Entries Tagged 'Lifelong Learning' ↓

For better resolution click here.

 
As I wrote last Thursday, we made a lot of progress last week. The stems walls are now done and Joe plans to go up tomorrow to pack the dirt around the outside of the house as well as level and compact the dirt on the inside. He and his crew will also bend down the rebar and add more to prepare inside of the house for a concrete slab floor. (That area is covered at the moment to keep the ground from freezing.) He hopes to get approval from the building inspector Wednesday so he can, weather permitting, pour the slab the following week.

If the weather cooperates the Tuff Shed crew will start building the shed Tuesday. Again, whatever happens it should be interesting.

Hope things are going well with you. Kaitlin and Torben are coming tomorrow and will fly back Saturday Friday. Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?

 

 
Last Thursday and Friday the road to and from the mountains was closed by semi trucks that rolled over. A company from Colorado was hauling away cars destroyed by the Las Conchas fire last summer, and apparently some of the drivers weren’t used to hairpin turns. Out of four truckloads two made it, two did not. (Both drivers are fine.)

We weren’t affected by the 5+ hour closure Thursday because we went to Santa Fe. But Friday Andy was stopped shortly after the accident occurred. He waited about an hour, and when it was obvious he wouldn’t be allowed through for several more hours he decided to drive home the long way…a three-hour trip. It was raining but he decided if he had to do it over he would simply have parked the car and walked the 5-6 miles home. Not the least because he triggered the 7-pm rule. If he isn’t home by 7 pm and hasn’t called I’m supposed to organize a search party.

He had tried to phone but his cell-phone battery was dead. So when he arrived at about 7:30 I was on the porch waiting for Beate and Tim to pick me up to go up and start looking for him. (They’re our closest summertime neighbors up there. They’re still here because they took a sabbatical to replant and rebuild.)
 

Their new cabin, taken from our property.
 

Beate in their kitchen/living room.

 
Needless to say I wish they lived here full time. Some of the sweetest words I’ve ever heard was when Beate said, “It will take us 15 minutes to get there, but wait on the porch. We’re coming to pick you up.”

Have you ever had neighbors like that?

 
As I’ve mentioned before, Google and the internet has been invaluable the past few months. First to get information for documenting the value of our losses for insurance, more recently for getting information about materials for the new structure.

Now I’m done with that for a while and am curious about how effective the overhangs Steve (our architect/project coordinator) is proposing will be. Our first house was designed for passive solar, so we spent a lot of time looking at sun position and calculating how much sun would come in the windows in summer and winter. When I mentioned to Andy that I was going to try to do the same for the new design, he pointed out our solar book was one of the casualties of the fire. No problem, I said, I’ll bet I can find something on the internet.

Sure enough, a website called SunEarthTools.com not only has the formulas I need to calculate the sun position as a function of time for our latitude and longitude, it also does some of the calculations for me. I’ll still have to review some basic trigonometry when I take the overhangs into account, but the site will save me a lot of time. I do love the internet!

What about you?

The burned area is still closed to the general public because of the danger from flash flooding, falling rocks and trees, etc., but landowners have access as long as they have their key and signed paperwork with them. So Andy has to escort the contractor and workmen in and out every time they go up. (Yes, that is a nuisance!)

One morning a couple of weeks ago getting in took even longer than usual. The place was swarming with law enforcement officials, part of an interagency task force that included the National Park Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, a New Mexico State Police SWAT team, the New Mexico National Guard, the Santa Fe National Forest, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office, the Los Alamos Police and Fire Departments, and a Special Events and Tactic Team made up of park personnel from eight different states. So it wasn’t just a matter of opening the gate and going in, Andy had to show his paperwork and everyone had to show their identification.

Why? Because when a helicopter was flying over Bandelier National Monument to check for the effects of flash flooding, the the pilot saw a blue tarp on one of the rugged slopes. The people who went in to investigate found a sophisticated marijuana farm containing about 9000 plants with a street value estimated to be about $9 million. As far as I can tell they didn’t catch the people involved in spite of all their efforts. They did dismantle the farm and will be on the lookout for more drug growing in the future.

Again, who says life in the sticks is dull?

Are there any interesting stories from your neck of the woods?

иконописikoni

 
One thing I’ve tried to do in life is to get my ego out of the way, live my values and not worry about what other people think. I thought I was starting to learn how to do this, but a recent study implies it’s not a matter of experience, it’s that a part of my brain is starting to deteriorate. Whatever. That works for me too.

What about you? Do you find it easier to get your ego out of the way and to ignore the judgments of other people as you get older?

 
I took the background picture last Thursday afternoon after the snow storm. And early this morning, as the year switched to 2011, it was about zero degrees Fahrenheit outside. It only warmed up to about 20 during the day so it was a great time to stay inside and play with my computer.

Next Spring we will probably drive to see Kaitlin, Torben, Sammy, Boomer and Hass. In the past I would have used Microsoft Streets and Trips on a PC to compare various routes, but we’ve now switched to Macs. It turns out that’s not a problem, both MapQuest and Google Maps will do the job.
 
Here are the three routes Google Maps suggested (I superimposed them on the same image and added the driving times):
 

 
And here are the three routes MapQuest suggested:
 

No two suggested routes are the same and the estimated times aren’t that different, so we have a wide choice.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been playing with. What about you? Have you made any plans/played with any ideas for 2011?

cheerfulmonk. Creative Commons license.

Ursula recently commented that her son had been going door-to-door trying to collect money for Oxfam. I automatically assumed he was volunteering his time because he believed in the organization. Duh! (Hits head with palm of hand.) When Ursula pointed out he was getting paid to do it, it became clear I’m not a very fast learner.

Years ago, when I first went back to work after being a stay-at-home mom for 10 years, I still had a volunteer mentality. So when I got phone calls asking for donations for a good cause I thought, sure. The person phoning was volunteering his time and now that I was working I would contribute money. It felt right.

Unfortunately I started getting more and more calls…if I didn’t start saying no I would quickly go into debt. On top of that it finally dawned on me the people phoning weren’t volunteers, they were telemarketers. I had managed to get myself put on a suckers’ list.

So I adopted the attitude of the gal in the above cartoon…I told the next telemarketer that I never give to organizations that pester me over the phone. And miracles of miracles..the phone calls, from supposedly diverse organizations…immediately stopped.

I still give to some worthy causes, but never over the phone. What about you? Have you ever had an experience like that?

cheerfulmonk. Creative Commons license.

Last week we talked about the kite fiasco in Afghanistan. Other parts of that promotion involved handing out copies of the Afghan constitution as well as comic books about gender equality and the rule of law. I find it hard to believe that kids would be interested in reading the constitution, but comic books could work if they were done well. At least the kids were happy to snatch them up and the police weren’t interested at all…they just dumped them on the ground. There is no way of telling whether or not the comics had any effect.

A new comic/graphic novel in Indonesia entitled Ketika Nurani Bicara (When Conscience Speaks) may have a big impact, though. It was produced by Lazuardi Birru, a nonprofit group devoted to promoting pluralism and nonviolence. The book tells the true stories of three people involved in/affected by the 2002 Bali bombing:

• Ali Imron, the one bomber who had remorse after the bombing and was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of being executed,
• a woman whose husband was killed in the bombing, and
• a good Samaritan who helped rescue people.

In addition to telling the effect of the bombing on the victims and their families, the book explains how Ali was recruited, his part in the attack and his life after being arrested. The group spent over a year interviewing, writing and illustrating the book and decided on a graphic novel because they were aiming at 14- to 20-year-olds, and kids love comics.

For more information see the articles Fighting Terror Through Comics and/or Novel About Bali Bombing Spreads Message of Peace and Regret.

Or to get a feeling for the graphics click here to see a short video in Indonesian about the book.

I think it has a good chance of touching some hearts and changing some lives. What do you think?

Adjective: alive and kicking
1. Alive, vigorous and doing well
—WordWeb Online

To kick: (one definition) to protest strenuously or urgently : express grave discontent; complain

Mostly my husband and I don’t fuss about income tax. We don’t like the fact that only 55% of Americans pay taxes and that’s one reason we have to pay so much. And we often don’t like the way the government squanders our money, but mostly we figure it’s not worth wasting our time worrying about it.

But then I read an intriguing article in the Jakarta Globe entitled, India’s Osama Isn’t in the Mountains, But in the Corrupt Halls of Government. I think the author, Raj Gandhi, is correct that often the corruption and ineffectiveness of governments create the breeding ground for terrorism. (Although I don’t agree with him that the Commonwealth Games are enhancing India’s international image. ) Mr. Gandhi was talking about India, but his article made me realize my own tax dollars could not just be wasted, they could be doing actual harm by fueling corruption. Maybe I should behave a bit more responsibly and try to see that our foreign aid is going to the right people.

So I sent an e-mail to the White House about my concerns and phoned both of my senators. And I’m starting to search the internet for more information about the effectiveness of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the office that dispenses our economic and humanitarian aid.

The most interesting and useful information I found was this New York Times article on a USAID project in Afghanistan. To put it mildly, it didn’t work nearly as well as they hoped. The project was organized by a contractor named DPK, whose goal is to make the Afghan justice system fair and to get the people to use and believe in it. So what did they try and how did it (not) work? They tried to reach out to children by distributing

kites emblazoned with slogans lauding the rule of law and equality for women. The kites, along with copies of the Afghan Constitution and justice-themed comic books, would be gifts of the United States, part of a $35 million effort “to promote the use of Afghanistan’s formal justice system.”

The sight of the flying kites was supposed to instill hope in the people seeing them. Instead the police took over the job of distributing the kites and took most of them for themselves. The kids were a bit unruly so the police beat them with sticks when they got too close. Some boys did manage to obtain and fly a few of the kites, but even though there were a lot of girls around they mostly didn’t get kites. When one DPK staff member managed to give one of the girls a kite, the girl took it to show her father. He promptly took it away from her and gave it to her brother, saying, “He is my son and he should get the kite.”

The most interesting thing for me was the DPK project head actually called the event a success because 1000 kites were distributed in 20 minutes. Fortunately another DPK staff member was responsible for deciding if the event had met the true objectives…to change people’s attitude toward the law. He was much more discouraged.

What do you think?

Anyway, I will keep poking around and share any other good stories I find. This taxpayer isn’t wasting time complaining, but she’s definitely alive and kicking.

Are you concerned that the war on terrorism might erode/will erode/has eroded our civil liberties? An effective executive branch assumes more power in the case of war, and when governments have too much power it almost always leads to some abuse if there is no oversight/accountability. But in times of danger a weak government can’t protect its citizens. Do you think our/your government has a good balance between the two extremes?

On a related subject, do you think the U.S. should ban people from burning, or threatening to burn, the Qu’ran or other holy books?