A Girl With a Sword

recovering

Here's a new picture of my chin. Because healing is way cool.

why didn't I see that before?

I just saw this on Wikipedia "Ottoman Government employed the term Arz-i Filistin (the 'Land of Palestine') in official correspondence"

which made me go and look up "Palestine" on dictionary.com, where I found this: Palestine
from L. Palestina (name of a Roman province), from Gk. Palaistine (Herodotus), from Heb. Pelesheth "Philistia, land of the Philistines." Revived as a political territorial name 1920.

I feel like it's so obvious I can't figure out why I didn't see it before*. Palestine. Philistine. Whoa. I'm teaching Edward Said's essay "States" for the next two weeks, maybe I will bring this up in my class.

*linguistic note: vowels don't really matter** in etymology since they shift all over all the time, and /f/ to /p/ is simply changing a voiceless fricative to a voiceless stop

**on another, more nonsensical note, I've just noticed that the vowels really do matter in the first parts of these words because they mark the difference between "Phyllis" and "phalus"

cleanliness is next to . . . insanity

I have last month's Psychology Today in my bathroom and I've been reading this article this week. It's good, it's one of those bathroom articles you eventually just take out of the bathroom so you can finally finish it. It's called Cult of Clean and the sentence accompanying the title (what's that called?) says, "We've become a nation of grime fighters, and there's growing evidence that we're sacrificing our safety and our sanity to sanitization."

Ha, this is something I've been saying for years, and my mom always said that we were healthier, because she didn't worry about things being germ-free, than the kids of her friends who did. This didn't save me from being an obsessive hand-washer in high school, but then I went to college and Hope encouraged me to not wash my hands after peeing, but we won't go into that.

From the article: "The adult human body contains an estimated 100 trillion cells, points out microbiologist Lynn Bry, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. But only 10 percent of those cells actually belong to us! The rest are--are you ready for this?--germs. . . . 'If you were germ-free this moment," says Bry, "you'd be dead within two weeks.'"

I like this commonsense attitude: "'I fully advocate appropriate hygiene and cleanliness,' says Bry. 'Don't suck on your fingers after you cut open a chicken. But you don't need to scrub yourself until you're sore.'"

and you don't need to slather yourself with antibacterial "hand" gel (real enthusiasts use it everywhere--arm-gel, face-gel, computer keyboard-gel). And what's with those hand gels in bathrooms? Can you not use the sink?? I feel like even doctors get into this. I fell down and cut my face last week and not only did I have to renew my not yet expired tetenus shot (a measure I could see the sense in) I was also prescribed a week's worth of antibiotics. That seemed a little overboard to me.

And I love the last sentence of the article: ""The whole world is covered in a small film of fecal matter. Just get used to it."

natural foods

Here's a nice picture of Rosewood Market.

I took this on Tuesday night. We've been having great weather lately. The leaves have just started changing.

yes we did

What a night. I drove to my friend's house after work, listening frantically to NPR. They called Ohio for Obama while I was on the way and I came close to crying. I couldn't believe it was actually happening. Will called me and he said he was crying too. At my friend's we were switching between CNN and The Daily Show and we were actually watching The Daily Show when the annoucement came (interrupting Colbert's description of how all young Hawai'ian children would be inspired that one of them could be president). Then we switched back to CNN and watched the crowd in Chicago. I just couldn't believe it. I'm so happy. We drank champagne and watched the speech.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

This is the part that really made me start crying:

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

And this is the part they keep playing over and over on the radio and I love it:

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

Here's my favorite Obama video. I don't think I actually posted it on here when it came out, so here it is now.

Happy Obama's our next president Day!