The Hunger Games

By D Sharon Pruitt [CC-BY-2.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

It hurts. The movie - The Hunger Games - if you watch it, it hurts. I've been home for about an hour, and I'm still zombie-like, stunned, trying to find my numb place. I suspect Tristan feels it too. We've spoken only a handful of sentences since we left the theater. Something dark, palpable, heavy. It weighs on us, that which words cannot transmute to air. I shy from the cliff of tears, the inevitable tumble of pain.

My mother tells me I just feel things more strongly than others do. I can't speak for others; thus I can't know if there is truth to the latter. But as for the former, it is one of the deepest truths I know about myself.

I. Feel things. More. Strongly. 

Crap Your Legislator Says

Part of the ongoing saga of Mrs. Awj Goes to Frankfort....

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Representative X: "You know why crime rates are so much lower in Europe? Because they have real consequences. They don't have kids doing all these drugs because in the Netherlands they hang you for drug offenses."

Riiiight....and by right I mean you're an f*ing moron. Just to be sure, I checked and (a) the Netherlands banished capital punishment from their criminal laws over 130 years ago, and (b) Amsterdam. You just made Dubya look smarter by comparison. *facepalm*

***

Compost Happens...Change Does Too

By ExplicitImplicity at en.wikipedia (flickr/
Transferred from en.wikipedia) [CC-BY-2.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
from Wikimedia Commons

Read the first two installments here: Compost Happens...I Hope and Compost Happens...Of Course!

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In 2010, having lived and worked in five national parks from sea to shining sea, I returned to Mammoth Cave at long last. The guide force was still the same family I knew and loved – equal parts endearing and exasperating. But left to their own devices for five years without my outbursts, they'd changed all by themselves. 

Compost Happens...Of Course!

By alexkon from Jerusalem, Israel (Flickr) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], 
Catchvia Wikimedia Commons

Catch the beginning here: Compost Happens...I Hope

***

So I added too much newspaper, water, and yeast, too many nuked-and-frozen banana peels, and too little soil. And in less than a week's time, I'd become the world's most successful indoor farmer. Of gnats, that is. I fished out and trashed the banana peels, tried to rearrange and dry out the bins a bit, and made approximately five thousand fruit-fly traps. At two weeks, the feeding frenzy finally commenced! Tragically, not of the worms, but on the worms. My poor little wriggly babies. The damn fruit flies had laid eggs in my compost bin and were literally eating my invertebrate farm animals alive! Noooooooooo!!! It was the most disgusting thing ever.

Compost Happens...I Hope

By Red58bill (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

My second summer working and living at Mammoth Cave National Park, I decided it was time to walk the talk. If I was going to encourage visitors to be stewards of the Earth, it was time for me to start being a better one myself. Recycling and using less A/C was not enough. I was going to start composting.

My co-workers' number one suggestion was: “Throw it out in the woods. The varmints 'll compost it fer ya.”

You might be a tree-hugger if...

...you almost drive your sleeping friends off the side of a mountain...not because you're tired but because you were trying to ID the conifers on the horizon --or-- you almost wreck your car driving through the big city because you're staring at the red-tailed hawk in the sky instead of the road.

...you assign motifs to your backpacking trips: "I'm cold!" "I'm hot!" "Poop!"

Everything I Need to Know about Lobbying I Learned in Kindergarten

Photo Credit: Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

Wednesday I got home from KFTC's Economic Justice Lobby Day just in time to pick up Sophie from school. On the way home, I told her, "Sophie-dog (yep, my stepdaughter and dog have the same name, more on that another time) is going to be so excited to see us. I haven't been home all day."

Sophie(-girl), incredulous: "You finally found a job?!?" (Child, if we were cave people, you might not have survived to adulthood.)

Rob and His Job with the Mob

Have you seen this man? Of course you have.

You all know Rob. No, seriously. You probably do – he has approximately 50,000 friends on Facebook, of whom he has likely met at least half in his brief lifetime. And 99% of which likely owe him a favor. Still not ringing a bell? How about this: Ominous black trench-coat. Ever-present Kentuckians for the Commonwealth pin. Frequently photographed with voter registration clipboard in hand. Knows EVERYONE. ALWAYS. Excels at making you “an offer you can't refuse” so that it seems like it was your idea. After each encounter with him, you wonder: “How is this possible? How does he do it? How can anyone be so constantly aware and acting in support of social, economic, and environmental justice issues?” You assume the obvious answer is the Mafia. (Well, I did anyway.) But is it?

Ripples, Starfish, and Hope

Continuing from the thread of my last post, Dreams of Joe Hill, if you need a little inspiration, here are quotes on activism that always give me chills - and hope:

Dreams of Joe Hill

Dr. King, "I Have a Dream," 1963

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I am introducing "Dreams of Joe Hill" - the start of a thread of posts about a lifetime of longing to save the world and my first steps (long overdue) as a newborn activist. My story begins October 13, 2010, with an email to my family and friends:

Last weekend, I attended my first ever Kentuckians for the Commonwealth event - the Annual Membership Meeting in Jabez, KY. At the risk of sounding melodramatic – it made my life finally make sense.