We just got back this afternoon from Belgium. Our most prominent souvenir was one I picked up on Monday, and that Chris picked up today.

_I_ thought I ate a bad waffle. Turns out it was bigger than that. The flu has been going around.

Poor Chris didn’t know he had it until we were landing in chicago. He tried to make it, but he ended up projectile vomiting in a corner of O’Hare.

The crew there was incredibly good natured about it. The guy came by and said, “Don’t worry about it; Don’t worry. It happens every day. Now today it’s over. Don’t worry about it.”

Chris felt bad that he’d messed up their hallway. But I think he felt worse that he still had to travel from Chicago to LAX.

Poor thing. He is sleeping.

My friends! Blog readers! I am leaving for a European vacation tomorrow! I’ll be in Belgium for a week.

And my blog will be blank. I’ll have lots to say when I get back though!

See you!

I know it’s late…And the day is over for many of my readers. But happy valentine’s day, everyone!

I am happy and in love. I hope that other people have felt love today, too.

1 Corinthians 13
Love
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

11When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

13And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

This Sunday, in Los Angeles, 13-year-old Devin Brown was killed by 10 police bullets.

“Police said Devin ran a red light then failed to stop when police tried to pull him over for allegedly weaving between lanes in a Toyota Camry they later found was reported stolen. After a brief chase, the car ran up on a curb and stopped. Officer Steve Garcia, a nine-year LAPD veteran, got out of his cruiser, then fired 10 shots into the Camry when it backed toward his vehicle, officials said. It is unclear where Garcia was standing when he fired the shots.”

I heard an interview with a representative of the police department. He admitted that at the time of the shooting, the car was not reported as stolen. So the police officer shooting did not know that it was stolen. All that officer knew was that the car was backing towards him. And he shot to kill. Shot 10 times to kill.

This saddens me deeply.

When I first heard african americans making noise about America being a “terrorist state” for blacks, I thought they were being over-dramatic. But I stopped to listen.

The more I see and learn, the more I believe they are right. What’s going on around here is wrong, it’s evil, it’s nearly unbelievable.

We are not supposed to be like that. American values are directly the opposite of these kinds of actions.

And yet, this particular incident, which seems to call for city-wide mourning, is not even on the front page. It’s too common-place. Many people in the community are thinking, it happens too often to get upset about it.

I find it interesting that in this article, many people are asking, ‘Where was his mother? If he hadn’t have been out he wouldn’t have been shot.’

What? Are we supposed to assume that uniformed authorities have the right to shoot people for being outside after dark? That thought chills my blood. Fact is, we don’t have to assume anything. We have proof.

We have some cleaning up to do at home. Sure, there are troops in the Middle East. But charity begins at home, and we have to get our house in order.

THIS IS TOO CUTE!!!

Bremerhaven Zoo in Bremen … found that three of the zoo’s five penguin pairs were homosexual.

Director Heike Kueck said … that the birds had been mating for years and one couple even adopted a stone that they protected like an egg.

Maybe they should let that couple adopt?

Walmart is notorious for union busting. They’ve taken measures to keep all unions out of their stores. Today, I heard on the radio that there had been a union finally formed in a Canadian Walmart, but that Walmart would be closed rather than allow a union to form.

Walmart has the pleasure and the pain of being the best at what they do, the first in the crowd. I don’t think that other stores are so much worse than walmart.

Walmart got to its level of prominence because it gathered together its buying power and leveraged it to get prices and products that were beneficial to it’s goals. They get the most amazing prices across the board.

That’s why people shop there.

Now, in a huge ironic twist, they want to keep that leveraging power all on their side. Unions are about a group of laborers, who individually might be insignifiant, banding together to demand things beneficial to them.

Guess what? That’s not fair. Walmart needs to know that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Whose budget items need to be changed? Store managers make more than the greeters do. And the corporate people are not making 7 bucks an hour.

There has to be a way. A way that is equitable. I challenge the corporation to find it.

1992-Yeltsin ends supremacy of Communist Party, privatizes state-run enterprises, guarantees free press; businessmen, mobsters begin to take over economy, massive corruption sets in

that’s ehat i found. that’s what this internet timeline had to say about life in russia in 1992.

those words seem so small and inadequate. I know that historical timelines that begin in the 800s have to be small and inadequate.

Everything they say is true. But it was so much more.

So I’ve been working hard on my book. There are two basic sections to it: the first part where I am a pathetic teenager trying to be a grown up in my hometown in Alaska.

Yes, Alaska is America. Very much america, even if it is as weird a region as Faulkner’s south.

And the second part is in Russia, post-communist Russia.

The first part took a long time to write, and i learned a lot aboiut how I write things that are longer than 10 pages.

In pieces, more or less.

But I knew all along that I had to finish the part that was in america before I could move onto the part that was in Russia.

It was a whole new world. I couldn’t even think about it until I was done with the part in america.

I realized so many things about my life in my hometown. Because I’m not 18 anymore. I could see things taht were completely invisible to me at the time.

And now that I think about my time in Russia, I am terrified by what we did.

I realized that we walked into a time bomb waiting to happen. The people in the town had literally not been paid for 5 months. NO ONE IN THE TOWN HAD GOTTEN A PAYCHECK FOR FIVE MONTHS AT THE TIME WE ARRIVED.

Imagine a company town, in this case a communist town where the employer is the government, and the company just stops paying everyone? and they don’t say, hey, we’ll pay you soon. THey say, “We’re going to go over to new management. Only, we don’t know who these new managment will be. We only know for sure that they don’t have any ideas for the short term. Longer term, we don’t know either.”

No wonder they were warning all the americans to leave. If that had happened in a small american town there would be violence.

But in RUssia, they just kept going to work. They would talk about the situation over their vodka,cognac if they were educated class, and then laugh and lift their glasses again.

I have so much respect for the Russian people. They amaze me more and more the more I think aout it.