the back burner

Adding to my collection

So it seems I'm collecting bumper-sticker sayings from around Decatur. I spotted these three last night in the Target parking lot:

"Ankh if you love Isis."

"Question Gender"

And the ethically fascinating: "Harm No One, Do What Ye Will"

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Today I'm off to Tina's house, where I have a paint-splattered porch and overgrown yard awaiting me. Odd jobs r me, these days. :)

Egad.

Reading UK's Guardian today led to a startling discovery: "for the first time, annual UK sales of instant coffee have marginally eclipsed those of standard tea." What? How can a mere priod serve this rollicking monster of a statement? Surely they could have used an exclamation mark.

More from the article is below. I must now retire to my work, slowly digesting this news. It's not as though the British cuppa has actually fallen from grace -- drinkers still spend an enormous annual amount on tea -- it's just that one of my favourite stereotypes is suffering a little tarnish. (At the hands of instant coffee, no less.)

(from The Guardian, Simon Bowers reporting:)

Many tea packers privately concede this is just the latest milestone in a slow but resolute decline. Younger drinkers are switching to bottled water, fizzy pop and coffee, and when they do drink tea, they have come to expect to buy teabags at rock-bottom prices.

This month Premier Foods, which owns Typhoo, announced its tea sales in the first six months of the year were down 9%, and said this reflected a similar decline right across the mainstream tea market. Typhoo has quietly been put up for sale. Meanwhile the latest industry figures, also released this month, showed annual retail sales of standard tea (that is, non-premium teas) dropped 5.1% to £439.8m — for the first time falling a shade below those of standard instant coffee, up 4.1% at £439.9m.

Bill Gorman, director of the UK Tea Council, warns against sounding the death knell. Measured by volume, tea's popularity remains unrivalled. It still dominates what the packers refer to as "share of throat", with 165m cups drunk every day in Britain, about double our coffee consumption.

The amount of tea drunk in Britain has been steadily on the wane for decades, with most people in the industry putting the rate of decline at about 2% a year. Mr Gorman insists tea's "share of throat" is not being lost to coffee, despite the rapid proliferation of espresso bars. "There have been two big hits to the tea market," he says. "In the 1970s and 80s we lost out to fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, then a decade later we started losing sales to bottled water — particularly among women."

Nick Kilby, a director at Tetley, which is owned by the venerable Indian conglomerate Tata, is especially concerned about trends among younger drinkers. "People in their 20s are simply not drinking as much [tea] as older generations were when they were in their 20s. That's when people tend to make their choices — and they stick with them. Over the longer term, it could be quite a big issue." One thing all the packing groups agree on is that tea drinkers tend to fix on a brand and drink it in steadily increasing quantities as they get older.

Gomer Musings

good love doesn't fail
it just feels heavy sometimes
or stupid, uncomprehending, dense,
or hot, like iron to auger or to brand
the jealous mark upon my hide.

and who has the right to love like a millstone?
to love like the idiot, forgetful and slow?
to love like iron glowing white?
it's completely ridiculous.

who has the nerve
to love like this?

only you.

only you.

travel rearrangements

So. My parents are back in their Houston apartment. There doesn't seem to be anything amiss in Houston, since Rita turned northwards. Neighbors who stayed said they didn't even get much rain -- they were watering their lawns all weekend. So that's a bit anticlimactic.

My sister's just thankful she doesn't have school until Wednesday.

Our team's trip to Houston has been put off indefinitely. The 'rents are kicking around plans to do family Thanksgiving in Montana, where the brother is stationed. PERHAPS we will revisit Texas just before, so that I can fly up with them to see Jeff. But then what would my teammates do? Anyway, we will do something.

In other news, I will be in Michigan in mid-October. Woot!

Support has been stuck in a ditch, but with some effort on my part (and lots on God's), the ball has begun to roll out of the ditch and down the road. Pray for momentum. I'm picking up odd jobs around town in order to earn a little moolah, since my first paycheck has been delayed a month (result of the aformentioned ditch). And in-between times, I'll be calling and emailing & etc. Prayers would come in handy, not to mention a little accountability. ;)

CAN'T WAIT TO EAT!

So tonight I picked up some Pillsbury pizza-dough-in-a-can (think cinnamon rolls), unrolled it, brushed it with olive oil, and then topped it with chopped garlic, chopped pine nuts, basil, and chopped spinach. Then I rolled it up, sliced it into 12 slices, and popped them into the holes of a muffin tin.

400 F for twelve minutes, baby! Oh yeah! I can't wait.

Feminist, Pro-Choice, and Democrat

Sampling of bumper stickers from my little corner of Atlanta:
"Eve was framed."
"Don't pray in my schools and I won't think in your church."
"Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?"
"My kid reads your honor student's email."
"[Picture of Bush] American Errorist"
"Just say no to sex with pro-lifers."
"I'll consent to being post-feminist when I live in a post-patriarchal society."
"Love the one you're with."
"Agnes Scott College"

Hahaha. (Ok, ok, that last one is usually used in conjuction with some of the others.) How many times have I wished for a digital camera while on the road? Incidentally, these people must have really good jobs. They're always driving really nice cars.

Oh well. I guess I'm opinionated enough to fit right in, but somehow I still feel a little different. I think I wouldn't be so disgruntled if these bumper stickers were being used alongside stickers that say, "Every second another child dies from hunger-related illness," or "Care is never futile," or "Remember the poor," or "Buy used cars and spend your extra money on the third world instead of buying new cars on credit and using your extra money for stupid political bumper stickers that don't mean anything." Heck, I could even go for a little "Free Tibet." Is that too much to ask?

boo-boo

I bumped another driver tonight. Even though there was no damage, he wanted a police report. Even though it took a million light years for the po-po to arrive, he wanted a police report. Even though the officer tried really hard to TALK HIM OUT OF IT, he wanted a police report.

So I got a ticket.

And then my battery died. Atlanta police aren't allowed to give jumps, so we locked the car (the windows were down -- darn power windows!) and he drove us to McDonalds. In order to do this, he had to search us (hands on the car, please) and put us in the back of the car. What fun.

Kudos to William Akins, who is not afraid to give friends jumps, who is not afraid to drive the wrong way up the access road to get there, and who always carries jumper cables.

Lovely Rita

...is a hurricane. Here's a picture. Recognize the coastline? That's right, she's headed for Houston. So we're making a decision about whether or not to take this support-raising trip. Our bags are packed, but will there be anyone to meet down there? Should know in two hours.

scatterbrained

Today and yesterday, I:
*posted two packages
*bought azaleas
*found a place to stay in Baton Rouge
*coordinated Houston appointments
*nearly finished HP #6 -- still grieving Dumbledore's death
*bought car snacks
*watched John score 3 goals
*worked out
*made that cd for my sister
*multiples calls, multiple emails
*multiple decongestants
*multiple antihistimines
*multivitamins

Things I have yet to do:
*make scones
*clean car, inside and out
*read articles
*send more emails (of course)
*stay hydrated, take more drugs

OK, so what have I fogotten? I just want to take a nap.

quote of the day

"The Observer"

Completely protected on all sides
by volcanoes
a woman, darkhaired, in stained jeans
sleeps in central Africa.
In her dreams, her notebooks, still
private as maiden diaries,
the mountain gorillas move through their life term;
their gentleness survives
observation. Six bands of them
inhabit, with her, the wooded highland.
When I lay me down to sleep
unsheltered by any natural guardians
from the panicky life-cycle of my tribe
I wake in the old cellblock
observing the daily executions,
rehearsing the laws
I cannot subscribe to,
envying the pale gorilla-scented dawn
she wakes into, the stream where she washes her hair,
the camera-flash of her quiet
eye.

Adrienne Rich, 1968

Why is this funny?

So I'm sitting on the sofa re-reading Till We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis) and generally minding my own business, while Mike irons. Suddenly, he lays this one on me:

"How did Helen Keller burn her face? She answered the iron.

"How did she burn the other side of her face? They called back."

All guilt about laughing aside, I wonder how much there is to be said for slapstick. Hmmm.

more on employment and education

Ok, ok, gotta press the point. All this talk about employment and our education system (below, at Out of Egypt, and at Ranting to /dev/null:) has me thinking. What is an education supposed to accomplish, anyway?

I found a really impressive article by Professor Peter Scott, Kingston College, UK that seems to support an argument for the importance of value-formation in higher education. I recommend reading this article, since it encompassed a good deal more than that, but it might take you more than a few minutes. This makes me think of the inescapable Christian Mind reference: Arthur Holmes' Idea of a Christian College. Are these people just out to lunch, or is education about more than getting a good job?

the gorgon masterpiece

what followed
arrested all of us
reality emerging from behind the curtain:
Marie quietly retching,
all of us feeling the same.
and on and on the Speaker spoke
telling us what we had always known
somewhere, somehow,
but never acknowledged
we were reeling before he was done
and afterwards, stunning in our silence

so we sat there,
stupidly,
running into the wolves
a step closer with every word
funneled into our brains
and rolling slowly towards our comprehension,
hence the stunning quiet
as word, word, word dripped
into understanding growing,
knowing finally the truth:
that we ran an unacknowledged race
from predators towards cliffs of certain death.

every word peeled back
more of the great eyelid
and second skin
that was our imagination
and self-deceit,
peeling it back so that we clearly saw
this curtainless reality
and seeing,
braking through a perfect arc,
facing the pack and running again,
away from a future precipice
and towards the chasing jaws,
still running in our minds
and feeling as we left the room
a cold and knowing rain.

Obedience means...

picking up the phone and asking church leaders to focus on Europe when they are surrounded by hurricane refugees. Weird.

How to End Poverty (yeah right)

Carrie said: "It goes to further prove the endless cycle of poverty. Circumstances are always going to overtake you. If you don't have the tools to realize how you can break the cycle it will always overtake you. My heart breaks for those who truly had no way out."

Here's a tool checklist:
education
healthcare
access to lump sums
safety
job training

Carrie has a good point, but here's a question: are tools enough? We might add to this list, of course, but even if we have a perfect list, the question is still important. Is working for "tool availability" sufficient, or do we need to tackle environmental problems (like racism, social sins, oppression, etc.)?

Sometimes white people (often Reformed Christians) tend to say that all we need to do is to give people skills/tools/etc, relying on the poor to steward these gifts responsibly -- to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, as it were. In contrast, many minority groups tend to focus on creating opportunities for poor communities, assuming that poor folks already have unique skills and tools and only need someone to go to bat for them (lobbying for friendly legislation, networking for job opportunities, all that "environmental stuff").

Just thinking out loud...

From the Press: More Quotes

Here are two quotes, compiled along with others by the BBC online news service. The first is fascinating because of its source, and I would love to get my hands on the papers to which the second is responding.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, quoted in El Nacional:

"The rich were able to leave, the poor stayed there, and it is now that they are evacuating them, four, five days later. That is the model they want to sell us. Racial segregation - the mayor of New Orleans said it - is a question of social classes; the rich were able to leave, the poor were left, enduring the hurricane. It is capitalism, in its extreme individualist phase."

Robi Ronza in Italy's Il Giornale:

"Everything can be used in Europe to badmouth Bush, so it may be worth clarifying a few key points: New Orleans was below sea level even before drilling for oil began. Second, there is no certain proof that the increase in the mean global temperature is a consequence of the emission of so-called greenhouse gases. Finally, the federal government has no specific responsibility for the post-hurricane chaos."

Quote of the Day

"[stuff about false teachers]...who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. Now there is great gain in godliness WITH CONTENTMENT, for we brought nothing into this world, and we cannot take anything our of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. But as for you, o man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses."
(from 1 Timothy 6)

day labor

woke up this morning and I
washed my sheets and I
made my bed and I
called my mom
all before 10 am.

I went runnin early
felt the dyin breath
of summer on my face
and a stray dog kept my pace.

plans fell through the floor I was
crawling through the wires I was
callin out for more,
busy lookin for the backdoor.

somehow I feel new clouds are rollin in
suddenly lookin back over my past sins
and I never thought I'd see the day when
I'd laugh away the urge to find you again.

shooting clays

rattle rattle.
rattle crack shick-a-shunk crack.
rattle shunk click.
rattle shuck click.
ready? throw.
shiiink swish
...
(silence, everyone holding their breath)
...
BOOM crack exhale shick-a-shunk crack.
shuffle. chuckle. smile.

gut reaction (from oldacousin's blog)

GOGOGOGOGO! It was all I could think about last December, when tsunami news hit the radio, and it's all I can think about now. (Come to think of it, there's an answer for the people who keep asking me why I am so dead set on missions... hmmm. Not very rational, though. More visceral.) How does a single person NOT uproot themselves and move to where the hurt is? Bah. Like you and everyone else (even the barefoot elf, I imagine), I have responsibilities and callings to the places and tasks in front of me. That leaves me always being ready to pray and go, but also always being ready to pray and stay.

The first is my gut reaction, but the second (and harder of the two) is what I will do. You're right to be shocked. In addition to the violence, here are other issues that have erupted in the wake of Katrina:

Racism (in social structure, in relief structures, in city management, in journalism)

Government responsibility (funding decisions, response times, preparedness)

Humanity (depravity of, resilience of, nobility of, squalor of)

International relations (American awareness of what natural disasters are like, lack of international aid to America, disaster comparisons, etc.)

Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Wish I were there. :(