Posting a Post

It's been forever (or honestly just too long for me to be pleased) since I actually finished and posted a blog post.

Democracy

Yesterday was the election -- ballots were cast, results were announced, and there was much rejoicing and/or weeping and gnashing of teeth. I have a lot of thoughts about the race, the president, and our ballot questions like 5 and 6 and 7, but I think those deserve a more thoughtful post and honestly I am mildly hesitant of topics that are such holy hand grenades so today I am just having E.B. White do all the work for me. I heard this earlier today and really liked it, Charlotte and Wilbur's creator originally wrote it during World War Two.

E.B.White's meaning of democracy:

    "We received a letter from the Writers' War Board the other day asking for a statement on "The Meaning of Democracy." It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure.

'56 Hungarian Revolution

... the flag with a hole in it

October 23rd is the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, so today I'm going to indulge my history-major-side. Junior year I did an Oral History project interviewing a man who fought in the 1956 uprising as a 15 years old. Part of why I find the Hungarian revolution so fascinating is I spent a summer with brilliant Hungarians, I adore Budapest, and my grandma's side of the family is Hungarian. But it's also fascinating because they were my age and even younger, because those two and a half weeks were epic, and because it's the type of story you hope will end well --even when you know the ending.

I hope it's more like a story and less like a term-paper,
because these people were amazing

In October 1956 Polish workers went on strike, an incredibly risky thing to do under a strict communist government. This inspired students at the Technological University of Budapest, they organized a simple protest walking along the Danube down to a statue of Bam - a Polish native and Hungarian hero who had fought in the 1848 revolution. The students created a list of 16 demands and as their protest grew and attracted more and more students and then workers and people from all over the city they went to the radio station to broadcast them.

Their demands were first off the removal of all Soviet troops from Hungary. Soviet forces had liberated Budapest and Hungary from Nazi forces at the end of World War Two. While it is a huge relief when someone gets rid of Nazis, it becomes worrisome when they immediately set up their own secret police in the same office building and people continue to disappear to the dungeons and death, with no sign that the troops have any plans on leaving it is not as acceptable.

The student's 16 demands listed free and legitimate elections open to all parties.

For the Love of Funny Alphabets

 This fall I'm taking Russian 101. Just for fun because I enjoy studying languages and have a slight obsession with funny alphabets. To be honest this is probably due to the fact that my real desire when-I-grow-up is to be Mara and overthrow evil-ancient-egyptian-pharaohesses by acting as a-double-spy-translator-bad-ass-chick-who-runs-around-bare-foot. Since these dreams of being an blue-eyed-ancient-egpytian-bi-lingual-secret-rebel will most likely never be a reality, I have to settle for attempting to be bi-lingual . . . or more actually jump at any chance to study a language that has a funny alphabet. Although I am miles away from fluent in anything but English, I very much enjoy my kindergarten-level-of-skill at sounding-letters-out-painfully-slow-to-attempt-to-read-words, because the fact that those foreign squiggles mean anything intelligible to me makes me happy.

Day of the Brave

The United Nations made October 11th international Day of the Girl, which is particularly fitting as the recent attacks on Malala has brought a more attention to the issues she has been writing about and fighting for since she was eleven. Because this girl so-freaking-amazing-awesome that she has been standing up to the taliban since she was barely double-digits-old. I pray and hope she and her classmate fully recover. It is impressive to see how powerful the ideas of this young lady are, that they're seen as a threat to the taliban. Malala is an epic example of what a dis-proportional-positive-effect educating girls provides for their community.

Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani blogger fighting for girls to be able to go to school 

the play is just a can of soup

... the audience is really the art

Last weekend we went to a see The Government Inspector at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Not Shakespeare but really good anyway). This play-going all began when I needed to see a couple different productions for THET 101 at HCC. At one point in that theater class my professor mentioned that I should check out Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe when I was looking for a  monologue. I Googled it and loved the part of the play I found. Although I intend to, I've never actually read/ seen the whole play, but the portion I came across that someone posted is pretty great. Since it pops into my head at plays I looked it up again and decided to share it here too. [Googled it again actually and despite what Blogger might try to tell me that is in fact a word]

Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans

The Government Inspector

My brothers, sis-in-law, and I went to see The Shakespeare Theatre Company's Government Inspector last weekend and it was quite fun. The lovely STC has much-less-costly-to-get-to-see-lots-of-awesome-plays-season-subscriptions-for-students/under-35ers because it makes them so happy to see non-retired-white-hair-audience-members. We tend to pair of theater-going with yummy food beforehand and I'm extremely proud to say that we have almost completely out-grown of our traditional jog-from-place-with-yummy-food-to-theater-to-rush-to-seats-before-curtain-is-raised, not that it wasn't an exhilarating way to start a play.

Gogol's The Government Inspector is a satire about a town and its mayor who mistake a gambles-too-much-lady's-man-lowly-and-currently-broke-government-clerk with a fear-and-bribe-inducing-Government-Inspector -- hilarity ensues. You know it's a comedy because of all the doors and bright colors on stage. And there was all the laughter too.
I loved lines like: "When I see the stupid faceless masses I just want to scream 'Where are your faces?! Are you stupid?!'" The characters all had a nearly a Scarlet Pimpernel level of ridiculousness which continued nonetheless to be charming and entertaining.
The costumes were no-bones-about-it comic. To the point that the interchangeable-and-often-mixed-up middle class Pyotr Ivanovich Bobosky and Pyotr Ivanovich Dodosky were all but dressed like umpa-lumpas. Seeing a Russian play was also fun to complement the Russian I've been attempting to learn (but more on that later).

Out of Gas

A few weeks ago my best-ever-big-bro ran out of gas and I came to his rescue then made a bit of fun of him. As is my right as a lil-sister. However, it appears the gas-tank-karma-gods thought it would be funny to use this as a learning opportunity.

French the Llama

* Point of reference John Green has a YouTube
 channel with his brother Hank: Vlogbrothers
 lots of fans: Nerdfighters, and books: Looking for
Alaska, Papertowns, Will Garyson, Abundance
of Katherines, and The Fault in Our Stars = All very much awesome.

John Green was at the National Book Festival in DC last weekend. There were dozens of other authors, plenty of books and a couple of my oldest-dearest-friends there was well. But let's be honest, I switched work-shifts, changed plans with my brothers, and may have even sat-in-the-heat-for-nearly-three-hours, because John Green was there. As a nerdy-great-author-youtuber-fan-girl it was completly worth it.

John Green read the author's note and first few pages of Fault in Our Stars then spoke and took questions. Brilliant and fascinating as always. Here are some bits and pieces that I can remeber/ attempt to explain. He said it better than I do, so pretend that this is all coming from a professional-good-with-words-guy:

Missing Gorse

... and other symptoms of Ireland-sickness

After camp we say you get "camp-sick", just as you might have been home-sick when you arrived. There are moments when I find myself a little bit emerald-island-sick. I am grateful as all get out to be home and surrounded by friends and family with a car and jobs and swing dancing and so many people I love within easy access, but I love Ireland as well.

It's been rainy here at home and nothing screams Ireland like rainy days. The rain reminds me of Ireland, it was chilly-near-consent-type of rain and our dear little (un-heated) house on St Brendan's Ave was quite cold, but I remember much more the overwhelming warmth of walking into a pub at night or the cozy comfort of sipping tea wrapped in a blanket on our couch watching the Love Machine or something equally as ridiculous.

Gorse growing on Crogh Patrick (and photographed in the rain)

Remembering

Flags, hats badges, and notes left
at the Flight 93 temporary memorial  

 Since the anniversary of 9-11 has been set aside as a National Day of Service our Habitat for Humanity office spent today on a team-build working at one of the houses. Service seems to me like a fitting way to recognize the day. Like nearly everyone else I have my vivid memories of the morning itself: the cloudless blues sky, being a just-turned-12-year-old-in-brand-new-school-clothes, finding out over aol instant message to turn on the news, seeing the second tower hit on live TV, and sitting in my friends' backyard that afternoon watching for the occasional military plane in that clear blue sky.
The crash site of United Flight 93 in Shanksville Pennsylvania became a National Park just 6 weeks after Sept 11. A sort of spontaneous memorial began as well as people began to leave candles, notes, and flowers - much like they did in New York. But since the site is in the middle of a field instead of a city, the temporary memorial in PA continued to grow for the past decade. The park opened the official memorial last year and it's peaceful, beautiful, and well done. And the archive of items brought in to be protected from the rain continues to grow. One of my history classes went up to see the temporary memorial and the amount of things left by visitors was captivating.

All's Well that Ends Well

The Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC has an annual Free for All event -- a play from the previous season for free for a couple of weekends. This summer they put on All's Well that Ends Well. I love Shakespeare unabashedly, so a free play by the bard is a great way to spend a night. It's enough fun to balance out hours of waiting in humidity to pick up tickets. The Shakespeare Theatre puts on incredible shows, so the acting, sets, costumes, and all were impressive.
All's Well that Ends Well is just a really weird play.  The end is not quite the resolution you'd hope for/expect. Maybe a large dose of irony would explain it best. Or perhaps the point is that it's a backwards play. All's Well flips all the conventions: comedies end with weddings, but the wedding is in act one instead, the love-lorn woman pursuses the man who must be wooed, then no one appears to be in love at the end. Which is odd, well done oddness, but oddness all the same. To its credit it brings up fascinating questions about gender roles, marriage, and fate vs self direction that are still interesting a few hundred years later. Plus it has some good quotes like:
 “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”