If things don't work out, you can always go to law school

The best poem I've heard all week.



via Geeks Are Sexy

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Musings On: Haiti Fascination

Notes on Haiti.

Quick and easy donation methods -- because donations are dropping as the story begins to fade from media focus:

• SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts. Yéle Haiti is a non-religious charity founded by musician Wyclef Jean.
  
• SMS text “HAITI” to 501501 to Donate $10 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts.
  
• SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
  
• Gamers, pay attention: DriveThruRPG is offering over $1,000 worth of PDF product for a $20 donation through their site.
  

Yéle Haiti posted some interesting numbers regarding the current situation today. The numbers are daunting, in so many ways, but they do drive home the fact that this will be a long-term effort.

Haiti has fascinated me since 7th grade, when I first stumbled across a Zora Neale Hurston book lying out on a table at the IUSB library (it was Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, by the way). Someday, I would love to see the waterfalls at Saut d'Eau, visit the Citadel, and spend a week at a Vodou peristyle, feeling the drums and chants pound through my chest, and marveling at the delicate lines of a vévé drawn in cornmeal or rust.

It's sad that the artistry is almost always overshadowed by stories of corrupt politicians and our modern cultural myths about the depravity of Vodou. I always find myself pausing with envy when I come across sites featuring those amazing flags of the loas. I have a calabash decorated with Erzulie's vévé on my cabinet at work (one of the student organizations was selling trinkets from Haiti a few years ago, and evidently thought either the heart was merely harmless decoration, or chose to believe it represented one of the loa's many Catholic analogs). I also have a candle with Papa Legba's vévé on my shelf of treasures, although I can't remember where I got that. (Funny, about that -- I was actually looking for one dedicated to the Baron or Maman Brigitte, but somehow the gatekeepers and keepers of crossroads are always the ones I find first.)

Why the fascination with the culture inspired by what many see as a "primitive" religion? Haitian Vodou and it's diaspora cousins (Candomblé, Obeah, etc.) are living, breathing religions -- blood and bone and earth and spirit. They are ecstatic spirituality at their core, visceral, immediate and pervasive, and they have absorbed and adapted in ways that should (IMO) make the Big Monotheisms seethe with envy. (Well. I suppose some monotheists are seething, but most definitely not for the right reasons.) I strongly believe faith ought to be a mixture of learned information (from teachers, books, other practitioners, etc.) and personal experience. If I adhered to anything like a traditional religion, it would probably be one of these.

On a related note, I find the sheer arrogance and stupidity of Robertson and his ilk infuriating, to say nothing of the opportunistic scavengers scrambling to ship Bibles down to Haiti for all the poor souls "hungering for the Word of God," or putting together aid to be exchanged for conversions of convenience. I'm sure they think they're bringing comfort to those who need it, when they're only adding insult to injury -- literally, in this case. And yes, this is a particularly sore spot with me. My father's church made great use of convenient conversion tactics -- they were exceedingly proud that their "Feed the Hungry" program only fed Christian children.

So. Vodou gets a lot of flack and disrespect from the missionary contingent, but the reality is that it's a religion of hope, community, and honoring the spirits and those who have gone before. Contrary to popular belief, Vodouisants do, in most cases, believe in a single creator god; it's just that the loa are a few levels closer to us. They're the ones who actually Pay Attention to the little people down here on Earth; they're the ones dealing with the day-to-day work. Which is why their mapping of loa to Catholic saints seems to be pretty spot-on to this non-Catholic girl, IMO.

In any case. I continue to watch the coverage because I can't look away. It's heart-wrenching and sad, and yet ... there's a chance, here, for Haiti to remake itself. I sincerely hope they can do so, with the world's help, and still dance to the beat of their own drummers.

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Chillin' at home

Recuperating after a wicked exhausting week. It's been a long, long time coming, but I think things are finally starting to look up at work. There are a lot of interesting projects in the works -- about half of the projects on my grand to-do list are my idea, and half are from the new deans who've asked for my help on one thing or another. All of them will involve some form of geekery, so I'm looking forward to digging in.

Also handed off a 19-page doc to my boss this week that included a project log, to-do list, arguments on why my job needs to be restructured, and the four other positions I'm applying for. After taking a few days to digest the info, she came back with an encouraging response, so I'm working on draft two this weekend.

Speaking of work, I'm also working with The Monica on layout and design for a Violet War story project, and was approached by another program on campus to do some freelance work on their behalf. I have a couple of weeks at most to put together a workshop, modified style template, and procedural guidelines. And then we're going to tackle how they archive these projects, because they will contain patent-application materials that will need to be restricted to secured access. (I'm hoping to spread that luck around a bit, as well, since they also need writing help for their students, and I happen to know a freelance writer and editor with graduate/academic experience...)

It's almost like 2010 is apologizing for 2009. I ... accept. I think we're off to a good start, here.

In other news, a good friend shared a fun vid of a Glee-based flashmob in Rome over the holidays:



The fascinating part for me in the vid is how the flashmob grows, the longer it goes on, as if people who weren't in on the plan start to join in around the edges.

I don't think I've mentioned this previously, but I came across an excellent myth- and folklore-related blog late last year by author Kate Winter. Titled Girls Underground, it's Kate's attempt to explore the Persephone/Armless Maiden story archetypes in popular culture. I've been drawn to these stories since I was a kid, so I'm excited by the prospect of a writer paying close attention to those heroines.

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So tired...

It's been an exhausting week, and today was the worst of it. The snow-madness outside isn't helping much. I was ready to crawl into bed when I got home from work. However! The Monica has asked me to help out with a story she's going to be posting for sale soon.

Hurray for layout projects! They are my favorite. To me, text formatting is like ... a crossword puzzle, of sorts. Relaxing, finicky, tricksy and a good excuse to exercise the channel all the typesetting-perfectionist tendencies I try not to unleash on dissertation students. (I'm not sure they'd believe me if I told them that, though...)

The Monica has also asked me to assist with graphics and cobbling together a cover. This sounds fun, but is Very Hard Work when you're falling asleep and thinking half-awake thoughts about yetis and cookies (not necessarily in that order) as you peruse stock imagery sites. Hm. Perhaps I should put the perusal off until the weekend...

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