tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-204298882024-03-07T04:43:18.386-05:00Phaedras & FriendsCommentary and communitySiobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.comBlogger966125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-51650773629760957452014-02-10T14:13:00.000-05:002014-02-10T14:13:26.118-05:00Time management, experience of and deathI imagined a lot about life when I was younger. I thought about all sorts of options, diplomat (not real self aware with that one), wandering waitress/bar tender with a motorcycle driving my Harley from town to town, or some organizational job in some far off locale. All of them ensured no attachment to place and non stop adventures to reminisce about in my old age. They all Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-80308738590683531842013-04-28T20:37:00.000-05:002013-04-28T20:37:12.977-05:00BirthdaysThe past weeks has been awful. Unremittingly terrible and tragic and has caused me to have sharp shooting pain behind my eyes all day everyday. The chaos, loss of life, disproportionate and lack of response combos have diminished my capacity to believe that there is any point to our species except to offer a lesson to hopefully more intelligent and thoughtful species of what Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-33312285938635091312013-04-01T20:44:00.000-05:002013-04-01T20:44:05.479-05:00I am not a MomI have been thinking about my decision to not have children. It is something I have thought about with varying frequency and intensity over the past two decades, but I'm a few months from my 37th birthday and it is only now starting to sink in as a reality.
To offer some context as to why that is happening, I should point out that I am, by nature, a planner and my life story is the plan I Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-28611531196556344872012-12-10T16:26:00.001-05:002012-12-10T16:33:12.438-05:00It's the holidays, and that's a good thing
Hah, I just realized that I quoted from this very speech in a previous holiday post. Terrible to think how long it takes for a change in life to sink in, but poignant just the same.
[T]he real value of a real education [has] almost nothing
to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness;
awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all
around Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-27668246106366615042012-10-24T10:33:00.000-05:002012-10-24T10:35:02.989-05:00samsara-the riptideThis past year has been a difficult one. It is really hard for me to acknowledge that. I tend to participate, against my better judgement, in the Olympics of oppression. In the pantheon of suffering, this past year doesn't register at all. I have far more to be grateful about than I have to be upset about. I live a life of incredible fortune, friendship and opportunity, but I have suffered badly Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-70275065142756420742012-07-08T14:00:00.002-05:002012-07-08T14:00:44.869-05:00Sifting through the etherSometimes I come upon a paragraph like this and want to jump into another person's brain for a little while so I can feel what it feels like to think a sentence like the first one.
Fortuna's Wheel, it seems, is a chaos-proliferate fractal of perpetual hurt. The fate of others (and ourselves) is providentially unknowable. The present moment opens before us " so astounding to behold that we feelSiobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-32706277909984701372012-06-04T11:22:00.001-05:002012-06-04T11:22:48.367-05:00Moving I have mostly finished moving into a place I intend to live in for a decade. I am not good at the idea of permanence. I like to plan for all possible options and outcomes and not commit to any. So now I sit in a house I have a mortgage on and wait for it to feel like something. It was an enormous and exhausting effort to find and buy the place, so I expected Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-32457139056827814292012-02-12T12:29:00.002-05:002012-02-12T13:20:38.192-05:00It continues to not be what I expectedMy friend sent me this link to an article of people who never marry. It was intensely strange to read the article as someone who is in a relationship. One of the quotes: she wrote: “It can be marvelous to be free; it can also make you wince with pain when people tell you they envy that freedom.”seemed particularly familiar to me. I was single for 7.5 years. I dated, but never seriously and Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-51217005009517207692011-06-26T18:55:00.005-05:002011-06-26T19:29:45.196-05:00I spoke in meeting todayI have been home from Africa/Turkey for three weeks now and I have gotten flummoxed every time someone asked me how my trip was except when my family asked how my brother is and then I just got annoyed. In general though, I traveled across the most intensively different landscape I have ever traveled and felt tongue tied to explain, describe, refer to or anyway capture what that means. A travel Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-77252351443975914922011-05-28T02:58:00.002-05:002011-05-28T03:02:39.201-05:00Victoria FallsWe spent yesterday morning touring the Victoria Falls power plant. It was fascinating to see the turbines and the buildings. Everything about it is enormous and a feat of engineering. The original turbines built by the british in 1938 are still there and are still running. After a mediocre game drive we had dinner by the river and watched the sunset. I have been travelling for 2 weeks now and Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-87914937250247629512011-05-24T04:20:00.002-05:002011-05-24T04:33:07.732-05:00Bulawayo and a trainWe took the train from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls. The train is over 100 years old and the details in it are amazing. It is also surprisingly comfortable. We slept easily to the rocking of the train that made several stops seemingly in the middle of nowhere that people got out and started walking across fields. The stars were breathtaking. I think it will make me sad to look at the stars in Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-36297065947735559492011-05-20T00:29:00.002-05:002011-05-20T00:33:30.650-05:00Leaving NairobiI fly out to South Africa today following a week in Nairobi. I have been to see baby elphants, giraffes and the masai market. It has been awesome, from the matatu buses to the death defying street crossings. Life in Nairobi is not for the faint of heart. I can see why westerners get addicted to here. Life feels more immediate and edgy. Life also moves slower and yet much more seems to happenSiobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-86407677809406526082011-05-16T02:19:00.002-05:002011-05-16T02:28:45.937-05:00NairobiI have landed in Nairobi. Kenya is a long way from Boston. A really really long way. The things I have forgotten so far, my hat, my immunization record and enough pages in my passport. Apparently I have traveled enough since 2004, that I am at risk of running out of pages during this trip. Never even occurred to me to check. That should be glamorous. That should mean an adventurous life, butSiobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-87890233723209374772011-05-12T08:43:00.000-05:002011-05-13T15:30:58.600-05:00TravelsI haven't blogged in awhile. Life has managed to completely overwhelm me and time and space to think about things has been nearly completely absent. Fortunately I am taking a three week break and going on an amazing trip to Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Turkey and I am hoping to capture my thoughts here. If I really pull it together I will even post photos!Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-22544615096739658262010-12-26T10:58:00.000-05:002010-12-26T10:59:18.450-05:00ChristmasI used to really hate Christmas. It was always a time of extreme stress and difficult human dynamics compressed into a short time span. Now, finally, Christmas exists as the time I get to see good friends and hang out with family and friends. That said, the holidays are still exhausting, because often you only have a few scheduled hours to see people, you don't get to see very often. ThoseSiobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-78540657003190751472010-10-31T10:30:00.003-05:002010-10-31T10:53:05.395-05:00Constructive activitiesAlas, it has been forever since I last posted. Life has gotten overwhelmingly hectic and complicated. I chaperoned a BAGLY dance last night, which felt good but also had the effect of reminding me of just how much adolescence sucks ass. On the upside, I also went to my first woodworking class, which was kind of awesome. I highly doubt that I will ever be a master craftsman, but it felt cool to Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-6459600028142673952010-07-25T17:24:00.002-05:002010-07-25T17:34:49.455-05:00Constructive IdeasI have been thinking in terms of activities that I can do now to lower my carbon footprint (getting off of airplanes was a huge leap in that direction) and improve the quality of my food supply. I am thinking that it will be crucial in any food constrained situation to know how to preserve food that you grow during harvest season. I found this:NOFA/Mass is a community including farmers, Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-13474945584430284042010-07-18T15:30:00.002-05:002010-07-18T15:37:39.177-05:00New DirectionSo I spent a week on a third world beach and came back to my beautiful home, good friends, family and proper soap. I also realized that the daily onslaught of the end is near news is too overwhelming to digest and not really helpful. So for a little while, I am going to try a new direction. I am going to post the best ideas that our out there on how to change the direction we are going. Links Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-39618942452915805902010-07-06T08:57:00.005-05:002010-07-06T09:18:16.571-05:00The system is brokenSometimes you sit in your house with the electricity running, clean water coming through the pipes, food in the refrigerator and think how fcuked up can it really be? Really fcuked up is the answer.Berry writes in “The Peace of Wild Things”:When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down whereSiobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-63299890416235698282010-07-01T16:56:00.001-05:002010-07-01T16:59:14.207-05:00You fcuking a**holesSeriously? The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-67800667418249639912010-06-13T17:35:00.002-05:002010-06-13T17:40:12.976-05:00There is no answerNow it appears there is a possibility that the well is compromised beneath the sea floor and that there are already leaks coming from disparate locations on the sea bed. We are going to kill the planet, not just for us but for all living creatures.Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-26096246645917286632010-06-10T07:37:00.002-05:002010-06-10T07:42:13.994-05:00Um just so we are keeping trackOil catastrophe, we killing the bees, bats and snakes and now the sun is coming after us.Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-11769905326013654042010-06-01T11:58:00.002-05:002010-06-01T11:59:17.582-05:00Fcuk, we are killing the beesThey set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behaviour and productivity of bees in two hives – one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two fifteen minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed.After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phon, Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-73787839236382573862010-05-19T12:56:00.003-05:002010-05-19T12:58:59.789-05:00Oil VolcanoI had been trying to avoid the oil volcano story because it is so overwhelmingly depressing and demonstrative of human suicidal tendencies that I am deeply uncomfortable with....and then you see a news bit that makes you say, well hell we are so idiotic we deserve an extinction event.And see this. BP has refused to let independent scientists inspect the site so that they could estimate the rate Siobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20429888.post-11194857223155384912010-04-30T10:35:00.004-05:002010-04-30T10:50:51.626-05:0034 and countingAnother birthday passes and my mind checks its internal gauges for insight into the state of its union. Mental, physical, emotional. The goal is healthy balance. The goal is quality of life. The goal is to feel acutely and correctly the experience as it happens and to learn from what has gone before. That has not always been the goal. Once upon a time the goal was a good story, didn't necessarilySiobhanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01216609890943504663noreply@blogger.com0