shanah tova; the year ahead...

shanah tovah to you all! as this past tuesday and wednesday were the jewish holiday of rosh hashanah, which celebrates the beginning of the jewish year it seems that the past few weeks have included a lot of thinking about the future, especially the coming year and where i want to end up by next rosh hashanah. this has all happened sort of surreptitiously, though, interspersed between a lot that's been going on in my life. all of this is the same reason that i haven't gotten to post in several weeks; - an apartment search, a found apartment, a lease signing despite many doubts about the commitment-to-NY entailed by the signing of said lease, and a bunch of other stuff.

i took a few pictures at the 9.24 anti-war march in DC which i hope to post soon, as well as some of the numerous pictures i took of my niece while she and her parents visited for the holidays this week. but now i should get back to work and save the blog posting for my own time.

tomorrow morning i'm auditioning to be on jeopardy (keep on laughing; you're absolutely right) and the very vague and likely not actually happening plan is to move into the new place in brooklyn on sunday.

more to come.

but in the meantime, i'm still on all these listservs from cornell and elsewhere that i need to get off of, but i'm reluctant to do so. after seeing this website earlier today, i had an idea that instead of trying to continue to cull all of the interesting articles i receive and forward them on to individuals who might be interested, i could post them on this blog and comment :) i don't know why it's taken me this long to figure that out. as i sit and wonder how everyone else gets so much fodder for their blogs.

so here's the first one, taken from an email:


Happy Birthday Desmond Tutu!

From Wikipedia.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born October 7, 1931) is a South African cleric and
activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of
apartheid. Tutu was the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of
Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Church of the Province of
Southern Africa. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the
land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we
had the Bible and they had the land."

"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them."

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of
the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you
say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

"I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of
our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were
hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I
feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread."

"We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot
for sinners. His standards are quite low."

"Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity."

"A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons."

"For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are
trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we
are humans, too."

"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the
table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of
rights."

"Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a
favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor,
and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious
systems."


http://www.afrol.com/articles/13584
http://www.afrol.com/articles/11404
http://iafrica.com/news/sa/820912.htm
http://www.whosoever.org/v2i4/perry.html