Sexism alive and kickin'

I try not to jump on the feminist soap box, ever, but it seems hard to avoid these days. I build houses for Habitat for Humanity (a truly wonderful organization). It is not uncommon to find a lot of women on the construction site and still a fair number of men taking tools out of their hands or making totally unacceptable comments. I don't understand how people don't realize that referring to sweeping the site as 'women's work' is not acceptable. I'm at an AmeriCorps Habitat for Humanity leadership conference this week. This topic came up today in a session regarding leading volunteers. Obviously, the problem of volunteers not listening or respecting women on the work site is not an isolated event. I was furious to witness the question dismissed with jokes and indirect answers today. I won't rehearse the idiocy of the 90 minute session here. I just want to implore anyone, glbtq young or old, to stand up for yourself. Stand up for what is right. Don't just ignore these acts when you see or hear them. If someone isn't going to stand up for themselves, step in. Don't dismiss your worth for the sake of avoiding an awkward moment. Stop making jokes and face the small comments head on before they expand into bigger problems like Cali's prop 8 (p.s. vote NO).
Okay, thanks for the indulgence, I now pass the box to someone else.

like fabulous yellow roman candles

During the move I found a stack of scraps of paper and a small notebook half full of quotes. These must be quotes that caught my attention in High School and college that I made it around to writing down. I don't know if they're all accredited to the correct people, but here's what I wrote. I think it says a lot about who I am and ways I've grown since my first encounter with these words.
"You will recognize you own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will need." - Jerry Gillies
"Prayers are sometimes answered by the experience of more struggle, by our being plunged into situations where we must risk more than we ever dared before." - "Primary Speech" by Ann & Barry Ulanov
"If everyone thought before they spoke, the silence would be deafening." George Barzan
"To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed - that can make life a garden." Goethe
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say an uncommon-place thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles." Jack Kerouac
"Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the one that makes your heart smile."
"If you don't let your needs be known, you ain't got no bitch."
"If your religion does not change you, then you had better change your religion." Elbert Hubbard
"There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation." Eugene Ionesco
"What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out." Bertrand Russell
"He does not believe that does not live according to his belief." Thomas Fuller
"Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that you can make anything happen." Foka Gomez
"This above all: To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Shakespeare
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort." Herm Albright
"Faith is a process of leaping into the abyss not on the basis of any certainty about where we shall land, but rather on the belief that we shall land." Carter Heyward
"Faith given back to us after a night of doubt is a stronger thing, and far more valuable to us than faith that has never been tested." Elizabeth Goudge
"So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind, while just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs." Ella Wilcox
"What am I suppose to do, go over there and beg?" "That's why God gave you knees."
"Optimism is the cheerful frame of mind that enables a teakettle to sing, though in hot water up to its nose."
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." Charles Schultz
"Religion is a candle inside a multicolored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there." Muhammed Neguib
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." Voltaire
"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry." Gloria Steinem
"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost." H. Jackson Brown Jr.
"It only take a breeze to fly a kite and it only take imagination to soar an idea."
"Must be able to carry your end of the conversation without a wheelbarrow."
"There are no strangers here, just friends we haven't met."
"Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty."
"The biggest disease this world suffers from is people feeling unloved." Princess Diana
"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.'" Erma Bombeck
"The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers." Scott Adams
"A wise old owl sat on an oak; the more he saw the less he spoke; the less he spoke the more he heard; why aren't we like that wise old bird?" Edward Hersey Richards

Dependent

What makes a person dependent? Over the past few weeks I have spent a lot of time contemplating dependency. As I see it in others - as I see it in myself. I come back to this issue ever few years, it seems. Starting a new 'job' I notice that quite frequently my fellow AmeriCorps and I are wary to make a decision for ourselves. Should we really nail this in? Is it exactly right or close enough? Most of the decisions would not be world ending if they were wrong nor irreversible. Building a house is, when you get down to it, just not rocket science. At what point in time does a person begin to make their own choices and at what points do we cease to be able to function alone. When and why do we become completely dependant on someone else telling us our choice is correct. Why were we at one time able to write in personal journals desperately hoping no one ever found and read them and now our value is found in how many people read our completely public personal blogs. (Guilty myself, I'm counting ya'll) I recall one point in my life when I really struggled with this. My life was so consumed with school, theatre and work obligations that I was completely happy to be dependent upon my significant other at the time to plan my social life. I'm confident I could have created my own social system if need be (and have at times we weren't dating) but at the time, I was perfectly content with letting him. Is it because I knew I was capable myself and made an active choice to depend on him? Is there a good dependency? I like the definition of independent, I believe in most things that is how I'd like to be.

Love Poem

I don't live in California anymore, but this piece is beautiful and I whole-hearted and full-bodied support Vote No on Prop 8.