and pockets for the miner’s tools.

What began as a general supply of temporary housing for gold miners turned into being the most popular clothing design in today’s fashions. Levi Strauss completed his success story with the invention of the ever-popular blue jeans. Having cashed in on the California gold rush, Levi Strauss and Company is still panning blue jeans gold all over the world today.

Be open-minded to what God may have in mind for your life. You may think you are on a particular trail when God has plans beyond your comprehension. Keep Jeremiah 29:11 in mind. “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”


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A monster on the verge of eating an adventurer.

Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses D&D

by Ramanan Sivaranjan on January 25, 2013

Tagged: media dnd video mainstream

Ta-Nehisi Coates from the Atlantic writes briefly about playing D&D and the Caves of Chaos, and is featured in a short clip from the the upcoming D&D documentary.

I wonder if the is going to get more people playing D&D.

Add me to your circles and we can discuss post on on google+.


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Sunday, March 23, 2008

System Failure

Nervous breakdowns, Anxiety..blah blah. College has ended, I just have to go for like 5-6 days for the giving exams and other paper stuff. That's it! I'm not cribbing for the end of college but yeah what lies ahead? I must have said this over and over again but its high time now and I'm almost losing my head, my patience everything.

Lemme not make it seem as if I'm suicidal or something. I'm F-I-N-E.

I finally finished The Kite Runner and I recommend it to all those who haven't read it. It's a must read. Now I have to concentrate on angrejji honors. bah!

Was in Haryana for holi. It was fun-ish. Of course I spent most of the time re-french-tipping my Which I don't usually do. I'm never one of those girls who own a huge make-up box and a huge collection of nail paints and stuff. But sometimes I do like it. I hate growing nails but when I get lazy and don't cut em for a long time I just do them nicely and get over it! I don't even have an eye mascara. Kajal is full stop for me. Even at parties.

Being back in Delhi feels good. I love Delhi. I wish we all had tees that said I love Delhi...hehe...I've gone crazy!

Later. isshttudy time!

Nirmal's Blog said...

hey nice reading you.......
gals with kajal looks good..

Everybody's fool! said...

thanks!....kajal is all tht matters to me i gues!

Smokin Joe said...

Who doesnt love Delhi.


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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Rebirth: Explanations by the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Courtesy: Growing up with the Mother by Tara Jauhar, pp. 196-201, Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Delhi Branch Trust, New Delhi, 1999.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Speech of Mrs. Indira Gandhi at Sri Aurobindo Ashram

"The Spirit of Storm" painted by Promode Kumar Chatterjee

Promod Kumar Chatterjee-a painter and a seeker

Promod Kumar Chattopadhyay (1885-1979) was an interesting personality who travelled through many vicissitudes in his life. He was a traveler and travelled extensively all over India, Nepal and Tibet for pilgrimage. But it was not merely for the purpose of pilgrimage –though its spiritual significance was not absent in his psychology-but for his passionate seeking for meeting the enlightened yogis and sadhus, he spent a considerable period of his early and middle life in the paths of the Himalayas and other places of India like a barefooted sannyasin. But he was not a sannyasin. He was already married then and his wife was a loving and dutiful woman. He was a painter of high quality. However, nothing could bind him with the normal familial life and ordinary world. Actually, for an indomitable aspiration for realizing the spiritual truth he became a little restless. This moved him to the dusty path of eternal India. He met innumerable spiritual personalities of almost all the disciplines of the spiritual kingdom of India in the course of his frequent travelling. His love and respect for sacred India and his thirst for India’s spiritual treasure were the predominant factors that determined and shaped predominantly the course of his life. Eventually, he became a realized person, a siddha in Vrindavan –a sacred pilgrimage place of North India- famous for Lord Krishna and Radha’s lila there on the bank of river Yamuna from time immemorial. He then returned home and pursued his career as a painter to earn a livelihood. He joined Baroda School of Arts as its Principle in the Twenties of the last century. Later he founded National Art Gallery in Masilipattanam in Andhra Pradesh in South India and became its President. He wrote many books on his experiences in the course of his extensive travelling in Bengali. His thirst to know about Tantric philosophy and practice led him to visit many renowned places of Tantric sadhana and he met many enlightened yogis and sadhaks of Tantra-discipline. He will be remembered for his renowned book “Tantrabhilasir sadhusanga” which is rich with the history, philosophy and the past glory and present decadence of Tantric sadhana in India and other places. Later he joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry in 1958. He painted some portraits of Sri Aurobindo which were highly praised by the Mother as they reflected the inner being of Sri Aurobindo to a great extent. He was amongst a very few who saw a vision of Supramental consciousness in the form of a winged bird. He came to Calcutta again for some personal work in 1975. But he did not return to Pondicherry as his daughters wanted his presence amongst them for the remaining days of his life.*He left his body on 22 September 1979 at the age of 94.
Once when Promod Kumar was returning home after visiting the Kailash Mountain and the lake Manas sarovar in Tibet he, by mistake, walked through a wrong path near Chmpawati in Almora district and entered into a deep forest. He was to reach Tanakpur to catch the train the next day with an elderly person with whom he was travelling. He was detached from his companion who was much behind Promod Kumar in the path. Promod Kumar as was natural to him was walking faster than his companion and was deeply engrossed in the beauty of the surrounding nature. After an hour he came to realise that he was following the wrong path which led him in the deep forest in stead of his destination. He was to reach Tanakpur before the evening. Then it was already evening in the forest and there was no path found for coming out of it. Then to worsen the situation, rain began to fall from already thickly overcast sky. It became gradually severe and the darkness became absolute. He fell from a height on a boulder, which hurt him badly. He was horrified in that dangerous and frightful situation. Leeches clung to his both feet and legs up to the thighs and were sucking his blood. He was bleeding and became extremely weak.
He lost his sense, remained there in the severe cold, and got completely drenched. After sometime he woke up only to suffer consciously. In the middle of that night he cried out to the God, “Why have you put me in such a situation?”Then all of a sudden he heard someone telling clearly in grave voice “Do you regard God as the doer of all your work?” Instantaneously an inner lightening struck him and by a flashing light he realized that he always thought himself as the doer of all his works and enjoyed the results himself, good or bad, that ensued from his works and regarded God as a separate and vast collective consciousness who was not anyway related to his individual work arising out of his personal initiatives. He said to himself “Then why do I call the God to come to my rescue for coming out of this danger that befalls on me for my wrong work? Actually it is the mechanical response of my vital nature. In childhood we call our parents for help and later we call the God whenever we get troubled as consequence of our own works. It becomes as spontaneous as our breathing lungs!”
Perhaps he knew it before but never before was so much aware of this fact. **
The writing of this article is based on this realization of Promod Kumar Chattopadhyay. We all know from our reading of The Gita that we should not expect the fruits of our work. We do not have right for the fruits or results of our work. So we should work not for ourselves but for the Divine. In the same way we do not have any right to work by ourselves. We are mere instruments through whom the Divine is working for something only known to Him. The basic principle of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is not to attain Brahman or God but to make oneself open to the Divine so that He can work through us. One does not know what is to be achieved from his life. What one is to become. So what makes the feeling that it is I who is working? It is the ego that so feels. But one may raise a point that one does many wrong and heinous works for narrow self satisfactions. Are all these works are done by God? Yes. There is none except Him in His creation. He is evolving i.e. he is in the process of attaining or achieving in myriad ways in all things and beings including the sadhus and murderous criminals. In this journey of evolution everything is progressing towards Him through Him. There is no wrong act. It is the ego only that defines. According to the status of ego in the evolution the work or karma is done in ignorance. We started to compare good and bad karma from the time we started to get in touch of consciousness higher than the general or ‘normal’ in enlightened beings and also in times even in ourselves. There is only one divine pressure behind the evolutionary urge. In some it is less hindered and so we meet a yogi or a poet or great visionaries and in some it is to move through obstacles and we are met with criminals or a Hitler. Every wrong act is an upheaval or catastrophe from the perverse point of ego.
But a bhakta may well ask where does he stand personally in this evolutionary process? He may obviously want to be justified of his individual dignity in his existence! Yes –the Divine approves and acknowledges his want.
But before that one must consecrate all his work and life to the Divine until one feels that it is the Divine that works through him and moves through him. When one consciously feels that the Divine is absolutely established as the driver in his being and one acts from the status of his union with the divine then only he will feel his individual justification in the vibration of the delight of unfolding of the supreme Divine will in this infinite creation. But one must be aware of one’s individual soul first as it is the individual link of the divine that exists within one.
The first essential work in this yoga is to give the right and the fruit of one’s work to the Divine. So the Mother tells us to work with a prayer “Grant that I may do as well as I can the best things to do.” She insists to be in our best in all our works so that she may face less hindrance in her work in us. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother always insisted on the perfection of our instrumentality.
*As told to me by Promod Kumar in presence of his daughter.
**Promod Kumar was able to come out from that jungle and caught the scheduled train on the next day at Tanakpur.

Courtesy and Link:

Monday, May 27, 2013

Darshan of the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram

March 7,197O

He sat, it seemed, for eons on the porch outside her room. He
had been waiting already for years, then months, then those
days since he was told he could go up to her on his birthday,
sitting in his solid little block of a Peace Corps house, trying to
concentrate on a name, a tiny face glimpsed above a railing;
eyes that blinked at the brightness of the Bay of Bengal then
swept silence over the sea of faces below. Too soon she returned
into the mysterious inner world of which he knew nothing.
Reclusiveness held a fascination, especially for a restless
American given somewhat to seclusion himself. That first year
in India had been a reading binge, a trunk full of books devoured
during the day’s heat and night’s boredom. Without the yoke of
formal education he drifted from field to field, grazing indiscriminately.
 If he could not speak much Tamil, he could at least

talk English with his books. Yet every night he would bike out
into the bazaar on some useless errand, an excuse to lose
himself in the noisy river of the marketplace. He thought often
of Sri Aurobindo remaining in one room for years on end,
sitting still for hours in the heat.
It was very hot in the veranda outside her room. He hadn’t
brought a cloth for the sweat. The crows were obnoxious as
usual, louder and more present than the distant hum of the
Ashram below. He wondered if the others waiting with him
were as easily distracted. They seemed so sunk into themselves,
silent and unconcerned about the more than two hours they had
been there. It was two hours, wasn’t it? He snuck a look at his
watch. After eleven.
This was a test of course. Like the would-be Zen student who
sits motionless in the snow for days trying to persuade the
master to open his door. He wished ruefully that he could sit still
for five minutes, but he was just a gangly North American
wilting in the humidity. If only he could hunker down anywhere
like any Tamilian, easing the body down over the flattened feet
as if settling into an overstuffed chair; at home in waiting,
unworried about whether a bus would come in two minutes or
two hours. He lasted less than a minute, rocking back and forth
on the balls of his feet, his mind a runaway express plunging
through the dust of India.
He remembered the instructions given in clipped, hushed
tones: “Go in front of her, kneel, and give her your flowers
(rapidly wilting, he noticed). Then make pranam. She will be
looking clearly at you. You should open yourself and let her
look inside through your eyes. You may be staying for some
time. Then she will give flowers and blessing packet.”
Some time. . . the eyes! Back in Midwest USA people didn’t
look into each other’s eyes. He knew from taking speech in
college that “eye contact” was important, but its only purpose,
it seemed, was to make the other person shift their glance.
Man’s superiority over the other animals is proved by the fact
that not one of them, dog, cat, horse, can hold a human’s gaze.
But what about the wild ones staring at us from the shadows of
the forest. . . the door opened.
Someone stepped outside and motioned them to come. He
followed the others into the welcome dimness of an incense
fragrant room. He looked eagerly around-saw paintings, statues,
cases of knicknacks, books, carvings-a museum of a

room. ‘Another test,’ he thought, ‘to distract my already distracted thoughts.’
What was strange was the combination of

objects: exquisitely carved ivory and wood figures next to
sea-shell necklaces, toy elephants, the kind of things found in
tourist shops at Mahabalipuram.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Bilkees Latif reminisces Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

Courtesy: "The Fragrance of Forgotten Years" by Bilkees Latif, pp. 159-165, Rupa & Co.,
New Delhi, 2009.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

An Aurovillian: Energy but it is not my energy...

                                    Roy in the seventies
 Energy…It is not my energy...

When I came to Auroville, it was like an extension of that existence I already was living.
"Here is your ticket for Sunday."
"But I can't leave on Sunday, I don't have a visa!"
On Friday I go to the Indian Consulate. The Indians there hate India, they really try to discourage you.
"Why are you going to India? We spent so many years trying to get out of India. You don't want to go to India!"
"Yes I want to go to India. What kind of visa application?"
They told me to go into another room to find the Visa Applications which were on the floor in a pile.
"Here it is".
"Come back tomorrow," the guy said.
So I came back Saturday. The plane left on Sunday February 28th, 1971.

For me it all started when I was four or five. At that time I had an experience which later I called my "Sri Aurobindo chair experience". It is hard to describe, but after that I started speaking a language that only my cousin, Justine understood. She was a year younger than me and I bossed her around in that language. Later my sister asked me, "Do you remember that language you spoke?", which I didn't, as I didn't know I wasn't speaking in English, but the only word of that language that I remembered was what I used to call my cousin: "Didi", and afterwards I learned that this is Bengali for sister.
I often asked my mother, "Why did you call me Roy?" and she replied ,"Because it is a short name". Much later, when Imet Nolini Kanta Gupta he told me, "My name used to be
I thought this was very special until I discovered later that everybody in Bengal is called Roy. So I felt for a very long time that I had a connection to Sri Aurobindo and very much to the Mother from some earlier times. As a child I was very secretive because my family was hostile to anything having to do with spirituality. There was just so far I could go with them in discussions because they were very sarcastic. They have a New York sense of humor which is sarcasm, which I did not share.
So I was waiting to grow and leave, living in my own private world, and finally at 18 I left home. I was really happy when the sixties happened; it was such a great thing having a community of people that I could identify with. I hated the fifties. The beginning of the hippie thing was great: communities, no money, everything was free; you would just go from place to place. I assumed this was the beginning of the new age. And it was not only the beginning but it was going to expand. Itwas so obvious, you could see it everywhere. So when I came to Auroville it was like an extension of that existence I already was living.
During the sixties, I was looking for a spiritual commune to live in, and people of my own kind. I went to Harvard square, where there was a bookstore where I picked up the latest copy of a magazine called Modern Utopia. On the cover, there was the Lama Foundation which was started by Ram Dass (Richard Alpert). I thought, "Ah, great! A spiritual community, in New Mexico. Perfect!" On the back cover, there was a picture of the galaxy of Auroville, but it didn't really register. So I took off for New Mexico, which was a big adventure and quite interesting, and there I met somebody who had actuallybeen to Pondy, and as he was describing Pondicherry, I visualized something, a weird building with green shutters.
My first discovery of Sri Aurobindo was in 1968, and I got seriously into yoga. I had a kind of opening into the vital world which was really unpleasant. I had these occult experiences many of which were quite frightening: being pulled out of my body, things like this. So I came
specifically to see the Mother to get patched up again. I had studied Tibetan Buddhism, and all those deities they talk about in their texts, I met them, but when you meet them outside your body, it is much scarier than the way they look in tankhas.
So I came here to see her. I was reading Sri Aurobindo. I read in Letters on Yoga that if you want the transformation, you have to see the Mother. Of course he wrote this in 1936, so that wasn't exactly relevant, but I took it as an indication that I had to come and see her. Before I left for India, I was living at Tail of the Tiger at this Tibetan Buddhism place. I don't know if you have ever been to a meditation center, but after a couple of months, you become very addicted to meditation. I got really into it. You keep on increasing your hours until eventually you are living in a kind of monastic life in which all you do is meditate. When you turn the brain off, it is really nice. I was quite happy there, but I had no money as usual. Meanwhile I went down to Boston visit my yoga teacher, who instructed me on Sri Aurobindo. He opened the door and he said, "If you have been thinking of going to India, go!" And he closed the door in my face. So I said okay.
I went into New York. There was a bookstore which sold Sri Aurobindo's books. I used to go there and read. On the wall, there was an announcement: India, $350, one-way ticket. I said, "Oh! I can afford that". So the next day, Thursday, I go to this airplane place.
"I am interested in the ticket for India".
"How do you pay?"
"In cash".
"Here is your ticket for Sunday."
"But I can't leave on Sunday, I don't have a visa!"
On Friday I go to the Indian Consulate. The Indians there hate India, they really try to discourage you.
"Why are you going to India? We spent so many years trying to get out of India. You don't want to go to India!"
"Yes I want to go to India. What kind of visa application?"
They told me to go into another room to find the Visa Applications which were on the floor in a pile.
"Here it is".
"Come back tomorrow," the guy said.
So I came back on Saturday. The plane left on Sunday February 28th, 1971.
I left a chit to my parents: "I am going to India".
I arrived in the Ashram. I just came from that Tibetan Buddhism center in Vermont which was very cold, so I arrived at the Ashram with an Icelandic wool hat on, a woollen lumber jacket, back pack and a guitar, dressed for winter. At the Ashram gate they saw me and they freaked
"Go away, go away!"
"Where should I go?"
"Take him some place," they told the rickshaw.
The rickshaw took me to some lodge, Anavasyam Lodge, which turned out to be this ugly building with green shutterswhich I had visualized earlier at Lama Foundation.
So my trip coming here in hindsight was guided forcefully because I am still pretty stupid but I was really stupid then, really an unconscious person, and to get here took something else. I would never have made it.
I went to see her. Before we were allowed up there, her secretaries came down the stairs, like Counouma who came literally creeping down the staircase, and looked really scary. There seemed to be a very strange kind of cult thing surrounding her. It was hard to have access. But when she touched me, she changed my whole personality, from this uptight New-York Jewish guy into something else.
And lots of people who meet me say, "Roy has such a good energy".
It is not my energy they feel, it's hers. It has always been like that. If anything, because I am a simple person, she put something in me physically that people feel - those who are open to me,
they feel this.
The thing I am sure everyone who came early will tell you, is that the vibration of the Mother here was so strong and physical that you could not think of leaving. Now everyone goes out for the summer because it is hot. In those days we would not leave for a second because it was totally happening and you would not like to miss one moment.
You had these experiences, and after a few days Mother would say, "Oh, yes, something came down and did this..." You felt it. Her Being was so big and powerful and present that you would not even dream of... .
Why leave? So it is a lot different now than it was.
I stayed in Pondy for a couple of months, then I got directed to Auroville. I lived in Silence, where Bharat Nivas is now. There was Larry, who came the same day I did, and Jaap and Lisbeth who also came the same day I did. Black Krishna was there, big Jocelyn and
Constance and Daniel. Minu had a hut that was only big enough for a bed. She had a big framed sign that said "Sincerity", that the Mother wrote to her. When she left Silence, she moved over to Gene Maslow's place (which is where Sincerity is now), and she brought the sign Sincerity over to there. So they called the place Sincerity.
It was an interesting time.
I was very young when I came. In fact, the oldest persons in Auroville were Frederick and Shyama and Francis. They were the adults. The rest of the people were my age, like twenty. The whole place was run by kids basically.
Besides the other aspects, it was really fun. It was an amazing place where you would feel totally
comfortable as a young person. There was no one to tell you what to do. So we did every stupid thing you can imagine. It did not matter. It felt very experimental: we try this, it does not work, so what?
We were living in the middle of the fields, sleeping in the fields, there were no trees. The water used to come by kattavandi. We would wait and see in the distance the kattavandi coming with the water. It was timeless. There was no electricity, no village music. It was still the ragi
culture here; there was this amazing cycle of timelessness. I don't know if you have ever ploughed a field with bullocks, it is an amazing feeling. Watching them is different, but if you do it yourself, you feel an amazing security. This is a wonderful thing, ploughing the field. It is so
ancient. India was really incredible. Now with TV and everything it is totally ruined. It is not the same thing.
A year before Mother died, I was living in the Matrimandir workers camp. I had this very vivid dream where I went to the Samadhi and there was a long line of people. I waited in line, and I went in and there was the Mother lying dead. So I go up to her, I kiss her feet and all this energy comes out. I thought: She is not dead.
Then I woke up. Larry who was living next door came in, looking the way Larry looks when he is in a state of shock. He said: "I just dreamt that the Mother died!" I went to see Pandit and I said, "I just dreamed that the Mother died." –
"Ah! this is in the atmosphere, you know!"  like: forget about it.
One year later I was in Pondy. I used to play Go with this Chinese man, Fan Chan Hsu, who lived in the Ashram and was translating Sri Aurobindo into Chinese. He was a very special kind of person. He once told me he could look at somebody and tell if he was going to die or not. I said, "Oh it's interesting!" He said that well, it wasn't interesting, because when the Japanese had invaded China, everywhere he looked he saw people about to die.
He came to Pondy in 1949 to study Sanskrit. The Red Chinese took over and he could not go back to China because he came from an aristocratic background. He would have been executed or sent to a camp. I used to play Go, which is a Chinese game, with him.
On November 17th, in the middle of the game, he stands up and says, "Let's stop playing". I looked at the clock: it was7.25. He says, "It would be good if she could live up to a hundred." Then I went to a place called Aurovilla where little Jocelyn had a kind of guest-house. I was sleeping on the roof, billions of mosquitoes, it was impossible to sleep. When the sun rose I was so happy to get up and go to the Ashram.
There was a long line of people, it was like in my dream, she was lying in state... When I saw her, she looked totally different than the picture they show you now: she was quite erect and her head was up, and she was still in her trance. There was a picture [like this] that they posted in the Ashram briefly, but then it disappeared and they put the other one, where her head is down, on
her chest. I've always been trying to get that picture but no one knows where it is. In this picture, she looks incredible, in a different state - not dead, in a complete trance state. Satprem wrote about all that. It was my experience also, that she wasn't dead, she was in a trance. She
shouldn't have been touched or moved for a while at least but then they brought her downstairs and disturbed everything.
After that happened, I was in a total state of shock, because that was not supposed to happen. We had a belief system that was total commitment at that time, so it was impossible. Then Nolini came out with his statement saying the transformation has been postponed! I freaked out a little more: like the whole thing is over, that's it.
Still we had this faith that it was not finished.
Then these incredible years began. The war with the Sri Aurobindo Society started in 1975. From that point on, another thing kept us here, which was this fight for freedom.
It was such a together thing. A lot of people got messed up, but at the time it was like no question, we felt so strong. When it started, it was a shock not only because of their hostility, but that it could even happen in Auroville.
Now I feel more compassion for Nava and everybody. Everyone is an instrument for the Divine, which uses whatever it can, so there is no blame. People did what they did.
I guess everybody was sincere.
But the attacks on Auroville - I felt they have been happening since the very early days. We used to have occult attacks that every night people experienced in their body. These were intense experiences. We had to stay really focused on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, whoever one felt closest to, and shield ourselves, because the hostility was incredible, totally penetrating. Auroville has been under that kind of hostility since the time I came
In Letters on Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says "You should not criticize the Ashram, because it is a creation of the Mother." And it is the same thing for Auroville: It is Her creation and it is difficult to justify criticizing things because we are not really conscious of how She is developing Auroville.
When Krishna calls you to wish you a happy birthday, it is such a nice thing. Last time he called me, I told him, "As long as I can hear your voice say Happy Birthday, I know everything is good." I feel like that, because a little bit of personality makes such a huge difference. When
Kireet first came, he said that when one wrote to Sri Aurobindo, they used to bring his reply by hand to the person, so the people in the Ashram felt some contact with him, physically.
Kireet had the idea of a Unity Council: a group of people that would make everyone feel known. They would know your birthday; they would come and see you, like the Ganges flowing with goodwill into the community, all the time, all the time, all the time. Later it switched to
something else, but it was a great idea, a simple idea...
From a conversation with Roy
TURNING POINTS published by Auroville Press Publishers


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Only survivor from The Monastery of the Sundered Chain

Kalad is tall for a dwarf and thickly muscled.

Deeply pious, as one would expect of a holy warrior, Kalad spends a portion of each day in deep prayer, calling out to his god for guidance, comfort, and a renewal of his resolve to continue his fight against the darkness. Outside these private times, Kalad is friendly, if gruff, constant in his support, but always detached. He doesn’t have much use for humor and ignores the banter of those around him. He has a mission and he intends to see it to its end. He might be reserved in his relations, but the PCs couldn’t ask for a more committed ally.

Scales of War jlewis501


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2015 Summer Funding Round | SC Community Loan Fund | We support the development of vibrant, sustainable communities by providing loans, technical assistance, and advocacy for affordable housing, healthy food retail, community facilities, and community businesses.

2015 Summer Funding Round

May 22, 2015

2015 Summer Funding Round

We are pleased to announce $5,000,000 available to finance community development projects across the state.  While we will continue to finance projects within our four areas of focus, priority will be given to the following:

We will hold a mandatory application meeting for those intending to apply during this funding round on Monday, June 15, 2015 from 1:00-4:00 pm in Florence, South Carolina.

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Cistus 'Peggy Sammons'

Cistus 'Peggy Sammons'
A semi-hardy, evergreen shrub with small, sticky, honey scented grey leaves. A profusion of pale pink flowers are produced freely throughout early summer. Each flower only lasts one day, but so many can be produced that this is rarely noticed.
  • Full sun
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    Pot size: 3 litre
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Postcard From the Past Mobilizes a Columbia Historic Church to Restoration

February 16, 2017 - Posted in Palmetto Scene by K. Park and T. Safdi

“We’re excited to be a part of history today,” said Jane George Holmes.

Holmes is a member of Ebenezer Lutheran Church, which saw an exciting addition of two new cupolas to its storied chapel on Monday, February 6. Construction crews readied cranes to hoist the cupolas into the Columbia skyline, as members of the community and the congregation gathered to watch from the sidewalks below. The group broke into a joyous rendering of the hymn, “Lift High the Cross,” as the cupolas, topped with white crosses, were gently placed atop the chapel's columns.

As the first Lutheran congregation in Columbia, founded by fourteen members in 1830, Ebenezer Lutheran Church and its chapel have stood as a backdrop to the city’s history, time and time again.

A fire destroyed the first structure during the Civil War. Northern Lutherans provided funds to rebuild, and G.T. Berg designed the new brick church, erected in 1870. Berg was a German immigrant, brought to Columbia by John Niernsee to assist in the design for the South Carolina State House. He remained a member of Ebenezer Lutheran Church for the rest of his life, and composed music that is still used in services today.

The congregation eventually outgrew the Old Church in 193,1 when the new Gothic Church was built, but it would remain an important part of Ebenezer Lutheran Church. In the late 1940s it served as a Fellowship Hall, in the 1960s the Old Church was a coffee house for young adult members, and in the 1970s and 1980s it was used as a senior citizens center. In 1993, the Old Church was rededicated as a chapel, and it now serves as a more intimate setting for worship activities and other activities.

It was not until a postcard of the original Ebenezer Lutheran Church was discovered in the Ebenezer archives, that it was understood by the church’s current generation, that G.T. Berg’s original design featured a cupola atop each tower, framing the Palladian windows of the chapel. It is assumed that deterioration over time led to the removal of the cupolas, although there are no records in the archives about when they were removed. The Richland County Conservation Commission awarded Ebenezer Lutheran Church a generous grant to assist with restoring the cupolas that were an important part of this historically and culturally significant structure.

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Author Topic: What is Microsoft's Pink and is it destined to fail?  (Read 1783 times)

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What is Microsoft's Pink and is it destined to fail?
« on: 11. April 2010., 08:27:33 »

With Microsoft and Verizon set to finally reveal the outcome of Project Pink on Monday, here we give you a preview of what to expect and try and explain just what this mysterious project is, and why it might have failed before it even launches...

Back in February 2008, Microsoft agreed to acquire Danger for an estimated $500 million. Danger manufactured the Danger Hiptop smartphone, also known as the T-Mobile Sidekick - a device with a young user base and many features centred around social interactions, things which Microsoft's Windows Mobile offerings seemed to be lacking.

Following the acquisition, Danger was integrated into the fairly recently formed Project Pink team in the Premium Mobile Experiences (PXM) group at Microsoft, led by Roz Ho: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/exec/rozho/default.aspx
PMX itself is part of the Mobile Communications Business (MCB) unit, which is part of the Entertainment and Devices Division - the same division as Zune and Xbox. Danger co-founders Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt joined Microsoft, whilst the other, Andy Rubin, went on to co-found Android, which was ironically then acquired by Google to form the basis of their Android mobile operating system.

The initial idea of the Pink team seemed to be to make a Zune phone (despite the idea always being rejected officially by Microsoft) by taking the Zune functionality and adding it to Windows Phone-like software. It seems somewhat strange then that the Danger staff continued to work out of their old offices and the Pink group worked completely separately of Windows Mobile and Zune.

But the acquisition gets even stranger. The operating system on the existing Danger device was based on Java, something which Microsoft stays well clear from. So if they couldn't build on what they were getting, why did Microsoft just buy a business - which had been losing money - for half a billion dollars? Apparently the deal was aimed at gaining some new talented and experienced developers and managers to try and take the Pink project forward, with Microsoft planning to use Danger's basic ideas to build a new experience.

However, it has since emerged that almost as soon as the deal had been done, much of Danger's talent were given lower down jobs within the PMX group and Microsoft revealed that it did not want to take the same creative path as Danger had. 300 employees joined Microsoft as a result of the acquisition yet another 200 were also brought onto the Pink team from elsewhere. When Microsoft decided to cut jobs in an attempt to reduce costs, many former Danger employees were fired, and many others have chosen to leave.

Despite initial suggestions that Pink phones may be branded as either Zune or Windows Phone, it now seems that they may not even say Microsoft on them. However, as with the Zune and Xbox teams in the same Entertainment and Devices Division, and unlike with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft will have complete control of the hardware of the devices. Their manufacturer of choice is expected to be Sharp, who also made the hardware for many of the old Danger devices.

Compared to Windows Phone 7, Pink devices will offer a more integrated and closely designed experience between the hardware and the software. They are expected to be lower end of the market phones than Windows Phone 7 devices whilst providing some of the main features, albeit in a more basic way. But will the two platforms compete against each other too much? With Pink only on devices that Microsoft makes and Windows Phone only on devices that it doesn't, it will be hoping to avoid the difficult clash that Google face with the Nexus One where the OS creator competes with its own rival device directly with those that it licenses to.

There may be a fine line between doing this successfully and annoying other manufacturers that use Windows Phone, but Microsoft see Pink as a phone more aimed at the young and as users grow older they could easily switch over to a Windows Phone. The two platforms will not be that similar, however. It is thought that the original plan was to base the Pink OS on Windows Phone 7, but with that taking longer than expected it had to be based directly on Windows CE (as Windows Phone 7 also is) and doing this all themselves required more work and took the team longer. As such, although there are similarities between the two they are thought to be unable to run the same applications.

This wasn't the only delay faced by Pink. Technology from other product teams, such as the Zune team, is key to the devices and many bits external to the Pink group were not done on time, creating further delays. With once source revealing that the project was two years behind schedule at one stage, this meant that features had to be cut from the product, with an app marketplace, games (powered by XNA), a calendar and an alarm clock all apparently being dropped, in what will surely be an unsuccessful move. When Pink was finally expected to hit the spotlight at CES in January it was a no-show. Presumably held up by more delays, the next opportunity for it to be shown off was at MWC, but Microsoft decided to focus themselves at that event entirely on the new Windows Phone 7.

Within the development team, many are said to "hate the product" and feel that their product was never intended to ship but more to "challenge [the Windows Mobile 7 team] and upset them into competing." Having to design 4 different end-products is also said to have slowed the development down. The two Turtle and Pure phones were both to be made as UTMS and CDMA as well, Turtle and Pure being UTMS and Pride and Lion being the same respective models as CDMA (from what I gather). It is more complex than you might think to develop for both at once, especially when there are two different devices for each. It now seems that only one set of the models will exist, with either CDMA or UTMS support being dropped.

So what of the actual phones themselves. Whilst they may have ended up more as feature phones than smartphones, they still have some decent features. These are meant to be social devices so on top of the standard phone features they should support email, web browsing, Windows Live, AIM and Yahoo! instant messaging, the ability to publish photos directly to Facebook and MySpace, the ability to set your status on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and access to Zune's music service. They can presumably be synced through the Zune PC software and should both feature a headphone jack and a camera. The Turtle is expected to have a screen resolution of 320 x 240 and the Pure being larger at 480 x 320.

Project Pink seems to have been plagued with problems from day one, some of which could eventually lead to its downfall. On Monday we should finally see whether these have been ironed out and Microsoft have managed to produce the youth-friendly social phone that they set out to do, and whether it is at a high enough standard to do well with customers and provide Microsoft with their first real fightback in the consumer phone market.

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What is Microsoft's Pink and is it destined to fail?
« on: 11. April 2010., 08:27:33 »
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Re: What is Microsoft's Pink and is it destined to fail?
« Reply #1 on: 11. April 2010., 22:57:47 »
I think they are way too late to enter this market with something that's really innovative...

Most smart phones come with social networking abilities.

To add that microsoft's rep doesnt help (bugged products, software), seems like more of R&D than anything else.

Anyway, Just my opinion :)

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Dec 4, 2014

Video: Falling Prices Would Help The Economy

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Poverty, socioeconomic development and the distribution of income in South Africa: fiscal and social policy issues

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Mathematical modelling of unlined dam spillway scour

Ousmane S ; Basson GR (2009)

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Date of Conferral

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Samuel Holtzman

Alternately certified teachers (ACTs) are teachers who receive teacher training in an accelerated program provided by alternate certification programs (ACPs). Induction/mentoring programs are provided to ACTs as a source of additional training. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine ACTs' perceptions of their effectiveness as teachers in relation to their students' achievement and the support provided to them as new teachers by their induction/mentoring training. The research question explored if there was a relationship between the amount of support provided to the ACTs from their induction/mentoring programs and the ACTs' perception of their effectiveness in relation to student achievement. The primary data sources consisted of journal data and semistructured interviews from 2 ACTs. Open, axial, and selective coding strategies were used as one component of the data analysis. Conventional content analysis was used to explore the perceptions of the 2 ACTs interviewed. Analysis revealed that ability to manage a classroom and the support provided by induction/mentoring programs may influence the ACTs' perceptions of effectiveness in terms of student achievement. Results also suggested that ACTs' induction/mentoring programs did not successfully facilitate a transition into the teaching profession. The results from this study can be used by mentoring/induction program directors, and school administrators to inform policy and curricular modifications to induction/mentoring programs that would optimize ACTs' perceptions of their effectiveness as teachers and student achievement. The use of these data may contribute to social change by providing the ACT with an improved support system during the ACTs' first year in the classroom.


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Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

April 8, 2016

[SOM #152]

We start off with my initial thoughts on coming back from the cinema. The first 16 minutes is relatively spoiler-free and Sharon asks me the following questions. Then we get to the rotten meat of the whole bloody affair.

Then there’s a considerably more positive ten minute piece from Eric Jones

Then we hit the main event and Bob Chipman joins myself, Sharon Shaw and Jerome McIntosh to discuss the film in a more meta context, including what DC Warner’s options are, moving forward.

00.00.30: First Impressions
00.40.00: A More Positive Response
00.56.00: The Main Event