My dear, wonderful friends

This season has been very hard for many of my closest friends.  Family crisis, health issues, heartbreak -- these things and more are being faced with grace and strength and bravery.
May I support them and offer all that I have to them!
May they have joy and hope today and the best of times tomorrow!

It's off to work I go

I'm getting ready to head off to my second job as a waitress.  It's a far cry from my week's desk work, and while I don't always relish the six-day work week, I do love the physicality of waiting tables.  

I also enjoy meeting so many people -- it puts me in contact with a huge range of people that I'd never encounter so directly anywhere else.  

And there's something so basic about serving people food and drink.  Maybe it sounds funny, but I think there's honor in serving something vital to life (even if it's a biiiig stretch calling hipster mac-n-cheese and high-end meatloaf "vital to life").

I am the Walrus

NEW YORK TIMES

SCIENCE / ENVIRONMENT

Walruses Suffer Substantial Losses as Sea Ice Erodes

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: October 3, 2009

Half a century after they began recovering from industrial-scale hunting, walruses are facing a new threat.

Alicia de Larrocha

I've been watching, listening to various YouTube posts.  She was an incredible artist.
Here's a killer performance of De Falla's Danse rituelle du feu.  I especially love the shots of her eyes, widening and narrowing as she listens and plays.  She's so focused, and the music so intense!

And here's the first movement of the Schumann Fantasy Op.17, played with such emotional direction and color that it warms you like sunlight.

I'm so thankful for her music.  I hope her family is doing well, and can be comforted knowing that she brought beauty to so many people.

Overcoming inertia

Greg Wood/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Obama and Mr. Hu on Warming

Of more than 100 world leaders who gathered Tuesday at the United Nations for a summit meeting on climate change, two mattered most: Barack Obama and China’s president, Hu Jintao. Together their countries produce 40 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Together they can lead the way to an effective global response to this clear global threat. Or together they can mess things up royally.

Yes, and while world leaders meet in New York's perfect fall air, Australia is covered in the worst dust storms of the last 70 years.

Glorious, Beautiful, Awesome

From the 2009 Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest:

Thomas Davis (USA): Eta Carina Nebula (Highly Commended)

Nik Szymanek (UK): Milky Way (Highly Commended) 

You can see more award-winning, glorious and awesome photos here.

Oh, the yearnin

Man, this whole health and lack-of-health has magnified my usual sense of "what am i doing???"
I yearn, I crave, I search for a greater sense of purpose.  Isn't that familiar to almost everyone?  Is it human to want to know why you're here and what you're supposed to be doing?

I'm always drawn to people who project this quality, this ability to articulate and pursue purpose with great passion.  Maybe it'll rub off!  Maybe I'll learn by example.

I do learn, to some extent.  Most people who pursue their passions are driven by an ongoing sense of yearning -- they're not content with just success today, but want to know the what and why of it all tomorrow and far into the future.

What do I want?  What is my true path?

The Koran opens with a call to God, Lord of all Worlds, asking that God Show us the straight way.


The Lord's Prayer asks that God lead us not into temptation.

And so I appeal: Let my eyes and my heart be open, let me follow my path, Your path, love others and become more fully my truest self.  Let me be who I truly want to be!


On India's Railways, Women Find New Peace in Commute