some more vintage jeannie

My one rockstar moment. October 24, 2008. Carnegie Mellon University.

what is care?

Here's an excerpt from a blog I posted over at God's Politics:

Yesterday I found myself on one side of a heated debate with my sister. I yelled, gesticulated, and argued ’til my face turned blue. She, on the other hand, remained calm, listened with an open heart, and then humbled me to oblivion by sending me this crucial Henri Nouwen passage from his text, Out of Solitude:

By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.

sometimes, I long for banjo

what are you wearing?

My cousin Helen.
I like to ask her what she is wearing because she gives very nice, detailed descriptions:

helen: i'm wearing seersucker bermuda pants from theory, an oversized button up shirt with jackrabbits all over from fcuk, and a theory blazer....

I love her!


***edit: added helen's jackrabbit outfit :) helen, you are soooo L.A. You're going to be too stylish for DCists when you move out here.

patronize your local thrift store!

Sure I come out feeling sort of itchy and dirty after trying on used clothing, but it's worth it when you can wear pretty clothes on the cheap and live sustainably. I like a brand new dress as much as the next girl (or guy, ha!), but when you think about just how much STUFF is manufactured and discarded in this world, it's enough to make you sick.

Today's outfit, brought to you by a thrift store depot (read: dumpster) in Long Island City (belt, $1); the Goodwill in Temecula, CA (dress, $5); Urban Outfitters (black cardigan, $20); and Zappos.com (Clark's sandals, $75).

some real vintage jeannie

I wrote this on November 22, 2007:

While living in Wheaton, Ill., I had the most fantastic roommate named Susan. She was 63, single and a retired missionary. Everyday, she would wake up at 6:30 a.m. and read the Bible a little bit, sing praise songs with her ukulele and pray.

Around Thanksgiving, Susan would christen the year that was to pass with some sort of phrase that summed up the events of her life, such as “the year God revealed his love”, or “the year God blessed me with more”. All of these she would write down in her journal with the deliberate cursive of a person born in the 1940s, when penmanship was of paramount importance.

If I had the posterity to keep up a tradition like this, 2007 would go down as “the year of absolute hell”. In the past year, I have seen 3 friends lose a parent. I have mourned 5 unborn children. I have felt distant from everyone I love. I have felt the unbelievable high of fulfillment in the workplace and the abrupt pitch and fall of disappointment, of truths revealed, of innocence gone. I have loved and lost. I have failed in ministry. I have dried up. I have no more to give and yet demands keep building. I have sought God and found only silence. I have given up, and in giving up, I have given in.

Earlier in the year, I remember having the audacity to ask God to shake my world up. “My life is too boring,” I said. “Teach me to need you, because right now, needing you is way too easy.” The cartoon-like God in my head hears this ridiculous little prayer from his throne enveloped in clouds, thinks about it a little, shrugs, and then takes his ginormous index finger and dips it into my tiny sphere of life and stirs it around for a few minutes while saying, “Well, you asked for it!” I guess I did ask for it.

So for me, this thanksgiving is a mixed bag of emotions. Am I thankful for my family and friends and all the comforts and love they bring? Of course! But often, when people suffer, there is a tendency to cover the gaping sores of our hearts with some pat answer. “God is in the silver lining, don’t mind the thunderbolts!” or “No pain, no gain sister girl!” Why do we try so hard to explain away the pain? Instead, this thanksgiving, I will not rationalize my struggles with the other blessings in my life like food and comfort and family, because that would be an insincere resolution to the very real anger I feel against God. Instead, I will give myself the freedom to grieve and my hope is that in doing so, I will find a more complete healing.

That’s what I hope for, anyway.

peep show

Every year the Washington Post holds a "Peeps" diorama competition where folks create scenes using everyone's favorite marshmallow chicks and bunnies . I actually find peeps sort of disgusting to eat, so I'm all about using them as visual art. The titles were cleverest of all, many of them referencing DC inside jokes:

*Where the Wild Peeps Are
*Peepocalypse: Dupont Circle Snowball Fight (a riff off DC's "snowpocalypse", during which there was a huge citywide snowball fight in Dupont Circle)
*White House Party Peepers (a riff off the random White House state dinner crashers)
*Easter at the National Peepthedral: A House of Prayer for all Peeps
*Peepstern Market (a riff off DC's famed Eastern Market)
etc. etc.

Check out the slideshow of entries. The Mad Men one is fantastic!



I often tell people that Washington D.C. was not my first choice when I was looking to move two years ago. But you know, I've really come to love this city. It takes effort to find the cultural enclaves and neighborhoods, but once you do, it's well worth it! It's no New York, but what DC lacks in excitement, it makes up for in charm.

I like this series that the Washington Post also does called "Scene In," not so much for the street fashion (which is pretty underwhelming if you ask me), but for the footage of DC neighborhoods. Check it out when you have a moment and you'll see what I mean about our nation's capital. The people and the scenes are just so charming, charming, charming :)