Fam...

I love my parents...


...and my sister, too.

Blahgs

Hey, I followed in Ryan's footsteps and ALSO made a list of blogs....please let me know if you want me to take yours down (or put yours up).

The bug...

I'm getting the travel bug again, that itch under my skin to leave the country...FAST. We Americans do have a problem staying put...being invested in one place, commiting our time and energy to a specific community for the rest of our lives. We are a mobile people, rootless and roaming, like the band of hippie ministrals Matt and I saw this weekend at the peace protest. There's something about the nomadic life that is sexy and, I'm sure in many ways, idealized. But it's appealing, at least to us here in the Estados Unidos.

Then again, the nomadic life is exhausting, especially if you are doing it alone, traveling from place to place, starting over wherever you go, establishing relationships and then leaving again. Going from Gordon to Romania to Portland to DC in less than a year was a bit overwhelming. A little too much transitioning if you ask me. But as of right now, the thought of being here another year feels...weird. I'm not used to it. I'm only used to biting off small chunks of time, a few months here and there rather than entire years.

So that being said, I feel the urge to be...somewhere else, somewhere none-US. Somewhere African or Eastern European. Uganda has settled firmly in my heart and mind as The Country To Return To. And Romania doesn't beckon to me so much as the people who are still there -- Dana and Brandi and Diana and Victor. I miss them a lot. I love to travel. I love the awkward, fish-out-of-water feeling you have for the first month, and then I love settling into the place, learning obscure local lingo and lore, feeling "at home" in a new setting. I love the excitement of being surrounded by so many new things - new foods and sites and customs. There are a lots of hardships and frustrations with traveling, too, of course. But the enjoyments far outweigh them.

I wonder if there will ever be a day when I feel read to settle down, take root somewhere, a day when a one-year committment will seem like a piece of cake rather than something daunting. It's not that I'm non-committal. It's just that there are a gazillion things I'm interested in and want to do and see and experience. Trying to pin down just one and stick with it is....against my nature. But not unlearnable. I am doing a lot of things lately that are "against" my very nature...like bills and schedules and meetings gallore. We can all learn to do even the things we aren't good at and don't care to be good at.

I've talked to Steve about potentially visiting him in Cairo next winter. Or meeting up somewhere. We shall see.

Some nice news....

Group Homes Get More Va. Funds

By Chris L. Jenkins

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 8, 2007; Page VA03

The General Assembly has dramatically expanded a program that provides community care to people with mental disabilities in Northern Virginia, approving funding that will add group home beds and pay more to agencies that offer services in the area.

During the 46-day legislative session that ended last month, lawmakers pumped enough money into the current $74 billion state budget so an additional 330 people with mental disabilities throughout Virginia will have access to community care, such as small group homes. Northern Virginia will likely receive about 60 of those slots, with the majority going to Fairfax County residents, said Alan Wooten, director of mental retardation services for the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Services Board.

In addition, state officials increased funding by $5 million to agencies in Northern Virginia that provide services to people with mental disabilities to help the agencies manage the high costs of doing business in the region. State reports estimate that the cost of providing those services in Northern Virginia is at least 30 percent higher than elsewhere in the state. Currently, agencies in the region are paid the same rate for their services as those elsewhere in Virginia.

The additional money will boost funding to Northern Virginia agencies by 15 percent, which will largely go toward increasing salaries to direct-care workers.

Advocates and state officials said the extra $5 million from the state will go a long way toward helping organizations stay in the region.

"This will go directly to paying our workers better," said Nancy Mercer, executive director of the Arc of Northern Virginia, which organized a regional push to get the extra $5 million from the state. Combined with federal funding, the region's agencies will get an increase of $10 million annually starting in fiscal 2008.

"We're also hoping that this will help our agencies here in Northern Virginia to stay and not have to move someplace else, where the cost of doing business is cheaper," Mercer said.

Advocates and officials said the higher compensation might encourage other agencies to open in Northern Virginia.

In all, Virginia allocated about $15 million statewide for those services this year, an amount advocates and state officials called significant.

The new funding will help whittle the long waiting list for services in the area. Nearly 950 Northern Virginians with mental disabilities get a Medicaid-funded waiver to receive services, largely group-home beds, in the community instead of being placed in institutions. Because of long-standing funding shortages, hundreds are on years-long waiting lists to receive community care, which generally costs less than institutionalizing people in large facilities downstate.

State officials and lawmakers said the General Assembly was swayed to make the investment this year because of a focused effort by advocates.

For nearly a year, advocates in Northern Virginia have been pressing lawmakers to help increase funding for the area's providers. Every Northern Virginia lawmaker signed onto the legislation to do so. In addition, the budget amendments were sponsored by area lawmakers, including Del. Vincent F. Callahan Jr. (R-Fairfax) and Sens. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) and Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William).

"The Northern Virginia advocates really pushed statewide, and the legislature heard them," Howell said.

The alternative version....

My dear friend Ryan, who seems to have serious disdain for my personality type (despite the fact we differ on one degree....take that!) left this 'alternative' version of Type 7 as a comment, but it was too funny to leave it there to collect dust, so I will post it here.

Opportunistic Idealism (Ennea-Type VII)
Gluttony, Fraudulence and Narcissism
Trait Structure
Gluttony
Hedonistic Permissiveness
Rebelliousness
Lack of Discipline
Imaginary Wish Fulfillment
Seductive Pleasingness
Narcissism
Persuasiveness
Fraudulence

I hae to say it, but he's pretty right on. Especially the "seductive pleasingness."

Uh oh...here we go again.

So...I found ANOTHER personality test, the Enneagram 9 Types (http://www.9types.com/), and I am a number 7. Does my love of personality tests make me obsessed with self? Or just interested in being self-knowledgable? I must admit this is pretty right on. I bolded the ones that hit the nail on the head (aka, all of them).

Type 7: Adventurers are energetic, lively, and optimistic. They want to contribute to the world.

How to Get Along with Me:

Give me companionship, affection, and freedom.
Engage with me in stimulating conversation and laughter.
Appreciate my grand visions and listen to my stories.
Don't try to change my style. Accept me the way I am.
Be responsible for youself. I dislike clingy or needy people.
Don't tell me what to do.

What I Like About Being a Seven:

being optimistic and not letting life's troubles get me down
being spontaneous and free-spirited
being outspoken and outrageous. It's part of the fun.
being generous and trying to make the world a better place
having the guts to take risks and to try exciting adventures
having such varied interests and abilities

What's Hard About Being a Seven:

not having enough time to do all the things I want
not completing things I start
not being able to profit from the benefits that come from specializing; not making a commitment to a career
having a tendency to be ungrounded; getting lost in plans or fantasies
feeling confined when I'm in a one-to-one relationship

Global warming as "tool of Satan"

Christians, particularly the fundamentalists of the Religious Right, fascinate me. I'm both repelled and attracted to them, much like roadkill....you know it's gonna be nasty but you can't help but look. Here are some particualrly amusing sections from an article I read on global warming and Jerry Falwell:
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Falwell Says Global Warming Tool of Satan by Bob Allen, 03-01-07, http://www.ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=8596

Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who has worked for decades to involve conservative Christians in politics, said Sunday the debate over global warming is a tool of Satan being used to distract churches from their primary focus of preaching the gospel. "If I decide here as the pastor and our deacons decide that we're going to get caught up in the global warming thing, we're not going to be able to reach the masses of souls for Christ, because our attention will be elsewhere, " Falwell said in Sunday's sermon at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. "That's pretty wise for Satan to concoct." ...

Falwell didn't deny the earth is warmer than it once was, but he said fluctuations in the earth's temperature have nothing to do with human activity. He described the "truth" linking global warming to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide gases as the "greatest deception in the history of science." ...

Falwell cited two Bible verses that he said apply to the global-warming debate: Psalm 24:1-2, which declares "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof," and Genesis 8:22, which says there will be seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter for "as long as the earth remains."...

"Now how long will the earth remain?" Falwell asked. "It will remain until the new heavens and the new earth come. And that won't happen until, well, over in the last two chapters of the Bible--after the tribulation, after the thousand-year reign of Christ, then new heavens and new earth. Why? Because the former things are passed away. The earth will go up in dissolution from severe heat. The environmentalists will be really shook up then, because God is going to blow it all away, and bring down new heavens and new earth."

In recent years, "since Al Gore invented the Internet and then accelerated global warming," Falwell said, "our world has been in turmoil." Unfortunately, Falwell said, "naïve Christian leaders are also being duped," jumping on a bandwagon with "persons who are on the left of everything." "I agree every Christian ought to be an environmentalist of reasonable sort," Falwell said. "We should certainly pick up trash. We ought to beautify the earth as best we can. We ought to keep the streams clean. But we shouldn't be hugging trees and worshipping the creation more than we worship the Creator, and that is what global warming is all about."

Falwell said a better name for Gore's film, which later the evening following Falwell's Sunday morning sermon won an Oscar for best documentary, would be "A Convenient Untruth--convenient for him to alarm the people for his own political advantage, without any background."
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As I said, pretty hilarious. But then there is this, http://www.christiansandclimate.org/statement, which renews my faith in the Church. I bought a book today called, "It's Easy Being Green" with all these pratical steps to make your lifestyle more eco-friendly. I would really like to implement some of these enivornmentally sound practices into our life in l'Arche. Perhaps I will post an entry with some of the ideas I find. More on that later.