Naples

We went to an art festival today. It was HUGE (I would say a good mile of street vendors) and really cool. Naples is a really rich fancy town that is south? of Fort Myers, and as I said rich. Seriously. Subway looks really out of place there. But it's a tradition to go, and the art is amazing. Kristin and I were wandering down the booths, and we went into this one display by a bronze artist name Bob Wilfong. Normally, when Kristin and I go into the booths we are ignored. I find this really annoying. I know that by looking at us one can tell we aren't going to pay 200-3,000 dollars for their piece of art, but that doesn't mean we don't admire the craft and might be interested in learning more so that when we do go out and graduate and make money we might want to come back and buy their stuff seeing as we would know something about it. Usually we get snubbed and they don't say hello. Then again, that is better than an alternative. Glen and I went to a pottery festival over the summer in Lubbock, and one lady was trying to force us to buy her cheap stuff.
ANYWAY this guy, Bob Wilfong, was REALLY nice. He started explaining all of his bronze sculptures to us, and it was really cool! At first, I didn't know how I felt about having the art explained to me. I've been told that it's better to let the art stand for itself and leave it open for interpretation than tell why you did what you did. BUT i would have NEVER understood his art without his explanation, and it made the pieces so much more interesting and beautiful when I understood why he created what he did. Maybe the best solution is somewhere in between.
Anyway, he did this really pretty piece called "Where Flowers bloom" that dealt with how we need to be okay with who we are before we can be in relationships. He writes poems that accompany the pieces I guess to offer some sort of a guide as well.
But, to copy from his artist statement, he said that he creates his work because of his love for his wife (Awww!) and it is his belief that art in all forms should move people to a higher level of consciousness and give them pride in who and what they wish to become.

and here are some pictures from naples:

the palm trees are so green!

Yesterday was the last friday of 2008! I suppose that that would go to say that today is the last Saturday, as well.
Terri gets mad at me when I say obvious things.

Yesterday was the first day I left the island since I've been here. We haven't really been doing that much this year. Either we are tired and just want to sit and bake in the sun, or we are just waiting until Glen gets here, and then start doing everything. He's in for a surprise. Though, really, it's the same with his family. When I was with them in Galveston, we had a bedtime and a time to get up and a schedule for the day. I don't think it's any less planned out here, there just isn't the bed time or the wake up time. At least directly. It's hard to find somewhere you can sit and read after my parents go to bed because: Kristin in the the bedroom talking to Jeremy, my grandma is sleeping on the couch, and if you put the light on on the porch, it wakes me parents up.
And when they get up, you can hear them banging pots and whatever else there is to bang in the kitchen.

At twelve o'clock and six o'clock the catholic church down the street rings its bells and plays Christmas carols. It's nice that Christmas hasn't died here yet. We went to the Edison House in Fort Myers last night (that is why we left the island) and it was lit up, and there were Christmas lights on all the palm trees, and there were Christmas trees everywhere...so it still feels like Christmas, now two days later.

Did everyone (Terri) have a good Christmas? The highlight of my Christmas, was honestly, waking up at 7 to go running with my cousin, Jay. It was the first time I had ever talked to him, where it was just him and I, and I find it sad that it took me 20 years to develop an interest in my relatives. But it was good to talk to him and start to get to know the people who make up my family, though I only see them every other year. I think it's cool that my mom has kept up with her cousins. I don't see myself really doing the same, and my dad hasn't either.
I mean, he'll talk to them, but I haven't seen his cousins or their children in so many years.

and now, I am going to go and research Darfurian agriculture techniques and plant life.

here's your stupid pictures, terri

Here's your stupid sunset. It was so much more pretty in person, but I guess it's always that way. And now the sun is setting, and it's SO PRETTY!
We have found that there are many opportunities to re-enact Old Greg in Florida.
This is the crab that I blogged in my last entry. I love the water here! Though the off shore water is murky, the water right on the beach is pretty clear.

I can't believe that Christmas is two days away, and school starts in basically two weeks. And I think the sun just set. My mother and I were supposed to watch it set, but she hasn't come yet to our meeting destination, which is the outrigger.
I don't really find peace at the beach. I have sat on it several times, expecting to feel some sort of relief or tranquility, but i haven't. The most at peace I've felt in Florida was when I was floating in the pool. i didn't swim, I just floated, and it was so relaxing. I let the water carry me where it wanted to.

Gondola

So I've been reading this book about Gandhi, it's called "Past Masters, Gandhi" Haha kind of funny. Buns and I went to the library before the break to get some books and of course Buns knew exactly what she wanted and I didn't. I've wanted to read about Gandhi for a long time now, he's always seemed like a big deal or something, and I was interested in exactly how he got non-violence to work on such a large scale. So Gandhi was looked up and a entire bookshelf made up of thick thick volumes and biographies was dedicated to him. Naturally I picked a concise summary of his life, partly because I'm lazy and I knew the reading would be kind of dry and I want to read other things this break, and partly because I just wanted a summary and thought more focused questions would come from reading an overview.

I read the book but am going back and taking notes on things I like and/or find interesting. So here are my findings so far... do I have to cite this crap? Hmm....

On equality-
"It did not mean that I should get what others get, but rather that I should get what I need for my development."

Religion/life-
"Gandhi's view that each civilization, religion, and way of life had it's strengths and limitations enabled him to highlight both the possibility and necessity of an intercultural dialogue, and to argue that learning and borrowing from other traditions in no way compromised one's loyalty to one's own."

"For Gandhi, writing thus became inseperable from action."
(He wrote everyday, thought you might like that Buns.)

Thought and life were inseperable-
"thought came to have no meaning unless it was lived out and life was shallow unless it incarnated a carefully thought-out vision of life."

"Everytime Gandhi came across a new idea, he asked if it was worth living up to. If not he took no further interest. If it was in the affirmative he integrated it into his life, experimented with it's truth, and explored it's moral logic." (As a result of this he read little)

Major works that influenced Gandhi-
Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"
Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You"
Ruskin's "Unto This Last"

Soooo here's a terrible citation

"Past Master's Gandhi" Bhikhu Parekh, Oxford University Press New York 1997



As far as life goes in Cooper... things are quiet, lazy, and cold. It's so cold in this house!

the sun is setting! It's setting on the beach, on the ocean more specifically, and it's so beautiful. Holy freaking crap it's beautiful.

There is an old man singing elvis

And now that Terri and I are in two separate locations, the blog will begin again! I know that we have had many people this semester who have been grossly disappointed by our lack or termination of updating, but now our one follower (whoever you are) will have something to read. You are probably going to be disappointed. Lol, Terri, why are we so negative on here?
I’m in Fort Myers Island, Florida for the break. It’s a small island (6-8 miles in length) that is full of lonely old white men who think it’s cool to call out “hey Lahinia, call me” when they see a twenty year old female jogging across the street. I HATE That. Until this year, the honks and whistling never really bothered me, to some extent I liked it, but this year it disgusts me. I feel rather degraded, and just want to run. When I was in Cooper a couple of days ago, I read J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace. It is an AMAZING novel. I don’t really want to discuss it, other to say that one of the characters gets raped. She doesn’t report the incident, refuses to talk to anyone about it, and tries to forget. The attackers are never caught. She ends up pregnant, and also finds that one of her attackers (there were three) is related to her neighbor, and is living on her neighbor’s farm. I can’t imagine what that must be like, and throughout the novel, I was mad at the character for never saying anything about the rape. I felt like she should have went to the police in the first place, but especially when the rapist was living so close. Or move away. This is a really long stretch, but at the same time I didn’t really see what the big deal was when guys would honk. I thought it was silly, but shrugged it off, while my friends were often bothered. God, but after this stupid old man yelling at me to call him, I wanted to stop running alone, not run that direction, run somewhere else, anything to not have people honk. In a way, I was doing the same as the character from the novel. I am not saying that what I was experienced was anything close to rape, and I’m sorry if it seemed like I was trying to make that comparison.
Other than the men, Florida has been great. I was out on the beach for part of the afternoon, and spent an hour walking a mile up and back. My mother and father love to walk the beach looking for shells, and they take FOREVER if you are trying to walk with them. I found myself doing the same. I find myself continuing a lot of their habits lately. It’s so cool to see all the shells washed up on the beach, and the sand pipers, and gulls, egrets, and other wildlife. I found a crab today in the shallow part, and it was so pretty! I took pictures, but Mu isn’t reading my card, so I will try to transfer them via flashdrive tomorrow to post. It was a really pretty crab. I have always found their empty shells (it’s not really a shell…more like whatever it is on top), so it was cool to see the entire crab.
I wrote this all a couple of days ago. I don't have a stable internet connection.