Many Zombie Moans Later

I'll spare you the graphic descriptions of how this cold runs (sorry!), but I'll also warn you in advance that today's post will probably be rather random.

First random thing

I read an article about Beads for Life, an organization that helps women in Uganda by providing a market for the paper bead jewelry they make.

I've been reading the section called "Stories that Inspire" and bawling into my kleenex. I'm glad they are doing this. But it's hard to sit in the middle of my comparatively rich and luxurious life and just read about it.

Over and over, I am reminded of the difference between wants and needs. Air, water, food, clothing, and shelter -- these are needs. The rest is toys and entertainment.

Next random thing

I avoid political discussions on this blog mostly because I don't really feel competent to discuss them. I'm not good at responding on the spot. When someone whacks me with a statistic, I tend to want to research it instead of shouting back refutations.

But here I am, living in Michigan, one of the two states that shot themselves in their feet with extra-early primaries.

From my perspective, it went like this: the state wanted more attention from the candidates, and thought it could get it by having an earlier primary and not being lost in the crush of later ones.

Result: many candidates skipped Michigan entirely. Since the candidates weren't here, neither were the news media. So final result, not more attention but less.

Additional result, since party rules were broken by the early primary, the Democratic party refuses to seat the Michigan delegates. So instead of more attention and more influence, Michigan ends up with less, and in my view, looks incredibly foolish in the news.

"Do-over"?

"Do-over" is something from the grade-school playground. When did all the grown-ups in politics go missing?

Next random thing

It's been very interesting to read the responses on creativity. A couple of years ago I was fortunate to go through Julia Cameron's Artist's Way with an online group. It was fascinating to explore my own attitudes about creativity, and "Who is an artist?"

Really, I think everyone, all humans, have creative urges. If you watch a little kid playing, you can see those urges at work, whether it's your child or not. What happens after that?

What happens to a lot of us is that we absorb things like artist = flaky, or artist = starving. We run into the art vs. craft debate. Maybe we laughingly run down someone else's creative efforts.

But when we do that, we end up short-circuiting our own creative urges. If we don't want to be flaky or starving, or expose our work to scathing criticism, maybe we end up not working on it at all. Or protecting it by "just following a pattern -- I'm not really what you'd call creative."

I guess I'm trying to say it's hard to feel safe and be creative.

Friday Snow

Tulip Leaves

The last time I saw these tulip leaves was back when it thawed in January, then very briefly earlier in March before it snowed again. Today it was raining and I wanted to get a shot of them before the rain completely melted the last of the snow that hid them all these months.

The rain finally let up enough so I could go out and take a picture without drowning my camera. When I got out there, some lavendar crocuses were up.

I guess it's spring, as my knitting mojo has gone out the window lately. Either spring or the cold.

Watch this space -- you'll be the second to know when it comes wandering back.