asking at the end of the year

when you wake, the morning covers you with light

(credit for the title goes to Counting Crows)

tuesday's happinesses

-getting up early while the house is still quiet

-a bonfire

-the car heater in 2 degree weather

-coffee with an old friend in a diner that looks like a train car, listening to the conversations of the bearded, plaid-wearing men at the counter

-bookshops and gift certificates

-my sister's kitten

-chocolate-covered, candied orange rind

-scraping wallpaper, which is oddly peaceful and satisfying

-the nearly full moon

-scar stories

christmas present ideas

While you're Christmas shopping, check out Global Reach! The unique thing about Global Reach is that 100% or their profits go straight to Sixty1, an organization that two of my friends started to reach women and children trapped in sexual slavery in India and Cambodia. So with every purchase you will make a difference i...n the fight against sex trafficking. For the next week they are offering free shipping- just enter "vintage" as the promo code. Please check out the store and let your holiday shopping make a difference.

find a penny, pick it up

“Sometimes I think the cement of my being was taken from one cultural mould before it cured and was forced into other moulds, one after the other, retaining bits of the form of each but producing a finished sculpture that fitted into none.”

–Sophia Morton

Shrimp and slavery

Abolitionist Christmas

If you're looking for Christmas presents, here's a great idea. I have an amazingly creative friend who has been asking people to design greeting cards and is selling to cards to raise money for the Not For Sale Campaign. The cards are 12 for $6 or 24 for $12, and over half of the profits go to helping women who have survived sex trafficking. The cards are absolutely beautiful (I've seen them) and very unique. If you're interested you can look at the designs and email Sarah (sarahd@notforsale.org) if you'd like to give the cards to someone for Christmas.

november happiness

We put up Christmas lights around our front door. The air is crisp. (such a lovely description. i always think i want something else, because that is overused. but really it's perfect.) There was frost on the leaves in the driveway yesterday. Every year I get more excited about Thanksgiving.

Sometimes I can't do things.

And sometimes, can I realize that is what makes life beautiful?

I'm not ready to see it that way
and to understand it differently than
that the walls, when they come nearer,
mean that I am growing
until I break them open, free myself from their narrowness

- Klee

The Journey Installation

You can see pictures of the installation that Emma Thompson worked on with Bondage for Freedom here.

They're pretty powerful.

I love this melding of art and activism.

Emma Thompson's Journey

Someone wonderful showed me this video of an installation that Emma Thompson worked on with a survivor of sex trafficking in the United Kingdom. The train car installation was on display in Trafalgar Square in London In September 2007. This is a short video but it walks you through the journey into sex slavery in a very visual and impacting way.

Reason to believe

india and baseball

I just got an email from the Not For Sale campaign with a link to this article about child sweatshop laborers in Delhi, India. This particular raid was successful and the government has a plan to return the kids to their families and fund their education. Unfortunately, this is just a small success story in the middle of a much bigger problem. It is encouraging, though, to see that kids are not only being freed but are also being provided for.

On another note, the San Francisco Giant's pitcher Jeremy Affeldt has been working with Not For Sale and has committed to their Team Free2Play. You can show your support for Jeremy by voting for him through the All Stars Helping Kids organization.

Citrus-y words of wisdom

My tangerine-eating friend wrote some lovely words this morning:

I'm not ready to see it that way
and to understand it differently than
that the walls, when they come nearer,
mean that I am growing
until I break them open, free myself from their narrowness

- Klee

Oyster River

It was so easy, and the word's so sweet. You can't remember. You try to move your feet.

Home again, home again...

After a summer of searching, getting lost, difficult landlords, and worry over the cost of rent, I have moved into my first ever apartment. It's the third floor of a lovely house owned by a nice couple, the last of three houses on a long driveway off of Route 108. It's very cute, although a bit cold, and we had a little trouble making tea the first morning because the knob marked "front" turns on the back burner. But we now know that our smoke detector works, so I feel confident that if I ever forget to turn the stove off we will not burn the house down.

Here are some pictures:

One Morning In Maine

I just got back from a lovely few days with my family in an A-frame house on a lake in Maine. I've always had the impression, from driving through Maine on my way to Nova Scotia, that it was all ugly fields and little rest stop buildings made out of lincoln logs, but this spot was really gorgeous. We were tucked back behind a campground, completely secluded from the rest of the vacationers, and just a few minutes drive from the ocean. It was only a few days but it included some of my old favorite things, as well as a few new favorites:

-Skinny dipping with my sisters late one night in delicious secrecy

-Entire family dance parties

-Lots of photographs

-Around-the-world ping-pong

-The ocean

-A photo shoot on a rocky shore (while a real photo shoot went on not too far away)

-A canoe on a lake

-Endless laughter and inside jokes

-Reading the Harry Potter series aloud to my little sisters, and eventually my whole family

The Women's Crusade

It's long, but this piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is fabulous. It's part of a longer book entitled Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide that I really want to read.

Claire

Today...

...One of Regina's beautiful new songs is playing in my head.

Rain, rain, go away