Hanford Nuclear Site

One of my professors invited me this coming Monday to canoe the part of the Columbia River which flows past Hanford, the nuclear site which produced the plutonium that went kaboom over Nagasaki in WWII.

Which we toured yesterday as a class. I wish I had my notes in front of me to remember important facts, but of course I do not. We toured the innerds of the "B Reactor" at Hanford. Unfortunately, I know nothing of such things so I didn't understand the technical aspect of it very well, but FINALLY! I had a breakthrough. The really good-looking tour guide guy (who is an alumnus of my college!) said that a reactor is like this:

Putting a hundred mouse-traps in one teensy box, side by side. Finally, you just drop in the 101th mousetrap in, and everything goes, "KABOOM!!!" and a reaction occurs. Made sense to me! So Uranium is a pure element and Colorado happens to have some of it, along with Africa and the Czech Republic apparently. Uranium is used to make Plutonium. Used to make the Atomic Bomb. After WWII came the Cold War era, where Truman gave his famous "Truman Doctrine" speech, and then George Kennan created what is now called the "Containment Policy" of containing the Communists and eventually squelching them. Because of these two things, the Handford site was kept alive and well, continuing to produce atomic material. Now it has become the largest conservational cleanup and the largest building project in the United States. They no longer produce atomic material, but are faced with the daunting task of cleaning it all up without a) killing Washington State off, and b) blowing the whole world up several times over (which I was assured the waste at Hanford most certainly could do). So the budget is over ONE TRILLION DOLLARS, and the plant where they plan on doing vitrification (turning waste into glass and then burying it several miles underground) is costing 11 billion dollars. As we were driving along, our tour guide would say, "and this is costing XXXX billion dollars, and this X billion amount," and I was like, "Holy crap!" However, when I found out Russia is not even taking care of their waste, just letting it pollute their country and kill off their people, I realized: heck. Its worth spending a trillion if it means it won't kill us all off. I'm worth more than that anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)

All very fascinating--if you have questions, ask me. Otherwise, I'll leave the history (mostly!) alone (for now!).

Other than that, you want to know my plans? Staying in bed for as long as possible listening to music. Studying really hard. Writing three major papers. Taking my Mom out to eat for a late Mother's Day "surprise."

One of my classmates is writing her SEnior paper on the Madaba Plains Project, an excavation site in Jordan that she (and my roommate) have gone to excavate in the past few years, digging up pots, houses, bones, etc.. She couldn't think of a good interesting title, so another classmate came up with this one: "Superglue and Pot." I am superlatively impressed.

Bush Helps GOP Raise $17 Million At Spring Gala

May 17, 2006 9:10 p.m. EST

Yvonne Lee - All Headline News Staff Reporter

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - President Bush attracts 800 people to an event that raised $17 million for the GOP.

The Associated Press reports many attendees contributed more than the $1,500 ticket price, giving the Republican National party a record take for a non-presidential election year.

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman says, "The RNC gala's record success this year shows that Republicans are eager to support President Bush and motivated to maintain our majorities in the House and Senate."

The GOP's annual spring gala raised $15 million in 2005 and $14 million in 2003, both non-election years.

When Mr. Bush was running for re-election in 2004, the dinner raised a record $38.5 million.

The event attracted 800 people to hear Bush speak and the country group Diamond Rio perform at DAR Constitution Hall, two blocks from the White House.

I Believe.

Illumination. The Holocaust Museum. The Smithsonian. Washington Monument. Lincoln Memorial. I sit here in Arlington National Park, as the sun illuminates downtown D.C, and I, with my bird's eye view atop this green grassy knoll, bid my farewell to my country's capitol.

I waited in line close to an hour to view our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence. Screaming kids, yelling teenagers, loud noises, but to me, it was holy ground, God-breathed and inspired. "John Hancock" was written at the top of each major document in a bold strong stroke of hand, in defiance of a government that had no respect for its people, a government that trampled upon his rights, a government that had turned sour on the New World people.

Although today's government is confusing, and perhaps frustrating, I still believe in the people. I still believe in the process. I still believe in democracy.

~Saturday, May 20, 2006

Chocolate Cigar Celebration of my baby nephew!!!!


So this is my very, very, VERY new baby nephew, Luke. I have fallen hook, line, and sinker IN LOVE! And after my long out-pouring of emotions that I am "missing out on love," I feel like I have finally arrived. My true love of my life: my nephew. I ADORE this wee sweetie! I cannot stop saying how much I love him. He is the cutest, most precious little sweetie in the whole entire world! And when he sleeps, he makes little cutie grunting noises, and I cannot stop kissing his beautiful baby head! It is so beautiful to be loved unconditionally and to love back with the same fervor.

Luke: My Little Cutie 

Capitol Picture

D.C. Capitol

This is such a beautiful structure! It towers above the D.C. skyline. Jeff told me that no building structure is allowed to be taller than this dome in the Capitol, which I think is cool.

I cannot list my favorite highlight of the trip--it was all wonderful and illuminating! However, for extracurricular activity, I have to say my favorite was the National Art Gallery. I sat in front of Monet for such a long time, and Pissaro's pointilism really inspired me, and of course an all-time favorite from last summer when I last saw his art in England, Turner and Constible. Van Gogh was there too, and although I never saw him, I bought several prints of Kandensky, a Russian modern artist. I've never been a fan of modern art, but every once in a while, one will inspire me--more for the colors than the technicality or lack thereof :) in an artwork.

Then of course, I really loved the WWII Memorial--the symbolism behind it all was fantastic, and really fun for me to figure out! When I can have my notes in front of me I will write more about my thoughts.

Tourista: Jen, Jeff, Dennis 

AI event on our college campus!

NEWSFLASH from a week ago :) but I still have to post it anyway to show what we are doing on our campus!!!!

College students and faculty are calling attention to the genocide in Darfur during two events on Thursday, May 18. From 5:30-6:30 p.m. Amnesty International will sponsor a teach-in and postcard-writing campaign on the lawn in front of the SAC. The teach-in will intersperse African music and information on the history and current status of the Darfur conflict. Kyle ***, Angie ****, Alma ***, Greg ***, Janelle ****, Charis ****, Katie ****, and Terrie **** are among the speakers for the teach-in.

Amnesty International will provide ice cream (donation requested) and will be selling T-shirts and wristbands to benefit the refugees in Darfur.

Jen ***, Amnesty International President, said, "this event is to generate further awareness of the people in Africa and the mass genocide taking place. The goal of Amnesty International is to give each person the right to life and equality on a humane level. Come join us as we eat ice-cream, fellowship, and learn. Although peace agreements have been reached on some level in Darfur, there is a likelihood that the government there is trying to quiet down the international community's campaign to stop the Genocide. What we need to do is reach our hands across the world and say, 'Never again!'"

From 7-8 p.m., psychology professor Angie **** will give an overview of the Darfur situation and show a short film in CSP 154 (Murdock Lecture Hall).

By Believing That I Could Never Find True Love

Edited Note: I wrote this late last night (really early this morning!), vowing to get feedback! And so this isn't taken wrong, this does not apply to ANYONE specifically in my life, just a general belief/feeling I have had for some time now. I have absolutely no one on my list, so there is no angle in this piece I wrote.

By believing that I could never find true love, I have not only imprisoned myself, but I built the cold concrete walls that surround me. I have become my guard, I have become a prisoner, I have become the sentencing Judge, I have become the voice of doom pronouncing chaos. I have, by my lack of watering love, shriveled my flower to nothing but shards of piercing glass. I have fulfilled my own prophecy of never finding true love again—by not willing to believe, by not willing to wait to take my chances. Instead, cold rationalism procured, has reduced me to nothing but a cynic of love and taken away the joy in the thought of companionship.

Sweet Sixteen. Only seven years ago, but my, how times have slashed away at me. He was twenty, a solid four years my elder, a hunky Junior in college, swarthy, the typical “tall, dark, and handsome” prototype. I still have his letters to me, and I laugh at them—at him, at me, at us—our “puppy dog love” which my mom’s faraway gleaming eyes pronounced upon my love-sick soul. Insecure, gangly, and only a little girl, I cried my heart out when I broke up with him. My heart felt ripped out, minced and diced, the salty tears and runny nose and pile of toilet paper surrounding me, I just knew that was the end of my life.

And yet, it was the only beginning. My grand road trip through the maze of life, and he was only one little stepping stone in it, a summer fling that lasted such an amazing short time, but a fling that taught me much—to believe that I could find a really good guy someday.

And after the second male XX that came along, all those puppy love feelings turned into solid true love, and the summer fling lasted for several years, from girlhood to womanhood, and was so deep and so pure, nothing could adulterate it, except everything that could, and did. And suddenly, the cynic in all of us suddenly became my reality, my Mapquest of finding true love. “Impossible!” “Singlehood or Bust!”

I asked a nameless person, who I am very close to, this question:

If you could do the past thirty years over again, would you choose to be single and fulfill your personal goals, or be married? She broke down and cried, thereupon proving my point yet again. Was I shocked? No. The first words out of my mouth were, “well, then, it’s not just me. Marriage does suck.”

And so, yet again, I have hardened my heart, built up my flying buttresses, fortified my walls, prepared for a foray of jousting and jesting, but never, ever, giving in and “falling” in love. One cannot “fall” because if one can fall, one can get out of, love. Is it so trifling that it can be so, or is it so programmed that you can only love one person, truly, deeply, purely, only once, and then that is it? Everyone else is second-rate, or else I was duped in the first place, a naivety settling over my befoggled brain that I had found, at long last, “love”? Will my Google Search not bring up a true pure heart ready and willing to find true love, or only my cynic?

It is not that I am afraid of being alone, but that I am afraid of this cynical view, this fortress that I have built--therefore, and perhaps, knocking out any chance of finding—and I say this in a deep whisper—him. Maybe he and love do exist, except I have been so convinced that he and it do not, that I will miss him and it while changing life at the train stop. This, then, is my sadness. This, then, is my fear.

May 11, 2006

Added note: a friend once told me, “When you meet him, he will inspire you to pure love” thereby knocking out my cynic. By realizing my sadness and fear and hardness, it has become my first step to stopping my emotional bad attitude. I do not wish to stagnate here. I wish to bloom for eternity.

Linnaeus, Voltaire, and the Merry Month of May

"Man, when he enters the world, is naturally led to enquire who he is; whence he comes; whither he is going; for what purpose he is created; and by whose benevolence he is preserved" (Carolus Linnaeus, System of Nature [1735]).

"... O stern and numbing truth!...
A God came down to lift our stricken race:
He visited the earth, and changed it not!
One sophist says he had not power to change;
'He had,' another cries, 'but willed it not:
In time he will, no doubt.' And, while they prate...
God either smites the inborn guilt of man,
Or, arbitrary lord of space and time,
Devoid alike of pity and of wrath,
Pursues the cold designs he conceived."
~Francois-Marie Arouet, or rather known as Voltaire, in Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, 1756

"A caliph once, when his last hour had come,
Ths prayer addressed to him he reverenced:
'To thee, sole and all-powerful king, I bear
What thou dost lack in thy immensity--
Evil, ignorance, distress and sin."
He might have added one thing further--hope."
~Voltaire, Poem on the Lisbon Disaster

Dost thou not see today is a bad day for me? :)
I officially have a full-blown cold, laid low, exhausted, bummed out. And 'tis the month of May, o wretched month that you are! Janelle and I were studying on how there is a leaning of some who believe that time is cyclical--it repeats--and last night, we both started recounting the bad things that happened in May, especially for me. Her bad month is October. If time is cyclical, and fate has decreed it thus, perhaps this would explain why I have been so extremely fatiqued and quite frankly, bummed. However, mind over matter! If I knew why I was feeling depressed (because of past history) then I can overcome by choosing to not let it get me down. It is quite fascinating though, that all the major crisis of my life have occured in the month of May. So if this were the reason for my exhaustion and mild bummed-out-ness (I refuse to call it depression!) I choose to be positive today. Maybe I'll go roll in the grass. Or maybe just go back to bed for the day :).

Beautiful

This morning, i took time to just breathe. I meandered my way to school, looking up at the sky. After class, I took the long way home and plucked some lilacs from bushes to smell on my way home, breathing deeply of the exotic fragrance. When I was a child, I asked God to make sure there was the hugest lilac bush ever in my front yard in heaven, and then scattered all over my backyard and mansion. And a waterfall. I love the sound of water falling. Who doesn't?

This afternoon, I went shopping at the dreaded Wal-Mart. I was so desperate for food though since I haven't been shopping in over a month! I was shaking from hunger, so I raced home, fulfilling my promise not to eat until I had a hearty soup made: acorn-squash soup base, potatoes, sauted yellow squash and onion, homemade buttered-bread--it WAS worth the wait to get a decent home-made down-home cookin' meal. I truly believe my stomach has shrunk, because eating a small bowl of soup felt like way too much. Not cool. I am wasting away.

Then Janelle, Charis, Christa, and I headed to Starbucks, and a Grande Mocha later, it was 9:30 p.m. and we had slogged through some heavy conversation: casting out demons (scccaaarrreeee), marriage (scccccaaaarrrreeeee), politics (sccccaaarrreeee), and other such grisly topics, all very fascinating and thought provoking. I went to "study" for my test (which I am supposed to be doing now as well!!!!) but instead I explored myself and life.

Why is the thought of marriage so depressing? Why do people have such a limited view of relationships? Why do people demonize others instead of trying to understand them? How come small churches are so critical and closed-door to society that the only reason you go out to make friends with "them" is to save them? The real people you are bosom buddies with are other remnant people like yourself. Why can't people be accepting of their significant other to let them be free instead of trying to mesh or conform into some conglomerate "other" that is neither? Why do so many Christians view the text, "And the two shall become one," as the woman submitting to the man, and the "one" IS the man? Why do people ignore those overseas whose lives are a perpetual hell, but when something bad happens here in the States (aka Katrina, 9/11) it is a sign of the "end" when these are minor events compared to the genocides in Africa (aka Darfur)?

I have my opinions. But I do not fully know. But for the first time, I don't have to know--I can embrace life and the discrepanies of it. I asked the ladies tonight, "Wouldn't it be more simpler if life WERE black and white, like it was when we were children?" and then I answered my own question. Life would be scary if it were black and white. It would be a perpetual darkness over the land if that were fully carried out in life. I am glad it is not so.

I love having friends who I can bounce ideas off, philosophize about life with, and listen to them, share experiences, and drink some Starbucks coffee. Life is fascinating.

Beautiful.

WHEE!!! FUNNESS!!!!!!!!!!

G'day mates. School is repressive of the human spirit. Buckle down, knock it off, bash your brains out by cramming it with an overload of knowledge, crunch times, zillions of papers due, testy professors, zombie classmates, boss sick with the stomach flue, overall, school sucks right now. Why couldn't there be a more relaxed view of school, like Evergreen State College, where students develop their own core study focus, and then do whatever the hell they want as long as they are actually learning and making practical use of their knowledge to get into graduate school and function in life coherently, if not better than those of us who do rote papers and memorization?

Whine, whine, whine. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Moan, moan, groan.

I survive through school. I thrive on the practical side of life, or being able to focus on something and really get to know the topic intimately. Back at my other Uni, I never had any homework, because it wasn't a very good one, but I had time to develop my own personal interests. Something in class would gain my interest, so I would then go and spend hours in the library researching, and wowie! Even WRITE about it, doing my own mini-research papers all the time. It was beautiful to have more freedom.

I think it is very hard coming back to structured school after so much freedom in Olympia, and with such a packed schedule where every minute was a learning session. You could spend four years in college and STILL not learn what I learned in a sixty day session.

And on that note, I'll continue my bitch fest. I've been writing a complete waste-of-time mid-term paper for Dodds class. My roommate raved about this class, but it turns out to be an agh class, where half the stuff I don't understand because I don't have the background of science tucked nicely away in my past. Theorums? Chemical equations? Fludd? Galen, Harvey, Vesaleus, a nd all their mumbo-jumbo science that now forms our modern studies in cells, genetics, yadda yadda?

Continuing on, I'll stop. hee hee.

I look outside and see the gorgeous sun, and the only bit I can catch of it is in racing to my next class, so I cherish my weekends so much I've done absolutely jack squat in the hoemwork department the past two weekends! So rad! So rad. Yet again it is looking like a beautiful sunset, but I'm stuck in kretchmar answering the question, "Using the life and activities of Robert Hooke as a case study, analyze the social, intellectual and political dynamics that formed the historical context of the early Royal Society." Dude. I dunno. And I only missed ONE class period, and I've read the book, and I still do not know.

Staying alive, staying alive, staying allliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Professor Dana Thompson's Quotables

Random quotes by the Economics prof:

The three major summer festivities are:

Gloom, Doom, and Groom:

Gloom, because of rising oil prices
Doom, because of the possible impending war with Iran
Groom, because of traditional summer weddings.

"The only way to fail is to do nothing--SO BE WILLING TO TAKE RISKS!!"

"The smart person is the individual who knows what they don't know."