Here’s another book for you, dear reader. Smart Women Finish Rich written by David Bach is jam packed with helpful financial advice for women, as well as some sobering facts. I couldn’t believe how much I learned in such a short time, and I credit that to Bach’s reader friendly writing and helpful real-life stories.

Here are some juicy tidbits I learned:

1. Women earn 25% less than men.

2. Women spend 11.5 years off the job v. 16 months for men.

3. Only 5% of Americans can afford to retire at 65.

4. If possible, women should sock away 12% of every pay into a high yielding retirement account.

5. Time is of the essence - start saving sooner rather than later because money compounds over time.

6. Think about what you value and how money may or may not be able to help you achieve those desires.

7. Write yourself a $10 million check, stick it up in your bathroom and look at it every day, believing it’s going to happen.

8. Have a rainy day account which holds at least 6 months of money to survive in case you lose your job, your health or both.

9. Pull your credit reports, which you can do for free once a year, and double check them to make sure all is in order.

10. Get rid of your fear and anxiety about money. Instead, educate yourself as much as possible and treat moola with respect.

11. Best way to get out of debt? Start paying for everything in CASH. Suddenly, shelling out four 20s for a pair of jeans hardly seems worth it.

Whew! These are just some highlights, but the point is that the book was helpful and NOT scary. Check it out!!! It’s entirely worth knowing.

I loved this thought provoking book written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a professor of history at Harvard, and found it both well-written and fascinating. The book gives a nice history of the struggles women have had to overcome over the centuries, as well as excerpts from the writings of these women (i.e. Christine de Pizan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Virginia Woolf, Gloria Steinem, etc…). It’s such fun that I devoured it in about two days. Buy it for every woman you know!

I found the book’s conclusion perhaps the most telling, so I’m going to share it here with all of you.

If history is to enlarge our understanding of human experience, it must include stories that dismay as well as inspire. It must also include the lives of those whose presumed good behavior prevents us from taking them seriously. If well-behaved women seldom make history, it is not only because gender norms have constrained the range of female activity but because history hasn’t been very good at capturing the lives of those whose contributions have been local and domestic. For centuries, women have sustained local communities, raising food, caring for the sick, and picking up the pieces after wars. Today, because more women are educated and communication is easier, more of these projects get noticed, but the work has just begun.

Well-behaved women make history when they do the unexpected, when they create and preserve records, and when later generations care (pp. 227-229).

I woke up early this morning (5.30am!) thinking about the horrendous conditions some of the women in Afghanistan live with on a daily basis, some of this resulting from my recent reading about women there. They have experienced so much war, upheaval and devastation in their lives due the various wars which have been waged in Afghanistan that I really don’t know how they’ve survived. Enduring constant warfare since the 1970s, first with a civil war, then with the Soviet invasion (1979), then the Taliban (1996) and most recently with the US (Operation Enduring Freedom, October 2001), they have found their countryside pillaged and many of their young men dead.

If all of this suffering wasn’t enough, on top of it, many Afghan women have had to endure physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse, often at the hands of men they know. Many find themselves married off to men two or three times their age - many marrying at 14 or 15 years old. Unless women had progressive parents, many were not educated and did not work outside the home, if at all. Many of the privileges women enjoyed during the Soviet invasion were taken from them when the Taliban emerged as the leading political/religious group in the mid-90s.

While things are improving for women in Afghanistan today (i.e. women can work with the permission of their husbands or families), much abuse still continues. If you are unfamiliar with the beautiful landscape of Afghanistan, I encourage you to familiarize yourselves, dear readers, with its lush and varied past.

For example, Afghanistan had several cities on the Silk Road (Herat, Bamiyan and Kabul) and was the crossroads for many cultures and religions. Most interesting is the country’s Buddhist past. Bamiyan was known to be a Buddhist hotspot in the first millenium, up until the Islamic invasion in the 9th century. You probably are familiar with the city’s name, as this was the place where the standing statues of Buddha were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 for being “un-Islamic”. Before Islam arrived, over 2,000 Buddhist monks lived in the caves surrounding these statues and painted numerous frescoes in them. While there is some historical evidence that Bamiyan had three giant Buddhas, only two were destroyed in 2001. According to a Wikipedia site:

“The two most prominent statues were the giant, standing Buddhas, measuring 55 and 37 metres (180 and 121 feet) high respectively, the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. They were perhaps the most famous cultural landmarks of the region and the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamyan Valley.

The smaller of the two statues was built in the year AD 507. The larger one was constructed in 554. The statues are believed to have been built by the Kushans and Indo-Hephthalites (both eastern Indo-European peoples) at the heyday of their empires. The above mentioned groups were the ancestors of the Hazaras, the most persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan. Physical and facial features of the Hazaras are greatly similar to those in the frescoes found in the ancient relics and caves. Furthermore, considering the historical importance of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, unsuccessful claims over the Buddha heritage have been made by all the ethnic groups in Afghanistan.

Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsüan-tsang (Xuanzang) passed through the area around AD 630 and described Bamiyan as a flourishing Buddhist center “with more than ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks”, and he noted that both Buddha figures were “decorated with gold and fine jewels” (Wriggins, 1995). Xuan Zang’s account is intriguing as he mentions a third, even larger, reclining statue of Buddha; although it is generally believed destroyed, some archaeological expeditions are searching for it.

A monumental sitting Buddha similar in style to those at Bamiyan still exists in the Bingling Temple caves in China’s Gansu province.”

I’d like to point out two things here: One, in 1999, the Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Omar actually issued a decree proclaiming that the statues should be protected and, as there was no longer a Buddhist community in Bamiyan, the statues were not in danger of being worshipped. However, in 2001, the Taliban decided all images were “un-Islamic” and the statues were destroyed. Two, the Wikipedia article cites that the Valley of Bamiyan and its archaeological remains were placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which is true. However, it didn’t get placed on the List until 2003, well after destruction had occurred.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list

In fact, none of the two sites on the List for Afghanistan were placed on it until AFTER Operation Enduring Freedom began. The same is mostly true for Iraq. Of the three sites listed, only one (Hatra) was protected before the war (1985). This is the issue I focus on in my dissertation, which I hope to finish in the next few years. (Forthcoming blog on this topic…stay tuned!).

So, where can you go for information about Afghanistan? Talk to people who’ve been there (many folk are coming home from the war or NGO work there), read everything and anything you can about it, research the culture, people, history of Afghanistan yourself. Often, in larger cities, you can find excellent Afghan restaurants, which is always a good place to start!

Deb Rodriguez, author of Kabul Beauty School, had this to say about helping women in Afghanistan:

“There are many of us Westerners who want to help Afghan women, but our efforts don’t always help them in the ways that we hope they will. There are so many ties that bind these women and hold them back, and many of the ties aren’t even visible to the Western eye. It takes a long time to understand how the complexities of these women’s lives differ from the complexities of ours. Sometimes we can’t help, even when we understand these complexities. The culture is changing so much more slowly than their dreams are” (p. 259).

With this in mind, I’m including some books which help crack open the situation in Afghanistan:

Swallows of Kabul - Yasmina Khadra
The Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad
Kite Runner and One Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Kabul Beauty School - Deborah Rodriguez

My point? Expand your horizons and reach out to women across the world and in your own neighborhood who cry out for help. My hope is that through education, we can help each other effect change.

Let me just say how MUCH I loved this book. It was incredibly informative and beautifully put together, saying much about the American diet and why we eat what we do. I mean, who KNEW that corn was in almost EVERYTHING!!! I have to wonder if one can really escape corn in this country! Other memorable sections were the pages he spent describing hunting wild boars in CA, the ubiquitousness of Iowa corn, why Polyface farms in Virginia is such a gift and how wild mushrooms taste upon harvest. Michael Pollan has long been one of my favorite authors with The Botany of Desire being especially good. If you’re curious about WHERE your food comes from, I highly encourage you to read this book.

Below you’ll find some of my favorite quotes:

“A chicken nugget, for example, piles corn upon corn…to wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) - after water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient. Grab a beer for your beverage instead and you’d still be drinking corn, in the form of alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn. Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find…Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins…there are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn…even in produce on a day when there’s ostensibly no corn for sale you’ll nevertheless find plenty of corn: in the vegetable wax that gives the cucumbers their sheen, in the pesticide responsible for the produce’s perfection, even in the coating on the cardboard it was shipped in” (pp. 18-19).

“Corn was both the currency traders used to pay for slaves in Africa and the food upon which slaves subsisted during their passage to America” (p. 26).

“After Nixon’s 1972 trip the first major order the Chinese government placed was for thirteen massive fertilizers factories. Without them, China would probably have starved” (p. 43).

“The United Nations reported that in 2000 the number of people suffering from overnutrition - a billion - had officially surpassed the number suffering from malnutrition - 800 million” (p. 102).

Here’s something interesting about the concept of Supersizing food:

“Until his death in 1993, [David] Wallerstein served on the board of directors at McDonald’s, but in the fifties and sixties he worked for a chain of movie theaters in Texas, where he labored to expand sales of soda and popcorn - the high-mark-up items that theaters depend on for their profitability…Wallerstein tried everything he could think of to goose up sales - two-for-one deals, matinee specials - but found he simply could not induce customers to buy more than one soda and one bag of popcorn. He thought he knew why: Going for seconds makes people feel piggish. Wallerstein discovered that people would spring for more popcorn and soda - a lot more - as long as it came in single gigantic serving” (p. 105).

“Before we got off the phone, I asked Salatin if he could ship me one of his chickens and maybe a steak, too. He said that he couldn’t do that. I figured that he meant he wasn’t set up for shipping, so offered him my FedEx account number. “No, I don’t think you understand. I don’t believe it’s sustainable - or ‘organic’, if you will - to FedEx meat all around the country. I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.” This man was serious. “Just because we can ship organic lettuce from the Salinas Valley, or organic cut flowers from Peru, doesn’t mean we should do it, not if we’re really serious about energy and seasonality and bioregionalism. I’m afraid if you want to try one of our chickens, you’re going to have to drive down here to Swoope to pick it up” (p. 133).

“Rozin found that the rat minimizes the risk of the new by treating its digestive tract as a kind of laboratory. It nibbles a very litle bit of the new food (assuming it is food) and then waits to see what happens. The animal evidently has a good enough grasp of causality (”delayed learning,” as the social scientists call it) to link a stomach ache in the present to something it ingested a half hour before, and a good enough memory to store that finding as a lifelong aversion to that particular substance. (This is what makes poisoning rats so difficult.)” (p. 288).

“Pregnant women are particularly sensitive to bitter tastes, probably an adaption to protect the developing fetus against even the mild plant toxins found in foods like broccoli. A bitter flavor on the tongue is a warning to exercise caution lest a poison pass what Brillat-Savarin called the sense of taste’s “faithful sentries” (p. 291).

So…you get the idea. Highly informative and easy to digest (pardon the pun). In the end, what Pollan analyzes is that we, Americans, do not have a culture of food, like the French. Instead, we have had cultures bring their food here, but we don’t have any national sense of food. Instead, we’re struggling with what to even eat these days!

As Pollan wrote on p. 301: “Fats or carbs? Three squares or continuous grazing? Raw or cooked? Organic or industrial? Veg or vegan? Meat or mock meat?…is it any wonder Americans suffer from so many eating disorders? In the absence of any lasting consensus about what and how and where and when to eat, the omnivore’s dilemma has returned to America with an almost atavistic force.”

Thoughts?

One of my reading themes lately has been to read all the books I’ve wanted to over the years but never had time to dip into. Among the books on that list was The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. What a quirky, thoughtful little book! I was delighted by it, especially by the appearance of the fox, which shows up on p. 58! I love foxes, and I was tickled that THIS particular fox also happened to be quite wise, too. REOW!

So, here you’ll find some of the fox’s sage advice to the Little Prince. I found this particular passage lovely as I think it deals with love. Enjoy!

“Come and play with me,” the little prince proposed. “I’m feeling so sad.” “I can’t play with you,” the fox said. “I’m not tamed.” “Ah! Excuse me,” said the little prince. But upon reflection he added, “What does tamed mean?”…”It’s something that’s been too often neglected. It means, ‘to create ties’…” “‘To create ties’?” “That’s right,” the fox said. “For me you’re only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. For you I’m only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we’ll need each other. You’ll be the only boy in the world for me. I’ll be the only fox in the world for you…”

“I’m beginning to understand,” the little prince said. “There’s a flower…I think she’s tamed me…” “Possibly,” the fox said. “On Earth, one sees all kinds of things.”

“My life is monotonous. I hunt chickens; people hunt me. All chickens are just alike, and all men are just alike. So I’m rather bored. But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I’ll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Other footsteps send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music. And then, look! You see the wheat fields over there? I don’t eat bread. For me wheat is of no use whatever. Wheat fields say nothing to me. Which is sad. But you have hair the color of gold. So it will be wonderful, once you’ve tamed me! The wheat, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I’ll love the sound of the wind in the wheat…”

The fox fell silent and stared at the little prince for a long while. “Please…tame me!” he said.

“The only things you learn are the things you tame,” said the fox. “People haven’t time to learn anything. They buy things ready-made in stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends. If you want a friend, tame me!”

“What do I have to do?” asked the little prince.

“You have to be very patient,” the fox answered. “First you’ll sit down a little ways away from me, over there, in the grass. I’ll watch you out of the corner of my eye, and you won’t say anything. Language is the source of misunderstandings. But day by day, you’ll be able to sit a little closer…”

The next day the little prince returned.

“It would have been better to return at the same time,” the fox said. “For instance, if you come at four in the afternoon, I’ll begin to be happy by three. The closer it gets to four, the happier I’ll feel. By four I’ll be all excited and worried; I’ll discover what it costs to be happy! But if you come at any old time, I’ll never know when I should prepare my heart…There must be rites.”

“What’s a rite?” asked the little prince.

“That’s another thing that’s been too often neglected,” said the fox. “It’s the fact that one day is different from the other days, one hour from the other hours. My hunters, for example, have a rite. They dance with the village girls on Thursdays. So Thursday’s a wonderful day: I can take a stroll all the way to the vineyards. If the hunters danced whenever they chose, the days would all be just alike, and I’d have no holiday at all.”

THAT WAS HOW the little prince tamed the fox.

***

The fox, at one point bids adieu to the little prince with these words which I treasure: “Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”

You know, when I think about it, I, too, want to be tamed. I think Justin is taming me…slowly.

I suppose the most frightening aspect of relationships is being vulnerable…letting all your worries out of your secret places…feeling weak and afraid of so much…hoping your beloved will love you anyway. It’s scary, but perhaps more frightening is simply unveiling those shadow parts and voicing them in the first place.

I’m struggling with that right now. It’s definitely not easy, and I’m scared. But, I’m doing it anyway. I suppose that says something powerful about learning to trust and be tamed, huh?!

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I made a pact with Justin to read everything on my bedside stand. Just recently, I finished a few books by Yasmina Khadra (In the Name of God, Morituri, Wolf Dreams). The “she” is actually a “he” by the name of Mohammad Moulessehoul, a former Algerian military officer who adopted a female pseudonym to avoid military censorship. He is slowly gaining notoriety in the United States - especially with The Attack, The Sirens of Baghdad and Swallows of Kabul. Currently in exile in France, he has a beautiful, lyrical style of writing, and, in my opinion, he is the first writer to effectively explain how individuals falls into Islamic fundamentalism. His writing is so lovely that I find myself copying out passages in his books to keep with me to reread later.

Here is such a passage. Taken from In the Name of God, it touches on hope, which I think is something this world needs a little more of these days.

“To hope means to wait for a miracle to happen, Yusef. And miracles have to be made to happen. Someone who really wants to get there can’t wait. Time doesn’t wait. It only grants its favours to the tireless runners. In the marathon imposed on us by the taghout - since this is a war of attrition - each stride we take must be negotiated with the utmost rigour and calculation. We must leave nothing to chance. If chance is on our side, there’s no guarantee that it will continue to be so. Chance is only with the tireless runners. That’s why they succeed in turning the tables, in catching the world off-guard. It’s true that one sometimes needs a helping hand from fate. But fate only assists visionary opportunists. Chance is a comet which we must, if not track down, at least intercept. If it passes us by, we lose face for eternity” (p. 156).

I just finished reading Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. It was recommended to me by a very good friend out in Montana who has spent many years traversing the backcountry of America’s West. I was fortunate to travel into some of this terrain with him on two occasions and have learned much from him in terms of survival skills, increasing my already healthy respect for the great outdoors.

The book chronicles the short life of Chris McCandless, a young man who left behind a loving family and promising future for the lure of the West. He eventually died of starvation in Alaska in 1992; however, the book does an excellent job of neutrally capturing how Chris arrived there and what may have led to his death.

When I confided in Carl that I was finally reading the book, he had much to say about it, reminding me, yet again, how important it is to always enter Nature prepared for everything and anything. He’s right. On our second expedition into the wilderness, I had packed in a sleeping bag that was guaranteed to keep me warm at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. However, after improperly storing it for a few years and after encountering colder weather than was expected, it would not keep me warm. My body temperature had already dropped during the day due to the wind and late arrival back at camp and by the time the sun went down, I was already shaking violently and feeling very, very cold. Carl laughs and jokes about it now, but if he had not spooned me, sharing his warmth upon noticing that I was in danger, I probably would’ve been in major trouble.

The point is that the wilderness, as lovely as it is, can also be dangerous and it’s always a good idea to know what you’re getting yourself into before you head out to explore its valleys and mountains.

Of course, I’ve always loved Nature, spending countless hours as a child playing in the woods near my home and running through sunkissed fields whenever I could. And, like Chris McCandless, this love of Nature grew exponentially upon my first encounter with the West, arriving under the guise of Montana, in the early 90s.

My sister and I would spend parts of summers riding bikes, swimming and hiking in and around the small town of Seeley Lake, MT. And, I think it’s fair to say that neither one of us had ever known such beauty or contentment before; it was addictive. Nestled about an hour north of Missoula, Seeley Lake had become my aunt’s adopted home and it quickly became ours, too. In college, I continued my love affair with Montana, even dating a young man from Helena, Montana my freshman year, visiting him there on one of my summer trips.

During later years, I would travel to Montana in the late winter and cross country ski on a frozen Seeley Lake, marveling at the density of the ice and allowing the sun to heat my body. A few years ago, I returned to Montana and did a week long backcountry hiking and camping trip with my then boyfriend, Erik. I was petrified! I had never camped a day in my life, and, as much as I loved the outdoors, the thought of trekking through Grizzly Country was terrifying. After seeing two bears on the first day (one being a Griz), I crawled into the tent, had a panic attack and seriously considered scratching the trip.

I stuck it out (much to the delight of Erik) and came to enjoy myself and the silence and simplicity the backcountry offered. Aside from almost falling off a mountain cliff, caught and saved by Erik, I considered the trip one of the best things I’ve done in my life. I went well past my comfort zone, was tested by Nature and survived, relishing the surreal beauty around me with every step. It was this feeling that came to me again while out traversing the Beartooths with Carl this past summer. Though not as well known as Yellowstone and the Tetons, it is one of the most breathtaking slices of country I’ve ever seen, even rivaling Glacier National Park.

Even now I can close my eyes and feel the icy wind on my cheeks, the bluebirds which greeted us in the morning near our tent and the carpets of wildflowers we crossed as we roamed around the area. It was lovely.

I say all of this because it highlights the addictive quality of the West, and I found myself understanding the impetus behind Chris McCandless’s trek into the wild as recounted by Jon Krakauer.

I don’t want to spoil the book or the recently released movie by saying much more about it here. However, I would like to leave you with these words in the hope that they may inspire you to read this story and to safely find your own slice of Nature to explore:

“It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale” (p. 155).

I’ve been a reading machine lately, partly because I love reading and partly because I promised Justin I would read all the books (think HUGE stack) on my bedside stand before he came back to the US. It helps pass the time, and, in the meantime, I’m learning and mulling over so much.

Recently, I just finished Noam Chomsky’s latest book in which he combines his thoughts with those of Gilbert Achcar. The book is entitled: Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy. ‘Tis a fascinating read, and I couldn’t help but pull out quotes which struck me as being ripe for discussion. You’ll find them below. Do send comments, as I’m curious to learn how they strike you.

On Fundamentalism and Democracy:

Chomsky: “As in the United States, for example? The United States is one of the most fundamentalist countries in the world and has long been, and one of the few functioning voting blocs here is the extreme fundamentalists, who out of either cynicism or belief have a big effect on the administration. You can see it all over the place. Do you know any other countries where there are struggles going on over whether you’re allowed to say that humans weren’t created 6,000 years ago? I don’t know if there’s any other country in the world where that goes on.” (p. 46)

On the Holocaust:

Chomsky: “Before 1967 there were no Holocaust museums, there was none of the later adulation of Elie Wiesel, none of this stuff. It all picked up as a means of justifying the Israeli occupation; it became a huge business. Every city in the United States has to have a Holocaust museum, not a slavery museum, not a Native American museum, but a Holocaust museum. Why? Is it because of concern about the Holocaust? If it was, why wasn’t something done for the victims in the 1940s?” (p. 203)

On Racism:

Achcar: “Of course, one should make a distinction between the racism of the weak and the racism of the strong - the anti-White racism of the Black South Africans under apartheid cannot be equated with White anti-Black racism.” (p. 209)

On Anti-Arab Racism and Islamophobia:

Chomsky: “In the United States, it’s really the last legitimate form of racism. You don’t have to try to cover it up. You may be racist toward other groups, but you have to pretend you aren’t. In the case of anti-Arab racism, there’s no pretense required. The things I mentioned before are a perfect example: Distinguished Harvard professors produce statements that you would regard as hideously racist if they were aimed at any other target - Jews: impossible; Blacks, Italians, any of them: unacceptable - but if you say them about Arabs, it’s fine. Jack Shaheen is one scholar who’s done a lot of research on images of Arabs in the cinema. It’s grotesque, right up to the present day. There’s not even much to say about it; it’s open, it’s considered natural and normal that you should be an anti-Arab racist. Nobody will use the term for it, but it’s the kind of attitude and discourse that we would regard as hideously racist if it was directed at any other target. It’s all over the place.” (p. 211)

Achcar: “Islamophobia is based on fear, as the etymology of the term indicates. It grows in a specific and complex manure: the many anxieties created by neoliberal social and economic deregulation, seeking scapegoats through a well-known psychological phenomenon, compounded by the fear instilled in Western public opinion by governments unwilling to give the true answer to the much-asked question: Why do “they” hate us?” (p. 213)

Since my teaching duties have ended, I’ve been voraciously reading everything I can get my little paws on. Seriously. The card that’s burning a hole in my wallet more than others these days is my public library card. If I wasn’t such a bibliophile, I may just have cause enough to be embarrassed!

It brings back all these wonderful memories of heading to my local library as a kid, running ahead of my mother and slipping into the cool air conditioned shelves containing treasures which could take me anywhere I wanted to go.

So, it didn’t surprise me in the least that the first stop I made after I turned in my grades was to the Missoula Public Library to begin reading all the books I wanted to all semester but didn’t have time for.

Last Thanksgiving, I traversed through a bookstore with an old friend of mine, passing book titles and authors to each other. At the time, he suggested I read a book entitled Blindness by Jose Saramago. “It’ll blow you away”, he said.

I was intrigued but wasn’t sure if I was up for a story dealing with baser human elements and tragedy. So, I put it off…until now.

I read it…no, devoured it, in a day! The book’s landscape was utterly powerful and disturbing. I cringed through sections, felt nauseated through others, and sadly smiled at still other passages in the book.

Saramago’s characters are bold, fresh and somehoew familiar. I urge you all to find this book and read it, not because it’s good but because it reveals the soft underbelly of human nature. The shadow side…a side that we glimpse from time to time but politely ignore. Though written in 1995, I couldn’t help but think about New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina or Berlin in the days following its fall to the Russians in 1945.

I won’t say more than this, but by the book’s end, I can promise you that you will want to pass it off to every other person you know.

Saramago: he’s entirely worth knowing!

Over the weekend, I flew cross country and picked up a few books to read while in transit. One of them was *most* remarkable and entirely thought provoking. Entitled The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton focuses in on how our thoughts have the ability to affect us even at the cellular level. A cell biologist by trade, he’s performed pioneering studies on this topic at both the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Stanford’s School of Medicine.

One of the points he makes in this book is that we become what we believe, even at the cellular level. In essence, we become our thoughts. Consider a Baylor School of Medicine study, published in 2002 in the New England Journal of Medicine which evaluated surgery for patients with “severe, debilitating knee pain”. Dr. Bruce Moseley, the lead author of the study, was ultimately trying to discover which aspect of surgery brought his patients relief. To do so, his patients were divided into three groups: one received the full surgery, another had their knee joints flushed of the material thought to be causing inflammation and the last received nothing, except they *thought* they had surgery (Lipton, p. 139). All groups were prescribed the same post-surgery care.

What the study shows is that the placebo group “improved just as much as the other two groups”. In fact, the patients in the placebo group didn’t even find out that they didn’t actually have surgery for two years. Lipton writes, “One member of the placebo roup, Tim Perez, who had to walk with a cane before the surgery, is now able to play basketball with his grandchildren…he told Discovery Health Channel: ‘In this world anything is possible when you put your mind to it. I know that your mind can work miracles’” (Lipton, p. 140).

If it’s true that our thoughts hold this much power, then it leads me to wonder just how my thoughts may be getting in the way of how I’m living my life. What aspects of my thinking are sabotaging that which I want the most? Which thoughts are propelling me towards my goals? If nothing else, this question is really making me examine the mental tape which continually plays in my mind. By tuning in, perhaps I’ll learn how it’s directing my life, as it’s been some time since I checked. I blame my busy life, of course!

Still, it’s no excuse to let my mind run on auto-pilot. I am reminded of the following quote from Gandhi:

Your beliefs become your thoughts
Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your values
Your values become your destiny

My greatest challenge in the next few weeks will be to determine my beliefs and to see *how* they are affecting my thoughts. To do this, I’ve decided to undergo a bit of an experiment. I’m going to create a new belief for myself and infuse my thoughts with it. I’ll let you know what I discover.

In the meantime, I challenge you to do the same. Keep me posted on your discoveries, and I’ll do the same. Deal?