time for a laugh

There's an old joke, I just made up
How many of me would it take to screw up your life?

- Ben Folds, Kalamazoo

Who knew he was such a deep thinker?

Merry Christmas.

i-d-i-o-s-y-n-c-r-a-t-i-c

Tests, schmests

Finals are upon us, so there is not much time for anything but studying, procrastinating, eating, and ignoring responsibility. It's a tough time for everyone, I think, but as you try to survive the next couple weeks, just remember one thing - you're not alone.

Live art

Artist: Alexa Meade
Paint: acrylic
Subjects: real people covered in acrylic paint

Go here to learn more about the artist:
http://www.alexameade.com/portfolio.html

True love...

So...Holly Timm + Troy Stogsdill = engaged!

They love each other almost as much as those
two Oktapodi love each other. They couldn't be happier
and their family and friends couldn't be happier for them.

Congratulations, you two!

Just use the stairs

Um...yeah, this is really super cool.

It's coming...

...so close...

Go here, too:

http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/harrypotterandthedeathlyhallows/index.html

Also, happy birthday to this girl tomorrow, she'll be 18! She's growing up so quickly.

Bon Iver

One of the best things about life is when people
tell me about music I've never heard of and it turns
out to be really great.

Dancing Under the Gallows

Alice Herz-Sommer. Concert pianist. 107 years old. Oldest Holocaust
survivor in the world. Theresienstadt Terezin concentration camp.



"Put as much as you can into your heads because that is something nobody can take away from you...you can actually have music in your head without anyone knowing it is happening. You can actually go into another world, which is a lot nicer than the world we're actually living in."

"I never hated, I never hate. Hatred brings only hatred...I was born with a very, very good optimist and this helps you. When you are optimistic, when you are not complaining, when you look at the good side of our life, everybody loves you. Only when we are so old, only, we are aware of the beauty of life."

Baile de manos

Watch and be amazed.

Get out of my head

What happens when Dracula has insomnia?

He gets a sunburn.

It's finally getting cold

I feel so bad for my brother, Jeff. He studies his heart out every day and he has to do it in this prison hole of a library. How does he survive?

If you want to see some awesome pictures of dust storms in Australia, submarines breaking through ice, how Vladimir Putin relaxes and upside down whales, go to Time.com and look at the Year in Pictures photos. Cool stuff.

The Falling Man

WARNING: This video is extremely sad. I just watched it in my Rhetoric of Violent Images class and it made more than one of us cry. But it's really powerful and it's a film people should see, so if you have some time, watch it.

It shows an aspect of what happened on September 11 that not many are aware of because the media and the country chose to exclude the horrifying details of this hidden story when many expressed outrage at its awfulness.

It didn't really give Americans a fair chance to understand what little we could about this part of the immense terror the people in the World Trade Center must have felt - enough terror to jump to their deaths a thousand feet below and become one of many "falling" people.



None of us will ever really fathom the magnitude of a situation like this since we weren't there, but the video gives a little insight into what it was like and lets us put ourselves in their position.

What would you have done? Waited bravely, albeit terrified, for the smoke and the flames to engulf you, or taken control of your last moments in a gut-wrenching instant of courage and spirit?

Zuckerberg the Philanthropist

I think it'd be very interesting to sit down and have lunch with this guy.

Zuckerberg the Philanthropist
The New Yorker

Posted by Jose Antonio Vargas

“What makes Mark tick?” is the most common question coming from readers of my Profile of Facebook’s C.E.O, Mark Zuckerberg. After that, they ask, via e-mail, tweets, Facebook messages, and a live chat last week, versions of “What will Mark do with all that money?”

Apparently, Mark will give a lot of it away. Wednesday night, the New York Times broke the story that the Facebook co-founder, in his first public act of philanthropy, will donate $100 million to the Newark Public Schools—one-eighth of its annual operating budget.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/09/zuckerberg-the-philanthropist.html#ixzz10bkoTgLn

Also, check out The Face of Facebook, a really interesting profile about the man himself. Good read.

chilling effect

I'm going on one of these someday. To the Arctic Ocean, preferably.

Coming with?

a few things

One:

Best of Austin City Limits Music Festival 2009: Andrew Bird: Not a Robot But a Ghost

Two:

Andrew Bird - Oh no (Live at 89.3 The Current)


I wish I could use my minimal violin, singing, and whistling skills as proficiently as this Northwestern University grad (violin performance, 1996). Isn't it amazing how he turned the nerdiness of being a music major into fame and fantastic creativeness?

Andrew Bird, everyone.

yesterday

Happy Birthday, mom!

You are great.

*photo by Kristin Campbell

Nine years

St. Paul's Chapel

It stood. Not a window broken. Not a stone dislodged.
It stood when nothing else did.
It stood when terrorists brought September down.
It stood among myths. It stood among ruins.

To stand was its purpose, long lines prove that.
It stands, and around it now, a shrine of letters,
poems, acrostics, litter of the heart.
It is the standing people want:
To grieve, serve and tend
celebrate the lasting stone of St. Paul's Chapel.

And deep into its thick breath, the largest banner
fittingly from Oklahoma climbs heavenward
with hands as stars, hands as stripes, hands as a flag
and a rescuer reaches for a stuffed toy
to collect a touch;
and George Washington's pew doesn't go unused.

Charity fills a hole or two.

It stood in place of other sorts.
It stood when nothing else could.
The great had fallen, as the brute hardware came down.
It stood.

- A poem by J. Chester Johnson

In March, I went to New York City with my mom and my grandma. After looking at Ground Zero from the upper floors of the Hilton across the street and having my mind blown by how enormous the site actually is, we stopped by the church next door, St. Paul's Chapel.

This little church is Manhattan's oldest public building, opened in 1766, a place where George Washington came to worship and where 9/11 firefighters, volunteers and victims sought refuge, care and healing because it was still standing after the World Trade Center towers collapsed in explosion, fire and terror just right across the street. The churchyard and church were full of debris and dust, but no windows were broken, no stones displaced; it was untouched.

This small inconspicuous chapel is full of memorials to those who died that day - art, photography, writing and love. It's where I found the poem above, printed on a card for visitors, paying a beautiful tribute to September 11, 2001.

Music

Andrew told me to look this up. And for good reason. Prepare to be impressed.

Buy me last pape, miss?

"News is something someone, somewhere doesn't want you to print. The rest is advertising." -Anonymous, someone of importance

"News is the first rough draft of history." -Benjamin Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post, 1968-1991

"Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive." -GK Chesterton, English writer

"Yesterday's newspaper is used to wrap fish and yesterday's broadcast does not exist at all." -Martin Mayer, American writer

Someday I will...

fill up a library like these with my grand collection of books and spend unhealthy amounts of time in there hiding and reading.

I want to ride my bicycle

Wanna see how cool my brothers are?

Red Skelton

Red Skelton was one of many great American comedians when my mom was growing up and she showed this to me today. I love what he says here about the pledge of allegiance. Take a look...



I wish this kind of eloquence was more common these days.

Just take a look at this

My dad showed me this article in the Deseret News today. It's extremely weird and very ironic that something we were working to prevent in Thailand has actually been happening in our own backyard for almost half of my life. Read.

A story of modern slavery in Utah

Thais tricked, trapped and imported here to be slaves

Published: Sunday, Aug. 15, 2010 1:01 a.m. MDT

By Lee Davidson, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — Chan, a short man but strong from a lifetime of labor in rice fields, tells how he blundered into a trap when he left Thailand to work abroad. In fact, the U.S. government officially calls him, in diplomatic parlance, a victim of "human trafficking."

Chan is more blunt. "We were slaves," he says about himself and scores of fellow Thai workers.

He says their employer controlled their movement. If they failed to work long and hard, the employer could ensure that their families back home would lose everything. Housing lacked enough heat in freezing winters and air conditioning in scorching summers. They repeatedly went hungry and even trapped wild birds to subsist.

That did not occur in Sudan, Burma or some other infamous Third World slavery abyss.

It happened in Utah — from 2005 to 2007 for a group of workers from Thailand who eventually managed to get help, freedom and a new life in America.

With their experiences as a starting base, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating what could become the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history.

At the center of scrutiny is Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based company that recruited people in Thailand for farm work in the United States. It eventually placed some of them with two Utah companies: Circle Four pig farms in Milford and at Delta Eggs chicken farms in Delta.

Chan, Bon, Tin and Rong — all pseudonyms because they and their lawyer fear extended families in Thailand could be targeted because they are talking to the press — look like Americans now.

The skinny men wear polo shirts or T-shirts, blue jeans and sneakers. Their haircuts are American-style. They grin as they talk about America and its opportunities, sounding like politicians on the Fourth of July. One of their T-shirts even says "American Tradition" and has an eagle on it. Tin just came from a job interview in the land of opportunity.

They share their stories while seated around a polished conference table at Utah Legal Services, a nonprofit that gives legal aid to the poor. They say that agency and attorney Alex McBean rescued them and won them "T visas" from the Department of Homeland Security as victims of human trafficking. Those visas allow them to stay in America and seek permanent residency.

The four tell how they were conned into what sounded like a good deal to work in America, only to land in modern slavery in Utah. They became victims of human trafficking even though each had worked abroad previously without problems on farms and in factories in such countries as Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Israel.

...

Read the rest of the article at http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700057024/A-story-of-modern-slavery-in-Utah.html?pg=1.

ประเทศไทย

"Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by

demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry,

and die, it can introduce the idea that if we

try and understand each other, we

may even become friends."

Maya Angelou

One year older

It was Rose's birthday yesterday! The big 21. Congratulations Rosemary! You're the best cousin a girl could ever ask for.

Big news

We are sad to report that we're no longer in Thailand. We overstayed our welcome and got kicked out. Actually, no that's not what happened. The bubonic plague broke out in Thailand so we got pulled out. Actually, that's not what happened either. The bubonic plague only broke out in Burma, I think.

The reason we're home is because last Wednesday we stepped onto an airplane that brought us from Chiang Rai all the way to Salt Lake City with a few stops in between.

So here we are. Back to the boring old life again with no ostrich riding, bamboo carrying, watchtower building activities to report. For now.

Adios, Thailand. Thanks for being good to us.

Yi sip et....the big 21

I'm slightly embarrassed that I forgot to do this three weeks ago, but...I guess it's better late than never. Holly turned 21 years old on June 21. The golden birthday!

Most of you know how great Holly is, but I would just like to say that living here in Thailand with her for the past two and a half months has been pretty fun. Like living with your best friend all the time. We haven't had any huge arguments yet, just small squabbles that sometimes make our friends here feel uncomfortable until they realize we aren't really mad at each other, just making our usual banter. More like siblings than anything else.

Anyway, Holly is great.

Happy Birthday, Holly!

The Bangkok

So...two weekends ago, we went to Bangkok with our country director, Pim, who's turning out to be a great friend. She grew up in Bangkok, was headed down there for a wedding, and was nice enough to let some of us tag along, stay with her family, and take us around the city for a couple days.

...welcome to Bangkok, the city where it takes an hour to drive 5 blocks...

...we rode bikes around the Ancient City, a park that has tons of replicas of all the cool places in Thailand...

...took a 50 cent boat ride down the river...

...ate extremely delicious seafood at a beach restaurant, watched the incredible sunset, and the most amazing lightening storm right inside of those clouds...

...sunrise on the way to the real beach at 5 in the morning...

...the real beach. pictures don't do it justice. we've never seen water so blue and trees so green...

Couple other things about Bangkok...

12 hour overnight bus ride to and from: definitely worth it.

Mont: quaint little restaurant that serves...get ready for it...toast! Toast with peanut butter, honey, pumpkin sauce, jelly, chocolate, sweet and condensed milk...you name it, they have it. It's fantastic.

Weekend market: so huge that a whole afternoon there only let us see two rows of the half a square mile that it covers.

Taxi rides: extremely memorable. especially the tuk tuk that broke down 3 minutes after we got in as he tried to drive up the highway ramp and the 30 minute taxi ride in a car with a broken muffler and broken radio that replayed the zombie song at least a thousand times.

Massages: Thai massages are legendary and we've had the privilege of finding out why. Twice. You have to get a Thai massage if you visit Bangkok, but when you do, make sure your massage person is really and actual woman rather than a ladyman (lady who's really a man...always look at the adam's apple...it's the telltale sign) or else your massage may end up being much more painful than you anticipate. (Holly can give you details about that)

Go to Bangkok. You won't forget it.

Same same...but different

Don't worry, we're still alive. Just lazy. Past two weeks have been somewhat crazy...

Teaching English...theme of the day: food. The kids are clearly spellbound.

Look at those windows...

We play their favorite game at the end of every class. Down by the banks. We added it up...we play it for about one hour total every Tuesday.

The Thailand Akha hill tribe village medical clinic we are helping build. All last week, we hauled tons of 30 foot long bamboo chutes from the jungle, and stones and sand from the river across that bridge to help build a medicinal sauna, bathroom, and shower for the clinic. Really, really exhausting work, but way better than being stuck inside packing medical supplies or teaching English. Not that we don't love both of those things...

We also taught them about adobe stoves since they all still cook over open fires in their homes. Once we told them what to do, the village members took over and built the foundation and sides of the stove within an hour. It's in the village town hall so it'll be a communal stove. Also, there are huge spiders in that town hall that almost gave me a heart attack.

Two little beggar boys we met as we hiked to a waterfall near the Akha village. See the 20 baht bills in their hands? First thing they said to us: "Hello, 10 baht. Hello, 10 baht."

They didn't manage to squeeze any money out of us, but we still got suckered into carrying them around. Can you blame us?