The new library was rejected. Hell of bad. In another article, the fund we've built for it for the last ten years has been dissolved.
The measure expanding the use of industrial zones got passed. In the words of Mama Pratt, "big-box retailers are drooling as we speak, and I guarantee you their attorneys are in town today."
The Evil Jennifers got elected, one for selectman and one for school board. These are the ones who got mad that the high school runs a women's history course even though "geography of sports" got cut.

The situation in Merrimack is no good right now. I want to encourage everyone to keep voting- even if you don't live in Merrimack anymore, this IS your business! The kids need us. Haha.

An e-mail I got from my fabulous mom...useful for Merrimack kids who want to vote!

"In case you want to vote in the town voting thing for Merrimack:

The conservatives are campaigning to throw out the funding for the new library, might I add. Their reasoning is too stupid for words. But, yeah, here are some quotes from the town forum website:

"We don't need a new library. It's only for babysitting kids after school. The kids can get books from the school libraries. If I want to do research I can use the internet at home. I get all the stuff I need from the internet at home. The money belongs in my own pocket. The only people I see going in there are stay-at-home moms for Story Hour, and retired people. "<- Read: Only people with paying day jobs count, and of course those people are too cool to spend their time at a library........................(but we need an outlet mall)

"ABSENTEE BALLOTS
Absentee ballots are available from your town or city clerk 30 days prior to an election. Request the absentee ballot application from the clerk or submit a request in writing which should include your name, voting address, mailing address and your signature. Clerks may accept completed absentee ballots submitted in person until 5:00 p.m. the day before an election or until 5:00 p.m. on election day if received through the mail.

An application for an absentee ballot may be transmitted by facsimile to a town or city clerk"

Clerk: Dianne Trippett mailto:dtrippett@ci.merrimack.nh.us"

Does anyone remember Jay Hinch from high school? I remember he wanted to be a tattoo artist for a long time and I'm looking to get some work done. I can't settle on an artist and I'd like to find out if he ever ended up going through with that. Does anyone know, or know how I could get in touch with him to find out?

I threw out a bunch of old journal pages and didn’t think to shred them. Long story short, my mother knows every single thing I’ve ever thought or done that I never wanted her to know, and that is awful. Drug use, sexual activity, high school self hatred…all of it. And none of the good stuff! She said she didn’t tell my dad, and I believe her. I’d be so upset if he read those pages.

I guess this is good, because I do love my mom and I don’t like keeping secrets from her, so as much as it’s awkward and scary, I think in the long run it’s for the best. It made me think a lot about who I want to be for myself and who I want to be for other people. As much as deep down in myself I don’t regret the things I’ve done, I regret that my mother’s daughter has done those things. And while I’m aware that it would be silly for me to try and be perfect (and I don’t expect that of myself) and silly for my parents to expect me to be perfect (which they don’t) I feel that they deserve the perfect daughter. It can’t happen, but that’s what they deserve. So I’m going to try harder, for them, even though I’m okay with myself as is.

I guess it’s just made me think differently about my actions.

Some things that I ( like. )

The other night my roommate and I did a lot of talking about faith, and I know I've talked with a lot of you about being a Unitarian Universalist and how many people see it as not a "real religion." I thought it would be proper to post this now, it being the holidays, from W. F. Schultz.
Here's to you, and the holidays, and whatever crazy thing it is that made you and everything else happen.



Andrei Sakharov, the renowned Russian physicist, once asked his wife, Elena Bonner, “Do you know what I love most of all in life?” “I expected,” Bonner confided some years later to a friend, “that he would say something about a poem or a sonata or even about me. But no. Instead, he said, ‘The thing I love most in like is radio background emanation’” –the barely discernable radio waves which reach us here on earth from outer space and reflect unknown cosmic processes that ended billions of years ago.
What Sakharov meant of course was that he loved the mysteries that the cosmos hands us, the grandeur and immensity of this thing we call Creation. And he loved the fact that we human beings can occasionally get a glimpse of those mysteries and that grandeur, even the parts whose work was done billions of years ago.
Very few of us can ask the kind of sophisticated questions of the universe that Andrei Sakharov did. Even fewer have the opportunity to receive a hint of reply. But most of us at one time or another wonder about the ultimate questions of life: How did Time begin? Is there a God? Has life meaning? What is good? Why must we die?
These are fundamental religious questions. And most religions- at least in their orthodox varieties- believe they have the answers. Those orthodox answers may be framed in terms of Jesus Christ (Christianity), the law of the Covenant (Judaism), or the eight-fold path to enlightenment (Buddhism), to name but three.
Unitarian Universalism is different. We respect the answers offered by Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, and the world’s other great faith traditions- we even draw our inspiration and some of our forms of worship from those traditions- but we respect the mystery more. We believe, in other words, that no singe religion (or academic discipline, for that matter) has a monopoly on wisdom; that the answers to the great religious questions change from generation to generation; and that the ultimate truth about God and Creation, death, meaning, and the human spirit cannot be captured in a narrow statement of faith. The mystery itself is always greater than its name.
This, then, is why ours is a creedless faith and respect for others’ beliefs is a high value. We do not require our members to subscribe to a particular theology or set of affirmations in order to join our congregations. Instead, we encourage individuals to garner insights from all the world’s great faiths, as well as from Shakespeare and from science, from feminism and from feelings. We invite people to explore their spirituality in a responsible way. We ask Unitarian Universalists to cherish the earth, to free the oppressed, and to be grateful for life’s blessings. Out of this combination of reflection and experience, each one of us shapes a personal faith.

I just finished my final for my favorite class of the semester. It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, but I don’t care and I loved it and I’m hoping I’ll have another class that good some time in the near future. I’m hoping I can teach classes like it some day.
It’s weird, the two best classes I’ve taken have been education…this last one was Educational Issues in the Black Community. The first ed class I was in taught me a lot (my “lab” was working with first graders in Roxbury) but this one totally changed the way I look at the world. I know, it’s cliché, I don’t care. My professor was amazing and so were the other students. Wow. It was frustrating and awkward and tons of work, but I loved it even though I hated it.
I really hope everyone gets classes like this. If you aren’t, find one. I think it’s worth taking at least one ed class related to community as an elective at some point in college even if you don’t want to teach, just because some day you’re going to be a parent or an aunt or an uncle or something, and it’s going to help you to help that child (and their classmates) be the greatest. It also really helps to give you a new (more exciting) way to approach your own education. And it’s taught me more about society than any sociology, international relations, or politics class ever could.

( “notes” )

“Anyone who tells you what to do…you should be wary of them, because they are probably trying to oppress you.”

(Pee Ess, if you are at all interested in this kind of thing, check out “Teaching to Transgress” by bell hooks. She is great and so is this book, it talks a lot about everything that this course did. I have it and you’re welcome to borrow it if you like.)

The other day I saw an article on a band called Avenged Sevenfold and I was thinking to myself, "wow, what a terrible name for a band."

Today as I was doing research for a paper, I came across a brief mention of an indiginous Australian metal/hip-hop band called NoKTuRNL.

NoKTuRNL.

Damn.

SUNDAY!
boston thanksgiving!
ambria and i are going to cook tons of food all day and everyone is welcome to come eat it!
except crap dudes. no crap dudes allowed. dont bring crap dudes.
byob if you want to drink.
give a call: 6034945520

SisteRitaJ: hey
liz j pratt: 'allo?
SisteRitaJ: chop chop chop chop chop
liz j pratt: WHAT
liz j pratt: THE
liz j pratt: HELL
liz j pratt: MOM
SisteRitaJ: being a helicopter parent today------

"I love coming to Boston, because man, this is the drunkest town in the world. I have never seen a city drink more, as an entire city... I mean, have you ever woken up, as a city, and just been like 'Damn, what happened last night?"
-Jon Stewart

Memo to the guy on the other side of the cafe I am in: stop looking at me, your headphones are awkward.

New favorite movie: Crooklyn. See it.

A message from Professor Lowe: "All these old people are fucked up, and we gotta fix it!"

"there is no such thing as a neutral educational process. education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about comformity to it, or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." (shaull)

"this, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well." (freire)

Today my mother was shocked at the coincidence that the reporter covering the storms down south was named "Katrina Strikes."

There are bones on top of the computer screen- one is a bird sternum, and she doesn't remember what the other ones are.

Also, today we went to the Bureau of Hearings in Concord, and they had a handgun catalog and a hunting magazine for reading material. Rather than, you know, People and Reader's Digest.

OH, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

This has been the best summer ever and I am going to miss it (ear coning, people watching, learning about Taiwan, walking home while the sun comes up, pub nights, the park after work.) I also can't sleep because I am so excited for the fall (new classes, college kids back in town, foliage, quitting my job, my own apartment, UU group.)

I have been in this state for one week and it is time to go back to the city.

(Also, a girl from work is giving my her mattresses because she is moving to Russia. They are king size and I don't know what to do with such a huge bed. Adopt lots of puppies?)

Does anyone in NH have a Sony Trinitron TV? My awesome parents need to borrow your remote.

I know. Long story.