Eerie Similarities

My dad and me about 26 years apart.

(At my mom's house in Iowa helping clean out the garage today, I found this in a box.)

Thoughtful post to share

A Voice From The 1% does a good job of addressing the questions raised surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement. I've walked by protests in action and they appeared to be quiet people, clean and tidy, but still I did not know what I thought. I have always believed that while I have made good choices in my life, there is little that separates me from someone who has much less in life but a few strokes of luck.

Our country is in a state of demise in many ways and these protests are putting the our economic inequalities into question. For this I am proud- of the American right to free speech and that we are able to effect changes in this country. No matter what happens or whose side we are on, there is success in being reminded of the democratic process, of speaking up when we believe things need to change, of starting the dialogue.

Cows

Looking back to the south island of New Zealand when these guys tried to block our exit through the fence, I was with three other hostelers in a rented 1987ish manual jalopy mobile. Supposedly it was a big tourist site, but really just a few rocks in the countryside. However, we enjoyed the cow standoff. I've been enjoying the cows for years and years, since I first planted Father's Day flowers for my mom's rancher boyfriend in North Dakota, and little Henry the Calf came and ate them all. He was so cute and his mom had died... how could we get mad at him for that? These are also a few of my reasons to be vegetarian.

Boston Academy

Last week, the American Academy of Optometry held their annual conference in Boston. Since I'm currently living without commitments, I decided to head east less than a week before the conference commenced. I purchased a ticket out of Chicago on Spirit Airlines (a US budget carrier) and arranged to stay with my friend Xandra (Alexandra) who I met in the south island of New Zealand and now lives in Cambridge. It's a delight and surreal to re-meet people who I met on the road in their hometowns. On the road we are sort of floating about, so seeing someone indigenously helps to complete the picture of who they are.

The conference offered a wide variety of education and I surely benefited, picking up some new things and catching up on changes that have occurred in my profession during my last four years abroad. Also fun was seeing old friends and roommates from optometry school, a colleague from New Zealand, old professors, and making new friends. I was glad to go, and it's also good to be home.

Allston (below) is a suburb of Boston where Xandra and I had dinner. It's Portland-like with heaps of coffee shops, a few second hand stores, and vegetarian restaurants. I grabbed a bus there from the conference center to meet Xandra. Boston transport is very simple to figure out. I bought a one week unlimited fare pass for $15 on arrival, which covers all modes of transport in the metro area.

The last time I was here was when I was 14. My cousin Jenny and I would take the hotel shuttle down to this area, where we spent many hours shopping at Gap, which was something I did not have in North Dakota. The square looks the same but back then it seemed so amazing with possibility.

Inside Quincy Market.

Aeschylus

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
Falls drop by drop on the heart,
Until in our own despair,
Against our own will,
Comes wisdom
Through the awful grace of god."