Easy as the click of a button

When I was reading over one of the essays I had to write for my many applications this week, I right clicked on the highlighted changes Mom had suggested. It gave me the option to either "accept change" or "reject change." If only life had such buttons. With one click I could accept the enormous changes in front of me (transferring schools, moving home, commuting, working, changing majors, rearranging friendships) and have them settle in as if they were no change at all. Or, I could reject those changes altogether and have things continue on as previously planned. Of course, as with the paper, in doing so I would risk unfulfilled potential, mediocrity which never reaches the goal, meaning left undisclosed. Every piece of writing is better for a little editing--even life stories. But in editing you must discard one ending for another. There is always the possibility that the first one would have been good too. Unfortunately, in life there are no buttons. So, while we do either accept change or reject it, thwarting it entirely is out of the question and nothing about the decision to do either is going to be so easy or instantaneous. I have mostly accepted my current changes--the existence and inevitability of them--but for now I am back at Gordon, living in the possibility of an ending that isn't going to happen, while word by word I edit for a different conclusion.

Good News in this Economy???

I saw this on yahoo news and thought it was pretty cool....

A Head with a Heart

It was the kind of meeting that is taking place in restaurant kitchens, small offices, retail storerooms, and large auditoriums all over this city, all over this state, all over this country.

Paul Levy, the guy who runs Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, was standing in Sherman Auditorium the other day, before some of the very people to whom he might soon be sending pink slips.

In the days before the meeting, Levy had been walking around the hospital, noticing little things.

He stood at the nurses' stations, watching the transporters, the people who push the patients around in wheelchairs. He saw them talk to the patients, put them at ease, make them laugh. He saw that the people who push the wheelchairs were practicing medicine.

He noticed the same when he poked his head into the rooms and watched as the people who deliver the food chatted up the patients and their families.

He watched the people who polish the corridors, who strip the sheets, who empty the trash cans, and he realized that a lot of them are immigrants, many of them had second jobs, most of them were just scraping by.

And so Paul Levy had all this bouncing around his brain the other day when he stood in Sherman Auditorium.

He looked out into a sea of people and recognized faces: technicians, secretaries, administrators, therapists, nurses, the people who are the heart and soul of any hospital. People who knew that Beth Israel had hired about a quarter of its 8,000 staff over the last six years and that the chances that they could all keep their jobs and benefits in an economy in freefall ranged between slim and none.

"I want to run an idea by you that I think is important, and I'd like to get your reaction to it," Levy began. "I'd like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners - the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don't want to put an additional burden on them.

"Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice," he continued. "It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits."

He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Sherman Auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.

Paul Levy stood there and felt the sheer power of it all rush over him, like a wave. His eyes welled and his throat tightened so much that he didn't think he could go on.

When the applause subsided, he did go on, telling the workers at Beth Israel, the people who make a hospital go, that he wanted their ideas.

The lump had barely left his throat when Paul Levy started getting e-mails.

The consensus was that the workers don't want anyone to get laid off and are willing to give up pay and benefits to make sure no one does. A nurse said her floor voted unanimously to forgo a 3 percent raise. A guy in finance who got laid off from his last job at a hospital in Rhode Island suggested working one less day a week. Another nurse said she was willing to give up some vacation and sick time. A respiratory therapist suggested eliminating bonuses.

"I'm getting about a hundred messages per hour," Levy said yesterday, shaking his head.

Paul Levy is onto something. People are worried about the next paycheck, because they're only a few paychecks away from not being able to pay the mortgage or the rent.

But a lot of them realize that everybody's in the same boat and that their boat doesn't rise because someone else's sinks.

Paul Levy is trying something revolutionary, radical, maybe even impossible: He is trying to convince the people who work for him that the E in CEO can sometimes stand for empathy.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.

Italy Update

This update is a little on the tardy side, but I have been putting it off. The good news is that I was accepted into the Orvieto program on Friday. At this point, there should be lots of jumping and screaming, but I just can't get that worked up about it because of the bad news. There isn't enough money for me to return to Gordon next year, unless I opt for massive loans that will land me in debt for the next twenty years. I've gone through all the financial aid information and I'm 99% sure that it isn't going to work. As soon as I got this news (two weeks prior to today) I began looking at schools to transfer to. My top choice is currently is UNH. I would get in-state tuition and they have both of my majors. There is the possibilty of me commuting or I have been offered an apartment there by a friend. Tomorrow I go to take a tour of the campus and hopefully get some questions answered. So that's about where everything stands. Despite being heartbroken about leaving everything and everyone at Gordon, some excitement is beginning to well up in me for this new adenture. Nothing about my college experience has been predictable thus far, I guess there is no reason for it to start now.

10 Reasons to Become a Philosophy Major

1. Capitalizing the first letter of any noun gives it abstract existence.
2. You get to use words like "thatness" and "whatness" and they actually mean something.
3. People automatically defer to your superior intelligence without bothering to find out if you actually have any.
4. Every word is open to redefinition...even that one.
5. You will never take another exam again.
6. The departments are so small they are just happy you're there. If you are female, they may set up a shrine and enter the room kowtowing.
7. If you run out of time to write a paper, you simply channel Descartes and posit the non-existence of deadlines. You're only dreaming after all.
8. There really is no wrong answer. You just have to be able to take enough text out of context to support whatever absurdity you are claiming.
9. It is expected that you will babble inchoerently, forget the mundane niceties of everyday life, spend massive amounts of money on an education and books normal people don't understand, smoke cigars, and spend the majority of your time in pubs (mostly doing the incoherent babbling thing and smoking the cigars).
10. When you write papers, if your classmates don't understand it you'll probably get a B. If you don't understand it, you're edging toward an A-. If your professor doesn't understand it, you just put yourself on the presidential honors list.

The Magical Yeats

One of the authors we are reading for Irish lit is William Butler Yeats. We read some of his plays and quite a bit of his poetry. In his later years, he unfortunately entered into the occult and wrote a lot with those images. He did a lot of political poetry as well and liked to name drop. I fell in love with his earlier works in Irish mythology. Yeats was concerned with the legends of Ireland being lost; he wanted to use them to revive the spirits of the present day Irish with inspiration by their heroes. Here are some of my favorites from the book we had.

Into the Twilight

Out-Worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is aways young,
Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the grey twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

A Faery Song
Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania,
in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.

We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:

Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:

Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:

Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

And perhaps my favorite one I read....

The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,.
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he
can understand.

There are a few of his later works that I really love too and this is just a small sample of earlier works. Let me know if you want suggestions of other poems of his to read.

Italy Update

I think most of you know that I made a change in my study abroad plans over winter break. There were several contributing factors to my change of mind about Oxford. 1) I just couldn't get enough money in time. 2) It wasn't looking like I was going to be healthy enough to go if I had to work multiple jobs during the school year and all summer. 3) The academic pressure was getting to me. 4) I didn't really want to be gone a whole year. I prefer the one semester programs. I was very relieved once I made the decision. Because I got the flu last week I got my preliminary application in on the very last day, Sunday February 15. They were actually quite nice about rescheduling my interview since I'm sure none of them wanted to contract the flu from me. My interview was Monday morning. The director of the Orvieto program was actually at Gordon and conducted the interview. He was very kind and friendly. It was hard to answer the questions about why Italy is the best fit for me over another program. I worked so hard on having my academics good for Oxford that I hadn't really concentrated on answering that kind of question. In my mind, it's just Italy, so who wouldn't want to go? Well, I got the email that I made it through the first round. The guy said he was pretty sure that I would, but it was still nice to get the email. Now I have to get a bunch of references and a transcript and pay my fee. Then they call me in for another interview. I should have the final yes or no by March 10, I believe. While I was having my interview and he was telling me about the program I was getting so excited. I can't imagine just hopping on a train and going to Naples for the weekend. I want this so much!!! Please keep praying that everything works out. I'll be putting up more Italy updates as things continue to progress. If you have any questions, leave me a comment and I will do my best to answer them. By the way, the picture at the top is of Orvieto. Isn't it gorgeous up on a hill like that?

My Weekend: 1/30 - 2/01

Friday night, a bunch of the girls on my floor got dressed up and we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dessert. Ali and I went ahead of time to put our names in because it is an extremely popular place, especially on the weekends. It's a good thing the two of us went early because we ended up waiting two hours to be seated!

Typical Lyndsi moment...will read a book anywhere, dressed in anything

Classy

Very, very happy :)

Look at those gorgeous curls!!

waiting and waiting

(Nicole, Ali, me, Sarah, Emily, Cassie, Clara, Bethany)

This really hyper and enthusiastic waiter offered to take our pictures. We were really hoping he would be ours, but we got someone boring.

It looks like Nicole and Ali are about to do something to me...probably true...

What an attractive face that is in the background. Definitely some bonhoeffing going on there. (floor joke)

Outside in the freezing cold

Saturday was the first Arts in the city class in which we actually went into the city. Every other Saturday we meet from 9-4 and visit different artists and museums in the Boston area. I was so happy to get into it despite the fact that I lose half my Saturdays for the semester. In the morning we visited artist Ed Stitt. I loved a lot of his work. I think that is mostly because I am an idealist when it comes to paintings and probably most other forms of art. I like to see redemption and beauty in something. That doesn't necessarily entail perfection and lack of pain, but it does explain my leanings towards the softer impressionists like Renoir and Monet and my fascination with Edward Hopper's light experiments (although he works a lot with people in isolation which can be depressing and he has some let's say reavealing paintings). Ed Stitt painted the more "famous" places in Boston when he first moved there from Pennsylvania. Now he likes to work with the every day spots he sees. You can look at his work at www.edstitt.net.

We wen to the Gardner Museum in the afternoon. It was interesting and the courtyard there is beautiful, but I wish we had a tour of some sort. The rooms were labeled but Isabella's taste and arrangement is very specific, so I would have liked to have had some explanation for it. They had two portraits of her put in random rooms that didn't seem to have much of a connection. She looked like she would have been a fascinating person and maybe even a little wild sometimes.

Sunday I did end watching the Superbowl. Well, sort of. I've never been much of a sports person and definitely not a football fan, so I read Irish plays during the game and occasionally glanced at a commercial. (They weren't that good though.) My friend Marissa had a little party in her apartment which Ali, Steph, Dave, and I went to. I really didn't care who won, but when anyone asked I said I was rooting for the Cardinals. You die hard sports fans will not want to hear my reasoning behind that, so I will spare you. Don't worry though, it had nothing to do with their uniforms. :)