Author: Becky

Random

1. Today I can’t seem to stop watching what’s going on in Cairo and Alexandria via Al Jazeera. Apparently, this revolution will be televised. I can’t say I have any great understanding of the political situation in Egypt; here are the things that have interested me.

  • The Internet can be shut down, but with a press still able to give us reports through journalists in the field and broadcasters, the world gets news. And even without access to the Internet, Egyptians still manage to assemble to protest. They’re driving between towns and using their phones to organize, and even when there are no clear leaders, they aren’t turning into mobs.

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  • The cooperation between the military and the protesters has shifted the atmosphere from violence to orderly protest. I hope that continues.  Meanwhile, average citizens have stepped in where the police have failed to try to return normalcy and security to neighborhoods (there is looting of and damage to businesses).

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  • Regular citizens are linking arms to repel intruders who would loot and destroy cultural treasures inside museums. It’s moving to see their determination to honor and protect their country’s heritage.

2. It’s 34 degrees here and I still won’t get any sympathy because it’s so much colder/icier/snowier everywhere else.

3. Does anyone else think Lauren Conrad and Kate Middleton look like each other?


Lauren Conrad, Reality Princess Past – Kate Middleton, Real Princess Future

4. The Google Art Project is great! Today I’ve taken virtual tours of the Tate and National Gallery in London.

Magnetic Poetry 365: 31

I was composing a lengthy post inspired by an article linked by Jeffrey Ricker, when a couple of bad keystrokes cost me all but the paragraph I was working on–and nothing I could do would bring back my words. Over two hours of writing and research gone.

So, hey. Here’s today’s poem. Though even this mode of writing doesn’t always work out. The other day I picked up my poem to take it outside so I could photograph it, hit the door frame with the board, and all my magnets went flying into the great wide open. I still don’t know if I put the poem back together right or lost a few words in the process.

Confidential to …

Don’t take the silence personally. We simply disagree so profoundly about big things that discussing them is a waste of our energy. I stopped debating years ago. If I have opinions that can be changed, they won’t be changed by argument, but by my intellect and emotion applied to my own life experiences–which is how those opinions were formed in the first place.

Life is short. Use it well and enjoy it!

Another beautiful day like this one…

It was a day this beautiful–clear and sunny in Tuscaloosa–on this date in 1986. I drove from That Other City where I’d been living, followed by Mr. Category 3 in his car. Both of our cars were full of my possessions because I was moving back to my favorite town–into the brownstone with the giant flying palmetto bugs where I was still living when I met Tom, so there were lots of good things in store for me, though it didn’t feel like it that day.

We got out of our cars behind ten Hoor Hall, where I was scheduled to teach, and Category 3 said, “Were you listening to the news?” I hadn’t been, and he told me about the Challenger breaking up after liftoff. I met with my students long enough to cancel classes that day, then he and I went to a barbecue place on the Strip–its name will come back to me in the middle of the night–because they had TVs there. That’s the day I fell in love with ABC’s Peter Jennings because he was so calming as he delivered information as it came in.

It was an awful day. I would eventually meet people who would tell me first-hand what it was like to be employed on January 28, 1986, by companies that helped build the shuttles, the SRBs, and the external fuel tank. I was working on a NASA team at Redstone Arsenal on September 29, 1988, when Discovery took the U.S. back into space. It was amazing to watch the launch with people who were so invested in its success.

Here’s my button from the Discovery launch: