give.

for anyone who's looking for a gift idea for me, i'd love this:


and it's a double gift--something i'd love to listen to and support for NPR. and we all know i'm an NPR junkie.

brilliant.

i've been working. in the library. all day. 8 hours in the same seat with a short break after 5 of them for some food. and the thing that's kept me sane is public radio. which is completely unsurprising given my addiction to it. mostly i've been listening to this american life. if you've never listened before, you should. you can listen to any episode for free online (which is what i've been doing). or you can download. or you can podcast for free.

do yourself a favor and listen to act v. the first time i heard it was one friday night when i left home on a 15 minute errand to the grocery store for the requisite i'm-home-alone-on-a-friday-and-i'd-rather-not-be ice cream. i was so engrossed within the five minutes it took to get to the grocery store that i sat in my car and listened for nearly an hour so i wouldn't miss the few minutes it would take to run in and get my ice cream. it's that good.

{if you want other suggestions for wonderful episodes, leave a comment.}

junkie.
i am addicted to npr. or public radio, if you'd rather be generic (i do, after all, love some non-npr programs--this american life and the world, for instance). every single morning i wake up to one of l.a.'s two public radio stations. and i generally listen for at least half an hour before i drag my body out of bed. then there's the listening while getting ready in the morning. and the listening while driving every time i drive anywhere. and the listening while cleaning. any day without a healthy dose of public radio is just incomplete.

like i said: i'm addicted. and here's why. this morning's dose included the following:

strikes in france in response to sarkozy's efforts at labor reform.

the status of the new u.s. command in africa, with an account of china's burgeoning influence there. which highlighted yet again the way in which limited natural resources dictate foreign policy.

the ongoing debate over bush's veto of the recent schip bill.

the u.s. (non-)response to iraqi refugees.

just a sampling of the various u.s. and world news stories, covered with npr's usual evenhandedness. but that's not all. i also got:

an account of the hannah montana phenomenon ($2000 for a ticket to a hannah montana concert?! crazy parents and damn scalpers).

a report on anthropological discoveries of evidence of human civilization from 160,000 years ago.

in other words, interesting stories about culture and society in all their incarnations. and that's not all. npr coverage is eclectic and interesting and intelligent.

now i realize i could get most of these stories elsewhere. but internet news irritates me. too many banner ads, too much visual distraction, and most of it is poorly written. television news is a travesty of playing to the audience and mindless repetition. and other radio news just gives me a headache with all its bells and whistles and grating newscaster voices. plus none of them give me the other stories npr gave me this morning:

the woman arrested by her cop-neighbor because, when her toilet backed up, she cursed in her own home. never fear--the aclu has taken up her cause asserting a constitutional right to curse in one's own home. hilarious. especially when you stop to wonder what the hell went through that neighbor's head. all i can assume is there was a pre-existing tension; because really--how could you arrest your neighbor for swearing in her own home and not realize it is not a neighborly thing to do? not to mention the ridiculousness of turning cursing in one's own home into a constitutional matter (it is constitutionally protected speech, but did we really need to involve the law in order to determine that?).

and (my favorite) the woman who was minding her own business, washing her hands in her bathroom, when a 7-foot python popped its head out of the toilet next to her. she screamed. then called the plumber (the plumber?!) to take care of the problem. apparently the plumber helped her out, but i can't help but wonder about that. do all plumbers have to deal with large reptiles showing up in toilets? or is that just a new york city phenomenon? is there special training plumbers get for how to deal with large, potentially dangerous sewer critters? and how exactly does one extract a 7-foot python from the plumbing through a toilet?

and now you know why i'm addicted to npr. wouldn't your day be better, too, if it started with hearing such stories?

barriers.
today i bought myself lunch. two pieces of pepperoni pizza and a drink from ray's for five bucks. i love ray's pizza. and i didn't feel much like making myself lunch. so i bought it and ate it while sitting in my car listing to PRI's news show "the world."

and while eating my $5 lunch, i heard this story about liberia's market women. in a nation with an 85% unemployment rate, these women are one small economic bright spot. working 12 hours a day, six days a week, they earn enough to support their families. and they're petitioning their relatively new president ellen johnson-sirleaf for help in improving the condition of their markets. so they don't have to work next to mounds of garbage. so they have bathrooms. so they don't have to work in waist-deep water during the rainy season. on a really good day they earn as much as 1,500 liberian dollars--the equivalent of 30 u.s. dollars (more than a school teacher earns in a month). one of the women they interviewed, who is saving money so she can put herself through college, got her start with just $5. when i heard that, i couldn't help feeling a twinge of guilt that my $5 could have helped a woman in liberia start on the road to self-sufficiency, rather than being used to facilitate my laziness.

tonight on my way home from fhe, i was listening to talk of the nation (more NPR?! what a surprise!). tonight they rebroadcast one of today's earlier shows--neal conan interviewing author ayaan hirsi ali, a somali-born former member of the dutch parliament. she's just published infidel, an autobiography of her childhood and youth in somalia, saudi arabia, ethiopia and kenya and her flight to the netherlands for political asylum. a victim of genital mutilation herself, she was asked by a listener why she (and others like her who oppose the practice of female "circumcision" or genital mutilation) do not make more of a concrete effort to change the practice. her response was that with 140 million women mutilated in this manner--one little girl every ten seconds--it would be "delusional" for an individual to believe that she could change this practice.

i sympathize with that sentiment. i often find myself feeling distressed by the prevalence of sorrow and trouble in this world and feeling frustrated that there seems to be nothing that i can do to change it. and to hear this woman--a woman who explains living with death threats as akin to living with a terminal chronic disease that could take your life tomorrow or next year or in ten minutes; a woman who has been named by time magazine one of the 100 most influential people in the world--to hear her proclaim delusional the idea that an individual can make a change in the face of such odds confirms the way i feel. but it bothers me. immensely. because i believe very deeply that if each of us would take our gifts and use them fully, if we would put to work even some of our surplus in order to make our own worlds a more beautiful place, then we could truly change our world. i think of muhammad yunus and the micro loans his bank extends which have changed the lives of millions of people who were able to get loans through the grameen bank when they couldn't get financing anywhere else. and i disagree. it is not delusional to think that one person can change the world. perhaps they cannot completely solve a given problem, but no problem is solved in isolation; they are only solved in process and in context.

if i made myself a tuna sandwich and gave my $5 to a woman in liberia, her life would change and with it the lives of her children and their children. the real problem is not whether individuals can change their world; the real problem is how do i get my $5 to that woman in liberia who could set up a market business with it? our problem is not ability to change, but rather isolation. boxed up in my world of fast food and materialism and luxury, i can't help someone in need. it is only when we find ways to break the barriers of our confined and anesthetized worlds that we can make a difference--if only for one or two or five people. so how do we break those barriers?

entitled.
i was listening to NPR tonight (surprise, surprise) and they reported that vice-president dick cheney has asked (too passive) or demanded (too aggressive) or ordered (too militant; you take your pick of verbs) that his televisions be pre-programmed to fox news when he checks into a hotel room while traveling. i was horrified. not because i find fox news repugnant in every possible way. but because of the presumptuousness of demanding that a television be pre-programmed. we couldn't ask our esteemd vice-president to take five minutes and find the damn station for himself, now could we. it smacks of the kind of snobbery that leaves me disillusioned with the world. and it makes me feel better about disliking cheney (not that i needed more reasons...).

found.
more treasures.

indulge.

• chocolate. there are many reasons randi is my best friend. this week, she confirmed several of them by sending me a box of assorted chocolates from l'artisan du chocolate, a london-based chocolatier. a small box full of twenty assorted chocolates. some pure chocolate ganaches made from cocao beans grown in different areas of the world. some ganaches infused with spices, herbs, flowers, or fruites. all delicious. if you like chocolate, really like chocolate, you should indulge sometime.

salad.

• chicken. i'm not a big one for chicken salad. never have been. but about four years ago, my two sisters, my mom and i went on our first girl trip--a driving tour of new england. we spent a night in portsmouth, new hampshire, before driving up the coast into main. in portsmouth, we discovered a little deli called bell pepper at which we found a chicken gorgonzola salad. it was so good that as we drove back south to boston, we pulled off the road in portsmouth to stop and buy it again. chicken, penne pasta, gorgonzola, celery, walnuts, red grapes, onion (red or green), and a blue cheesy dressing. it's delicious. my mama made it this week (we improvise based on the list of ingredients the guy gave us when we bought it the second time) and i rediscovered exactly how lovely it is.

listen.

• haley bonar. i downloaded her album "...the size of planets" and have fallen in love with it. a bit folksy, a bit alternative. gorgeous voice. if you want women singer-songwriters, some others i've recently discovered (although not this week) include nina nastasia, regina spektor, deb talan, ida, hem, and jenny lewis. some of them use male vocals, too, but they're all driven by women. and check out the innocence mission. good stuff that.
• faith. on the radio. NPR to be exact. i've been listening to speaking of faith for a long time. today's program was interesting--an interview with paraplegic matthew sanford who has become an expert yoga instructor and author. all about the mind-body connection. the show takes widely varied approaches to faith and features an impressive group of religious and philosophical personalities. it's worth a listen. on kpcc 89.3 at 4:00 on sunday afternoons.
  

routine.
somewhere between 6 and 7, the alarm goes off (sometimes this happens as early as 4:30 or 5; never after 8). i can't sleep later than about 7:30 or 8. the alarm is set to NPR (i'm a junkie)--morning edition. so i wake to news. sometimes i stayed up too late the night before so i kind of drift in and out of sleep with NPR playing in the background. this makes for fabulous dreams in which i believe i am building an eco-friendly house or am in a board meeting discussing the sale of a company. it's kind of a lovely way to wake up.

once i am awake rather than drifting in a sleepy haze through the virtual world of NPR, i generally laze around in bed for half an hour. guilty pleasure. to simply lie there all cozy warm in my bed (which i love!). plus i get to hear the news, without which my day is crappy (see above indication that i'm a junkie). then i do one of three things: 1. turn off the radio and read before getting up; if i do this, it's cause i'm reading something either fictional or for no reason other than pleasure; 2. listen to radio while checking email, blogs, etc., etc.; or 3. i get up. which sets in motion the following: stare at my closet to determine what i will wear that day (sometimes this happens while lazing in bed; and this is occasionally a much more difficult process than it should be); assemble clothing for day; shower; moisturize face and style hair to the accompaniment of more NPR (bought a bathroom clock radio for this purpose).

i might eat. it kind of depends on whether my mom is around and how insistent she is that i eat before leaving. these days i usually read a bit or do the email cause i don't have to be anywhere til 10. which is when i show up at pam's house to work. pam is a lady i know who is blind and is working on her master's in english. i help her out. reading to her, looking stuff up online, cleaning the fridge out, running errands, finding show times and ticket prices, etc., etc. at some point she will offer me food. i usually accept unless i had an unusually large and late breakfast (thanks to my mama).

i wrap up at 2 and head off to do my own thing. which means read. or research. which are essentially the same thing. this generally happens in some cafe (my favorites these days are panera or kean) where i can get something to drink.

evenings are: monday eat and work; tuesday eat and work or socialize; wednesday eat and institute; thursday eat and institute; friday eat and work or socialize or fry my brain in front of the boobtube.

you can see the glaring omissions. exercise. scripture study. enough time to work. the scripture study will change first. tonight i spent a lovely hour in the scriptures. it was enlightening. then maybe i can work on getting my body into shape. it's about damn time i reversed the slow upward creep of the scale. not to mention making it possible to hike seven miles without feeling like i'm going to keel over dead at the next step. completely untenable since next year i'm not only going on my usual week-long jaunt but also hoping to climb whitney.

with that, i think it's my bed time. 11:00. night.

cahier.
yesterday morning, i sat on my bed listening to NPR, and opened my new moleskine notebook. legend has it that moleskine notebooks were used by artists and poets and writers all through the 20th century, carried in pockets of van gogh and hemingway and picasso, traveling around the globe as the avant-garde found inspiration for their imaginings. probably the manufacturer of this incarnation of the moleskine has simply tapped into a beautiful marketing scheme, but these artists did in fact use pocket-sized notebooks. repositories for flashes of insight and skeletons of future works of genius.

there's something magical about a blank notebook or journal. empty pages, waiting to be filled. even when all that's inscribed there is ordinary, mundane bits of information, they tell a story of a life. and, in amongst the mundanities, there are bits and pieces of wisdom and brilliance and passion. sometimes insights of my own. sometimes those of others far more gifted than i, culled from the world around me as i wander museums and bookstores and the mall. yes. the mall. it's amazing where inspiration appears unbidden.

just as i finished unwrapping my black, grid-lined notebook with a pocket at the back to hold treasures, my mama walked into my room holding something in her hand, saying "i think i'll send these to madelyn." when she got closer, i saw that she was holding three or four old notebooks of mine--relics of my childhood interest in hello kitty. but also the ancestors of my continuing love of a blank book, ready to be filled with thoughts and ideas.